The Human Biological Machine as a Transformational Apparatus

(Inner transformation as the only task worth taking seriously)

Foreword E.J. Gold has hit the nail squarely on the head. Man is an unfinished animal endowed by nature with the capacity to complete itself. It can then take charge of its own evolution and become worthy of the proud title Homo sapiens. The alchemical process of self-completion is shrouded in mystery and understood only by a few people in each generation. The Great Work consists in transforming a helpless other-directed puppet into an inner-directed, unified being that understands its place in the scheme of things. Nothing can be more important than the attainment of this understanding. Without it we are at the mercy of our dreams and delusions and our technical devices become more of a menace than a blessing. If a great catastrophe is to be avoided, a growing number of people must grasp the central truth. To complete one’s own inner transformation is the only task worth taking seriously. Everything else is secondary.

Introduction (This is a transcription of a talk given at a special workshop)

To lie down, take a little nappy state. But you might be standing and napping. It’s different from sleeping, because sleeping implies that you’re actually regenerating something, that you’re deep, deep, deep in the subconscious levels. That’s not necessarily true. Napping is a very light state of sleep, and that’s what I mean. It’s a somnambulant state. It’s a state where you can carry on business as usual.

The napping state you normally experience is one where you seem to be awake, but you are not actually awake. What does awake mean? First of all, if you’re going to talk about the “waking state”, you must identify it as a very specific state. Otherwise, it’s just this kind of amorphous blob of stateness, which is not the same thing as “a state.”

(What the waking state actually is)

The waking state is to be truly awake. That means to be completely, utterly, absolutely aware, with all the senses of reality, meaning that you actually are in that space that we all know about, that space where we are truly awake. Again, what does awake mean? You get the concatenation of everything all at once. You’re at the highest possible level of consciousness for you. Everyone achieves some sort of waking state at the limit of their tolerance. The waking state that we’re after is just a little past your level of tolerance where it’s almost too much, but not quite. The sensations, the thoughts, the feelings, the concepts, the knowingness, the wisdom – whatever it might be that falls upon you in the waking state – that is the waking state that we’re after, for you…

When you begin consciously working on yourself, you’re remembering yourself, which is re-membering, assembling, re-assembling yourself, putting yourself back together into the waking state. Right now, you’re spattered all over the universe. You’re going to be reassembling yourself into the waking state. The waking state – you take as much responsibility for Godness as you can possibly manage. You let yourself be God as much as you possibly can. Maybe that’s very little, maybe that’s a lot, doesn’t matter, doesn’t…

Why do that at all? Why not just let one take that full responsibility? The answer is pain – anguish, actually. And so we are learning to take some of that responsibility, some of that burden. Let’s call it “the great burden.” Take some of the great burden upon ourselves, even if only momentarily, or for a short period of time, or for a long period of time; it’s all subjective because time doesn’t actually exist in that space. So, sharing that burden, there is a network of sharers of that burden. That network is called the Great Work: those who share the great burden of Godness, of Absoluteness. Learning to share your portion of that is part of the conscious act that you perform in this work,…

To sacrifice your own personal suffering as the Absolute, all alone. You must share the burden if you…

Actually what the waking state does is it brings to an end your napping cycle. It brings to an end – not the end – your dream, the dream you’re dreaming right now. It brings that to an end. And in order to achieve, even momentarily, the waking state, which is all you’re going to try to do is just get one moment of waking state – just a single glimpse at it. You’re not going to try to hang out in there – that’s very unwise at this time. You need to learn the Zen Clap in order to get to play this particular game. I’m not going to go into a whole lot of theory at this point. I’m just going to show you how the game is played. Then it’s up to you. It’s your own responsibility whether you play the game or cheat the game. In order to play the game, you must absolutely, without fail, go into the waking state, awaken, at the clap of your hands, on a particular question.

And that’s the failure of any question in any serious way. How precise is the question? How good is the question? Because the question will be a determinant factor with the answer. In other words, the answer to the question is only as good as the question was specific. Otherwise, you get “42”, and you have no idea what the question was.

The question should be asked, “What do I do once I have achieved the waking state?” or “What do I do with the waking state?” “What can I do with the waking state?” is another way of asking it. “What can I do with the waking state?”

