To Be or Not to Be From a talk given by E. J. Gold
"We are trapped because we cannot use our attention. That is what keeps us prisoners-that and nothing else."
"When we are using attention as it should be used, it will hurt, and we simply have got to have the discipline to keep going, to continue day after day after day; and if we let a day go by when we do not use our attention as it should be used, if we do not use it every day, we will lose it. It is just like a language, if we do not use it, we lose it. We lose any ability that we have developed, if we do not exercise it."
"If we develop the ability to look, if we learn to place our attention, to pull our attention from where it is attracted, and place it wherever we want, that in itself will be tremendously powerful."
"If we wish to have life as a being then we must use our attention as it should be used, because it will give us the key to life."
As we start to really look at the question of attention, we will have some very strange surprises. Our perception of the world will radically alter. As we begin to use our attention as it should be used-as a being-we will violate the limits which are imposed upon our attention by the body.
But the body is just a low form of energy anyway; not that consequential. It will impose its limits, and so will the mind. There are physical limits, psychological limits, emotional limits, and every time the being uses attention as it should be used, those limits will be violated.
The machine does not like it when we violate its self-imposed limitations. We have been well trained, and well indoctrinated to treat those limits as potent taboos-so potent that they are all but unbreakable. Every bit of conditioning that has been poured onto us lavishly in life, by organic life, every bit of the machine’s conditioning, and the conditioning that we bought into as a being, goes against the correct use of attention.
We are trapped because we cannot use our attention. That is what keeps us prisoners-that and nothing else. When we start to use our attention properly, all of the limitations fall away by themselves. The being’s use of attention burns all the limits of the machine, and the limits of the lower centrums; That is, the use of attention as it should be used, as it ought to be used, as it was meant to be used-as we have had it all along available to us.
But a thing unused becomes atrophied, stiff, and unusable. The experience of having one’s hand in a cast for a year should be sufficient to convince anyone of the difficulty of using it once the cast has been remove. It takes weeks, months or even years to reachieve the same freedom of movement-if, in fact, it ever comes back.
If we do not exercise our natural ability-and we only have two real abilities, we can be here and we can look at things-if we don’t exercise those two abilities, they atrophy.
Now, the point is not that they will atrophy, they have already atrophied. We have got to realize that we are starting out with very creaky, unused muscles. And it is going to hurt. Just like any new muscle, or any muscle that we have not used for a very long time.
When we are using attention as it should be used, it will hurt, and we simply have got to have the discipline to keep going, to continue day after day after day; and if we let a day go by when we do not use our attention as it should be used, if we do not use it every day, we will lose it. It is just like a language, if we do not use it, we lose it. We lose any ability that we have developed, if we do not exercise it.
When we start to recover our attention as it should be, we will feel as if we have been in a deep, deep sleep for decades, and possibly for thousands and millions of years. We will start to remember ourselves as we are, not remember ourselves as a machine, but really remember ourselves. The only way we will do that is to start using our real abilities, the only two powers we actually have, which means retraining our attention.
It might be interesting to engage ourselves in just exactly that-attention exercises designed to help us regain those two profoundly important abilities. And then everything else will just burn itself away. Nothing will stand in the presence of those two things.
If we can invoke our own presence into the present, into this space and this time, we can invoke ourselves anywhere across dimensional barriers, wherever we want. We can invoke ourselves anywhere, anytime, under any circumstances. And be where we want to be.
If we develop the ability to look, if we learn to place our attention, to pull our attention from where it is attracted, and place it wherever we want, that in itself will be tremendously powerful.
If our attention is attracted by interest, by hunger, it is rooted, and we cannot lift it out of there. This is not our attention, it does not belong to us. Our attention has been attracted by something. We have no control over it. So, to really control our attention we must be able to withdraw it, take it back and replace it where we wish-to the exclusion of intrusions. Our attention should be our own, it should not be subject to intrusion.
If we are able to do that, our memory will come back. It will be as if we awake from a very bad fuzzy dream. We will be functioning as an essential self, as a being. And that is what we are after. A situation where we can learn, not only that our machine is secondary, but that we can learn to assemble the form of the machine without needing the machine itself. We should be able to-but we are not, because we do not have the attention.