Because there really is no other answer for it other than to be in the waking state, and then take a look at it.

(Sharing the burden of godness and leaving the chimp zone)

That is with the idea in mind that we are all sharing a single burden. Each in our own way, we’re sharing a single burden. We’re all taking some responsibility for that burden. Now, as you take responsibility back to yourself, you’re losing the hypnotic state. Hypnosis means to give away responsibility. When you’re with a hypnotist, the hypnotist is taking responsibility away from you, and you’re willingly giving, fool that you are, because you’re living in what’s called the “chimp zone.”

The chimp zone is the monkey space, the monkey area. That’s where you normally live is in the chimp zone. Chimps don’t like responsibility. They’ll look around and see who to copy, who to imitate, whose robe to touch.

Now, there is a price to pay. I mentioned it earlier. The price that you pay is your personalness, your personal loneliness, your loneliness at the top. It’s lonely at the top, only if you’re alone at the top. If there’s a sharing of that burden, then you won’t feel that. But that’s the box you live in, for God’s sake. So, the very box you live in is the box you have to dismantle there. You’ve got to open up the walls, and just open the thing up and go to the limits of creation, right to the boundary of creation, that boundary where creation is actually expanding out, and it’s happening. It’s at that very boundary, the boundary of creation, the crowning of creation, the crown of creation. That’s where all the walls are the total size of the universe.

Well, the way you produce the alter ego is, of course, with mirrors. You always use mirrors for this; it’s all done with mirrors. And we’ll talk about that. Who is the reflection and who is the reality? Or whom. Actually it’s not who you know, it’s whom you know. And it’s the same thing in … Who is the reality? Which one is the reality? Which one is not? Well, it depends. Which mirror are you looking at? Is the mirror the only reality, and the two reflections, and so forth?

So, now, in the Face of God, you have a tolerance level. It’s kind of tough to be in the Face of God. And so the tolerance level is very, very unique to you, how much tolerance level there is. And I’ll tell you a secret to that, a really, really fun secret. The secret to tolerance is to make the waking state fun.

One of the things that you might notice, for instance, a very obvious one, is in sex. Having a great time, you’re having sex, and something happens. You get hurt. You just keep going. Because, jeez, you’re having an orgasm. You don’t want to stop in the middle of an orgasm. But also, if the phone rings, you’re not going to get up and answer the phone. You just won’t get up and answer the phone in the middle of an orgasm. It’s just not the kind of thing you would do because your attention is rooted, so to speak. I wouldn’t. But … that’s me! But the reason you tolerate it is because of what we call love or lust, or both – love-lust, or lust for love, which is that you’re busy obeying the organic directives, the procreative directives, just like imperatives, like the territorial imperative, the consumption imperative. All these imperatives, you see, and the procreation imperative is very, very powerful.

Now, if you can only apply that same thing to God, you’d have a hell of a lot more tolerance for God. You know what I’m saying? In the Face of God, love of God will keep it tolerable, much more so than if you’re indifferent to God. But you’ve got to love God like a lover, ’cause that’s what gets you through it. So, agape is a form of love that is not romantic, it’s not sentimental, it’s not personal. Agape – it’s a very high love, but that high love can only be a love of God as a lover. In order to stand in the face, or be in the Face of God, be there as a lover … just a hint. We’ll talk later about gradations of the waking state and how you can actually increase your gradations along the waking state levels. We’re going to play certain games which will help you with that.

But also, you need to learn how to temper that lust for it – because you don’t want to blast into the waking state on your own, alone, and take that whole burden by yourself. You want to have support and help in doing that, ’cause you don’t want to take that whole pie; you want to take a piece of the pie. I’m telling you, you don’t want the whole action.

That’s above everything else – the pack of green rules everything. No matter what you think might be important, the pack of green is more important than anything you could possibly think of.

There is a game which we used to play, which came to me through Sam Lewis, which is – and of course, Reshad Feild played this game as well: I – you – God – where you repeat: I, I, I, You, You, You, God, God, God. First of all, it’s slightly incorrect. It’s deliberately in the incorrect order. It should be: I – God – You, You – God – Me, and so forth. Godding is an action as well as an object, and a non-object, and so forth. God is actually more of an activity than a person, place or thing. So you think of God as a verb rather than as a noun, and you’ll get closer to it. The I, I, I, You, You, You, God, God, God concept is based upon what is called the repetitions, and I’ll explain that to you. This is where it’s going to start departing from anything rational.

can consciously create using our own tolerances. You have to expand your tolerance beyond one, two, three, infinity. See, one WoW – that’s a warning. Click – clicks in, uh-oh. I’ve done a WoW. I’ve said a WoW there. Oops, second WoW just happened. Oops, now the third WoW. Okay, break. That’s it. Now we go back into the napping state. Okay, now we’re in the waking state again. We’ll try again. No repetitions three times, no repetitions three times, no repetitions – oh, I did it again. Almost did it again … almost … did it. You can consciously expand that elemental structure, and here’s how you do it. You take any given element that you can personally tolerate, any waking state that you can personally tolerate. In that waking state, you choose to ignore the repetitions of something. You choose to ignore the Trinity effect, and you just keep riding on your cheat, basically, is how you win. You’re winning, not for yourself. So you cheat past the third repetition – WoW, WoW, WoW, WoW, WoW, WoW, WoW, WoW. And you turn it into a mantra loop.

An infinity loop turns back on itself, klein bottle style, and forms what’s called a waveform. That waveform is a nonlinear wave. There are standing waves, sitting waves, lying down waves, dancing waves, running waves, jumping waves, waxing waves, briny waves. The structure of a waveform is determined by your decision as to where you’re going to clip your reality structure.

You can use ESD loops – Erotic Spirit Dance loops – they were made for this purpose, to take some of the burden off you. Those ESD loops are someone’s sacrifice. There is a sacrifice there allowing you to let go of some of the looping effect, and let that carry you. Let those carrier waves buoy you up, carry you up, boost you up, without you having to handle every single part of the waking state, all the various discomforts of the waking state. So it takes off some of the pain, some of the burden, some of the anguish of the waking state.

There’s always a balance. There’s always a balance game being played between energy and matter. In the waking state there is no matter. It doesn’t matter. It’s always energy. It’s some form of energy, and that’s all it is. There is no matter. It doesn’t ever slow down below the speed of light, not ever; it’s beyond photons. And it’s a kind of energy which was called shakti, which is a wet energy. And that’s not an oxymoron. There is such a thing as wet energy, and you need to look at that. The price of help in the waking state … the price of help is that help arrives.

But it isn’t. It really is much higher than that. It developed as an energy being. That’s where your suffering first started, when you first started making boxes around yourself. Oh, by the way, the wet energy is also called mana as well as shakti.

You’ll discover in the waking state that it’s easier to tolerate infinity than it is to tolerate eternity. Eternity’s a tough, tough nut. Infinity – no problem; can handle infinity until you start feeling the loops. When you start feeling yourself stretching out like a dachshund, or you start donuting out, or whatever it is that happens to you when you’re in that state, you know, you could maybe feel a little uncomfortable from that. But, infinity is fairly easy to take. Eternity is very hard to take – which is not heaven or hell – but when is this going to end? So there are several important questions that Barbara and Adam asked in Beetlejuice.

The crown of creation is simply this; here’s how it works: expansion and contraction both occur at the same time, if time is not understood to be a linear thing. At one and the same moment there’s expansion and contraction. There’s also: I eat you, you eat me. Something eats us. We eat something else. We eat and we’re eaten. At the same time, we’re eating and being eaten, if nothing else, by the action of oxygen. There’s something eating you at all times, wearing you away at all times – physically, organically, at least, but also energetically; you’re wasting away, you’re dissipating. At the same time you’re gathering. It’s all coming in on you and it’s all going out. You’re expanding and contracting at one and the same time, and therefore, in that co-action, you get a phase-factor which is actually a waveform elimination process where one wave beats against another wave.

You’re allowed to do that. You’re entitled. If you don’t know how to do that, it constitutes a workshop. Unity is created by separation, because separation produces yearning. That yearning acts upon you to create unity.

Like I said, a paranoid schizophrenic, a totally psychotic individual, would answer very well for the waking state. The waking state could be considered to be a state of ultimate, absolute psychosis. But that is the word. Don’t forget the word “psychosis” comes to us from a man who couldn’t keep his hands off his cigar or his daughter. Siggy Freud invented this concept. So, what he said was the waking state, basically, is nutty and the napping state is sane. If you believe that, then you have no chance whatever in the waking state. So you need to actually understand that what is called psychosis and paranoia – those are perfectly natural – are tools of consciousness. And they’re used that way. They can be used artistically as Dali did.