When a very highly trained and very highly disciplined attention is placed on the machine, the machine is immediately brought into the waking state. This only works with very refined and very potent attention which can even awaken someone else’s machine when it is placed on it, though we must be careful not to do that.
We can also do other things with our attention; just by resting it on something or someone-things can happen. Things which some might call magical or mystical, but those terms are misleading. The things that happen are simply effects of placement of attention. The potent placement of attention, or the placement of potent attention on an object has profound influences on the object.
Remember that, by definition, attention is always specific and awareness always general. It is never the other way around. We can put our attention on an object, then include, in a radiating pattern, everything around it or connected to it, and continue to expand indefinitely.
If we take our attention off all that, and put it on one object, all our attention is, for the moment, on that object only. But our general awareness is on everything else. Our attention can be fanned out, but still specific. We can move it around like a searchlight or a laser light; only it is a little more expansive.
Attention can expand or contract, come to rest, move again; it can be lifted entirely, or split; but it is always specific. It is not a general awareness. We should keep in mind that there are two very definitely different types of looking. One is general awareness and the other is attention.
Attention does not have to be focused, it can be disfocused, or even diffused. But then it still is not awareness. There are two things operating here. Awareness comes by itself. It drifts in through perceptions and impressions. Impressions is a catch-all phrase meaning ‘all kinds of things that arrive at us’. Attention is something that we direct which is not passive but active.
Attention must be intentionally directed. We can look at a book with our awareness but direct our attention elsewhere. We can pull our attention back, and put it on the book. It is like a physical thing we just take from where it is and put it wherever we want.
We can do other things also. We can take our awareness off and put just our attention on. In the presence of certain people with high attention we can feel the difference; there is a definite sensation.
We cannot generate and direct emotions until we can work with our attention, because emotion-real moods-are a function of attention. They are not ‘sentimental’ which means ‘to have physical sensations produced by the mind’: in Latin, ‘sentire’ means ‘to have physical sensations’, and ‘mens’ means ‘the mind’.
If we are operating under general awareness, our emotions are equally dependent on stimulus. They are reactions to stimuli. We are interested in developing something that is not a stimulated reaction or response. Something that comes from within, that comes from us. And in order to come from us, it has to be generated by us. We cannot generate it until we practice generating it. It starts with small things. We are starting from an atrophied point, with almost nothing, and we will have to work our way up.
It’s the same as preparing for almost any kind of exercise we can imagine. If we do not want to hurt ourselves, we must do some warm-ups first; work up to whatever it is very slowly. We will have to make preparations.
If we take our attention and place it on a glass, for example, the glass looks like it is being fused with light, it becomes more bright, more alive. It has a self-luminosity. The machine has not become more awake, but that kind of attention-if directed on the machine-will awaken it. When applied to the glass, it will just awaken the glass a little more.
We must work on simple attention. Take it from grade one, and carry it forward. We should not worry about awakening the machine. When we put the attention we presently have on the machine, nothing happens. No need to wonder why! What most people call attention and the kind of attention we are talking about here are two different things.
We learn by doing. Little by little the teaching has to be tailored to the time, place, and people. Two, three, or four thousand years ago had we been gathered in Sumer, for example, and we directed our attention to the machine, we would have been brought up with a certain type of attention all our lives, and we could count on that attention to be a machine-awakening attention. We would put our attention on our machine and it would be effective. Our machine would awaken, and it would be no great shock.
But because we have been brought up in a society which is destructive to that type of attention, to the use of attention in that way, when we are asked to place our attention on the machine, our attention is so weak, so ineffectual that it has no real effect, no awakening effect. We are not magicians, sorcerers, ‘sourciers’, sourcerers, someone who is a source; a sorcerer is someone who is sorcing, scourcing.
Now there is also the question of where our attention is coming from. At the beginning, our attention will seem to come from our eyes or from behind our eyes or somewhere in our head, or around our body, or within our body-possibly our chest, head, or throat.
But our source of attention is actually nowhere near the body. We are associated with the body and we are identified with the body, but we are not anywhere near the body. The source of our attention, our genuine location will become more and more clear to us, because we have a real location, and an apparent location.