(Life in the fish tank: the limits of one dimension)

CHAPTER 1 The Situation The impartial observation of the limits of life in a fish tank can provide us with an important clue as to the real nature of our planetary situation and a basis for asking ourselves what the meaning and purpose of life can be.

the oceans, seas, and lakes, and that, just as in our world, the inhabitants of the fishtank are completely ignorant of anything outside their little world, and cannot even perceive objects and events outside the tank in our world, the nearest dimension just once-removed beyond their own. Unless some accident or very unusual discovery happens to occur in the course of events, the fish will remain totally unaware of anything beyond the tank. They will continue to believe that their tank is the beginning and end of all possible worlds and never question their existence in the tank. For all practical purposes they will be right, insofar as they are utterly incapable of participating actively and consciously in an outside world; however, if the routine in this next highest dimension is in any way disrupted, their own world will suffer the consequences on a very large scale.

They have no way of knowing that there could be much more room to swim around if they were not in the tank, and they have no way of making observations which would lead them to question the invisible barrier against which they continually bump. They have nothing with which to compare their experience. How could they understand that the invisible walls are not the edge of creation, only a glass partition?…

CHAPTER 2 What to Do? If our world is actually related to other worlds, then we must ask ourselves what we can accomplish that would be significant and of objective value and consequence beyond its limited confines.

If the fish decided to organize themselves, to establish committees to take care of various interspecies problems, tank territory problems, minnow-care problems, and they formed a quorum to elect a leader who could give a definite direction to their lives, would this really change anything for them besides complicating their daily routine, and immersing them even further in their limited concerns about life in the tank? If some of the fish became historians, setting themselves the aim of describing what life is like in the tank, for the benefit of future generations of fish, what would this really accomplish? Or perhaps one or two of the more intelligent fish had serious thoughts about the meaning and significance of life in the tank, and shared these thoughts with other fish, not in the spirit of inquiry, but as authorities…of what real benefit would this be to themselves and others? If the fish who lived at the top described to the fish who lived at the bottom what life was like near the surface, then already some of them would have an expanded view of the situation. If the bottom fish described life at the bottom to those who lived at the top, then again this information could expand horizons.

By clearly reporting what they were able to observe in their own territory, and organizing the data reported to them by members of their own and other species, they might even begin to glimpse the artificiality and limits of the tank…They might even begin to guess the nature of their world in relation to another, much larger, world of which it was only a very small and insignificant part…

But even though he cannot change the fact that he will live as a fish, and someday inevitably die as a fish, in a sealed tank, and that his life ultimately will have no meaning in the historical or geological sense, can he do something that would really change anything about his situation? To begin with, he would have to be able to piece together everything that was known about the tank, for which he would be dependent upon information gathered from other, generally undependable, sources, because although he is interested in obtaining a whole picture of the tank, he is still a fish of a certain species and can only extend his explorations so far and no farther.

He could set himself the task of determining very precisely the nature of these limits and by so doing, he could definitely, with the right perception of the available facts, clearly grasp the fact that the tank—his own dimension—was actually part of our world—which would be, in relation to his world, another, higher dimension. If Redfin were able to deduce the existence of this higher dimension surrounding the tank, and he also knew that the walls of the tank were transparent, he would realize that the higher dimension must be visible to him—must always have been visible to him—if he could only readjust his vision to penetrate beyond what he knew to be the limits of his universe. He would be able to realize that the higher dimension had been visible all along; that he had always seen it, but because his vision automatically rejected and rendered invisible everything beyond the transparent walls of the tank, he had not understood what he had been seeing, and had been unaware of its significance. If he knew that the walls of the tank were transparent and that therefore he had seen but rejected perceptions of the higher dimension all along, he would understand that he was unable to perceive it because of a psychological barrier.

(Redfin deduces the higher dimension and the unseen part of himself)

CHAPTER 3 Our Potential for Inner Evolution The key to accomplishing something of objective value lies in our potential for inner evolution; special methods can teach us how to use our body, mind and emotions to transform our essential selves.

He might see something as astounding as a living creature as big as his entire universe. If he could understand that this creature was part of a dimension once removed from his own, he could deduce from this that there were other higher dimensions as well, perhaps an infinite number of dimensions all totally inaccessible to him, but even if inaccessible, he could, from the standpoint of his own lower dimension, deduce from the evidence of at least one higher dimension, the existence of a highest dimension, the dimension of the Absolute. He might not realize it at first, but not only is the next higher dimension visible from his own, but all higher dimensions as well are in plain sight if he can make the adjustment in vision which would enable him to bypass the machine’s natural rejection of their perception.

The fact is that most of them simply would not care about the limitations of their world, and certainly would have no interest in the existence of other higher and encompassing dimensions, even if they were easily observable. Not only would they find the idea incomprehensible and disturbing, but they would have no idea what to make of it. From their own view of themselves in relation to their world, they would be unable to find any value or potential to themselves in this.

How insignificant it would make them feel, especially if he could prove that an unthinkably greater being lived in this higher dimension and fed them, and looked over them, and seemed interested in their affairs, and who not only took care of their most immediate needs, but who, according to many first-hand witness reports, actually lifted them up out of the tank into some sort of heaven—possibly Redfin’s higher dimension—after they died. What could Redfin do, if he suddenly realized that he was alone with his new-found truths—that there was little or no hope of reaching anyone else, and if he did, what he had discovered would be inevitably distorted into some religious belief or psychological theory. He would have little or no hope of obtaining any real answers from the other fish, at the same time he would not have grown too far beyond what he had been before, and he would still feel the weight of the old, lost illusions… What aim could Redfin set himself after this shocking discovery? What might be demanded of him? And would he, as he is, be able to answer these demands? Could he ever really hope to have an objective view of life outside the tank? Could he ever understand what it means to be in a lower dimension staring a higher dimension right in the face? Even if he succeeded in understanding these things, how could he use this information to produce in himself something which would enable him to become something entirely different, something which would free him from his ordinary fate in life as a fish in a tank?

The first glimpse of a higher dimension could serve to provide the only clue that he would really need to understand exactly how he could raise himself from his ordinary destiny as a fish in a tank, and use his life for some objective purpose, a purpose far beyond his life in the tank, but eventually if he hoped to go further, he would have to achieve more than just an occasional glimpse. If Redfin were to accomplish anything of objective value, he would have to discover that his only recourse would be to throw himself onto his own potential for inner evolution, and that this would involve, at least in the beginning, the necessity of overcoming the natural biological rejection of the perception of the higher dimension.

In doing so, he would inevitably discover in the course of events a much higher purpose than his own small purposes, which would, if he were able to bring himself into alignment with it, raise his whole life beyond the petty confines of the tank, and place him on a path which would require that he perform tasks of real significance, not necessarily of significance to himself. He might not even understand the aim and purpose of his activities for a very long time, but his life would be of genuine significance to something much greater than himself.

In the course of his new discoveries, he might also come to realize that a part of himself is definitely not Redfin—not a fish in a tank—and that the evolution of this other, ordinarily unseen and unsuspected part of himself, is his only real chance to raise himself beyond his otherwise futile existence.

He knows now that he need only turn his gaze inward and break through the psychological barriers which reject the perception of the unseen part of himself to find an essential self which is not the fish in the tank, and which he understands now would have been equally visible all his life, had he only known what he was looking for, and had he known how to recognize it when he found it. He has found a way to transcend his ordinary destiny as a living decorative object; he knows and understands that he can never escape the tank as long as the fishy part of himself lives, and yet, if he understands the method of personal evolution, the use of the body, mind and emotions as a transformational apparatus for the essential self, he has no immediate need to leave the tank in order to achieve his transformation and evolution, nor to change his outer life as a fish in any way. A fish he is, and a fish he will remain; what has really changed is his potential to take a much more meaningful place in the larger scheme of things.

If we have seen that much—and we would not now be drawn to these ideas if we had not seen at least this—we would then be able to deduce the existence of an unseen part of ourselves and its potential for some form of evolution using the body, mind and emotions as a transformational apparatus. But what, specifically, are we to do now?