Our apparent location has always been obvious, our real location as a being will become more and more evident to us, as we practice using our attention as it should be used. Of course, just because it should be used that way doesn’t mean that we are required to use it that way. If we wish to have life as a being then we must use our attention as it should be used, because it will give us the key to life.
But if we choose not to live life as a being, then there is no direct urgency to use our attention as a being. In which case, any use of attention or non-use of attention is appropriate. The choice is to live as a being, to unlock our life as a being, or not. To be or not to be, that is the question.
Until we solve that question, we can go no further. Until we make a decision one way or another, no further progress is possible. We must choose. We will live or we will continue as we are. That choice must be made first. Then, and only then, can we begin to unlock the secret of life. I am going to live the life of the being, or I will continue as I always have. That choice is before us now. And that choice will be before us until we decide either way.
We cannot avoid the choice. And no one can make the choice for us. No one can encourage us one way or the other. We may choose either path. If we know of another path, we may choose that. Or we may decide not to choose, in which case we will just drift back to where we were before we became excited as a being; before we were tickled by cat whiskers-like a germanium crystal or a silicon chip is tickled into excitation.
Something excited our being and aroused it. Now we are faced with a choice, and we cannot make any further moves, go any further, or do anything until we choose one way or the other. The choice will not go away. It will always be before us.
The choice must be clearly understood. We can choose either the life of the being, the essential self, or the life of the machine. We must make that choice before we can even do a simple attention exercise. The exercises will do no good otherwise. Why must that be so? There are real laws involved here, things that we can move like blocks.
It is also very straight-forward. We can experiment with poking our finger in a light socket, but we have to make a choice about really wanting to experience what will come from that, if we know ahead of time what that will be. Otherwise our efforts will be misguided purposely.
If we choose the life of the machine, the life of the machine will not include something like an attention exercise. Once we have decided upon the path, then events will take place accordingly.
What becomes of the body of women body builders after the muscles have been developed? The body looks very much like a male body does, built up with muscles in smaller portions. Wide wings and rippling backs, great big biceps, and big thick legs.
Anyone enrolling into a body building class has to really decide if that is what they want to have happen to their body. Before we can do the smallest thing in terms of body development, we must decide if that is what we want to become-a grotesque thing like that.
Imagine how grotesque it would be for the essential self to develop along the same line and become powerful, much more powerful than in the ordinary course of events; in the ordinary course of events, a human being generally has a very undeveloped essential self. So, it looks pretty ugly to the average human being to have a highly developed essential self; as strange, as peculiar, as alien as these body built creatures look to us.
We could not really function in a human world, in the ordinary world if we were to do that. We would have to dress it in something, just as if we built our bodies in that way, we would have to hide them on the street. We could only reveal them among other body builders.
In the same way, if we develop the essential self along these lines, we will develop the essential self’s ability to self-invoke. This means we will be able to send ourselves through the maze, rising above the maze, and dropping ourselves through wherever we want to drop in by using some topological tricks. We will become shamen, voyagers and workers in the Great Labyrinth.
It is a terrible mistake to learn to dress after having built the being. The training to dress should accompany the growth of our being. When we don’t learn to dress in public, horses follow us down the street. We are very exposed, and it is extremely uncomfortable not to be cloaked. The risk of being mobbed is always present. Our will of attention and will of presence aren’t going to help us, should we get mobbed. We are just as vulnerable to the mob as any other machine. And we will look grotesque to any normal human creature, should they happen to catch sight of our highly developed essential self muscles.
We must have a good picture, a clear picture of how grotesque the development of the being will appear to those who have chosen the life of the machine. Those who choose the life of the being are grotesque in appearance and in feeling to those who have chosen the machine’s life-according to the way the other machines feel or sense.
If we were next to a highly developed body, we would immediately notice several differences, even if clothing masked it. We would find it grotesque just as we would be a pitiful caricature to that individual.
In that case, the body was developed because the person didn’t know what else to develop, didn’t know what really could be done. What was known about and what could be seen was developed. The evidence for something higher probably escaped that person entirely.
The wish to develop is in every human being. We all know that as we are, we are less than we really could be-far less than we really could be. We fall far short of the mark-even as an ordinary human being, even as a primate. Every human being senses that in one way or another, and attempts to do something about it, according to his or her understanding of himself or herself, and of life.
There is this urge to develop something, to be all we can be, to do all we can do. If all we see is the machine-that is what we will develop. We will develop what we are aware of-if we develop anything at all.
So the question has become urgent. What is more important to us? The life of the machine or the life of the being? If we choose the life of the machine then we must develop the machine to its capacity, but if we decide to live the life of the being, then we must develop the being to its capacity.
It means starting out small, because there is really nothing there and we will destroy what little there is by going too fast. We need to take a very slow gradient until our muscles have built, then we can do anything.
Imagine if we were able to direct our attention-as it should be used-right from the moment of conception on. Imagine if our attention was at its maximum, and all our life we never had to learn this. Wouldn’t we take it for granted that everyone else had the same ability? We might wonder why they were not using it, but we wouldn’t assume that they didn’t have it. We would assume that they weren’t using it.
That is the predicament of those who are born with potent attention, an never have to develop it. They assume that everyone has that form and potency of attention. They don’t know that’s not true. They also assume that everyone can manifest the intensity that they can, and believe that if they don’t, it’s because they choose not to. Not because they can’t. They assume that people are simply unwilling.
But in most cases, people are not unwilling-but unable. Unfortunately, even if we want to, we can’t even manifest the amount of attention, potency and intensity of attention necessary to awaken the machine. The beacon just isn’t bright enough. Under the scorching and glaringly intense light of attention, the machine must awaken. Radiating attention is guaranteed to awaken the machine. So why doesn’t it happen?
Our attention should look like a search light focused about two feet away directly onto the machine. What can stand that kind of light? Sleep is impossible. It’s hot and uncomfortable under that intensity; electrical, bothersome and piercing. But we are working with dull four inch flashlights where the batteries are so burned out that there is just a dull orange glow, so nothing happens. It is as if we are directing the flashlight from about two miles away toward the machine.
We’ve got the correct instructions, we’ve got all the method. But we don’t have the strength to do what is required. And yet, every so often, the machine will come into the waking state. It just happens. So we take advantage of that. The only problem is, without attention what can we do? The machine is awake, but it is as if we didn’t have a machine in the waking state at all. It’s as if it never happened.
Now, lots of people don’t like that intensity, or find it hard to deal with at first. Some people, on the other hand, really like it. If we find ourselves liking it, if we like burning like a magnesium flare, then we have an affinity as a being to the awakened machine.
We start out small, gently, one step at a time. But we can’t start off until we make the decision. How are we going to make that decision? It needs to be a formal decision, it can’t just be a casual drifting. We can’t go back on it, we have to follow it through one way or the other. Have we ever decided to do something and see it through regardless of what happened?
When we swim a half mile out, we cannot decide to not swim back. That is a very good example of this kind of decision. There is a point of no return, where we have reached the half-way mark. We can’t turn back once we embark on it. We can’t reverse what we are making of ourselves. If we suddenly stop somewhere along the line, we will look more grotesque than someone with a fully developed essential self. Partially developed is totally grotesque.
What can we do to assist ourselves in this decision? First of all, we must fully realize its importance-what it means and why. Realize why we can’t proceed further until we’ve made it; and what it is about this decision that blocks further development.
The example of body building will help us. What if we started muscle development techniques without a program to follow, and without a real intention to actually end up with a certain type of body? We need to have a picture of what it is we are aiming at. Otherwise, we may end up with something we do not want at all. Except we won’t be able to do anything about it!
We don’t start off with the most advanced exercises. We work very slowly in a highly disciplined way, so that every step is built upon the previous steps. We don’t take any short-cuts. It is almost the same thing as beginning to dance. We develop our body in a certain way for dance. And we suffer immensely if we try to stop. That happens in fencing too.
But we can have all of that, if we develop the attention. We don’t have to build the body, we can develop the body. The body is unbelievable plastic to the attention-when the attention is operating. We can easily dance, lift weights, fence, do any activity which normally requires years of discipline and practice. Just like caring; caring also comes from this decision.
We’ve come to the point where we are faced with a choice. We must choose the life of the machine or we must choose the life of a being. How will we make a choice that will stick-knowing that the primates will hate us, fear us, and generally find us disgusting?
- Talk of the Month #41, "To Be or Not To Be", a talk given by E. J. Gold