(Only an awakened machine can produce transformation)

CHAPTER 4 The Human Biological Machine as a Transformational Apparatus Contrary to popular belief, inner transformation does not produce behavioral and psychological results that can be easily recognized from the outside. Real results are of an entirely different nature.

Intellectual arrogance can be defined as the assumption that we fully understand an idea the first time we hear it, just because we happen to recognize the words and think we understand their deep, subtle meanings.

In our beginning work, we will turn our first attention toward the body, with its mental, emotional and motor apparatuses, which when taken as a whole, is called in this system, the human biological machine. Although it has countless inner subjective states which may give the impression of an unapproachable complexity, the human biological machine has only two definite objective states which are of any real interest to us in the transformational sense. The machine is either in the waking state or the sleeping state.

In the ordinary course of life, apart from momentary accidental awakenings, the machine is asleep, and during this sleeping state, it exercises its own will upon the situation, and at the same time, its higher transformational functions are not activated. In the sleeping state, its attention is completely fixated on its own inner subjective thoughts, emotional states and sensations, or on those distractions and attractions outside itself which happen to impose themselves through the thick veil of its subjective fixation on itself, which is the real meaning of the ancient myth of Narcissus.

But the pitiful truth is that very few people, even very famous and highly acclaimed directors of work communities, actually know the basic fact of work: that only an awakened human biological machine can produce a transformational effect upon the essential self—that part of us which is not the machine. The majority of work communities are founded on the basis that it is the essential self which is asleep and which must be aroused from sleep. Because they remain unaware of the essential self’s identification with the sleep of the machine, and the

machine’s potential as a transformational apparatus only when in the waking state, they have no hope of achieving any authentic transformation. Few people know this important secret, yet even knowing this secret does not guarantee that they know everything necessary for the transmission of these ideas; they may not know how to communicate the ideas to somebody else, and in any case, they may only know the ideas mentally, having never actually applied them in a practical way to themselves.

If we have seriously searched for something like a school, it is obvious to us that ordinary methods cannot produce anything other than ordinary results, and that only the extraordinary methods of a school, methods which are unknown and unavailable in the mainstream of ordinary life, can produce school results. In this sense, it can be understood that a school is a community of people gathered together for the purpose of awakening their machines and using the awakened machine for the purpose of transformation toward their possible evolution.

When the machine is awake, its attention turns inward toward the essential self, that part of ourselves which is not the machine. When its attention is thus fixated on the essential self, this produces definite transformational effects. For our very beginning work, we can think of the human biological machine as an alchemical factory which, if it can be awakened from its mechanical sleep, produces the transformation and evolution of the essential self. The essential self may become drunk with the sleep of the machine, completely identified with it. The essential self may even come to think of itself as asleep, but the fact remains that the essential self is neither awake nor asleep. How can we see this mysterious essential self? The human biological machine reflects the presence of the essential self in much the same way a Wilson Cloud Chamber can demonstrate the presence of unseen particles. Although we cannot see the essential self directly, we can see the results of the path it took, its effects on the machine.

We can measure visible particles in the Cloud Chamber, particles which moved because of a transfer of energy that occurred during an impact with something we could not see, and from this deduce a great deal about the thing we cannot see. We can tell quite a bit about this invisible essential self just by measuring its effects. Like the Cloud Chamber, the human biological machine is a reciprocal biofeedback apparatus in relation to the essential self. Because both the essential self and the machine are electrical in nature, the two fields impinging upon one another produce a third electrical field which can be expressed mathematically. In addition, each field can radically affect the other, which can work to our evolutionary advantage. Later, we will discuss this important idea in detail.

(Transformation of the essential self, not improvement of the machine)

CHAPTER 5 Beyond Personal Enhancement Most psychological methods provide us with a means to achieve personal enhancement by changing behavioral patterns of the “machine”. Real transformational methods enable us to achieve objective change by transforming the “essential self” and completely disregarding the effect we have upon others.

Most methods provide a means to change the machine. This is strictly for people who are interested in personal enhancement, in the effect they have upon others. We, on the other hand, are interested in objective change and consequently work to be changed by the machine. But what exactly does it mean, to be changed? What is it that is being changed, and for what ultimate purpose? To what use? Most importantly, what is it, exactly, that is undergoing transformation? We know it is not the machine. The machine is just a kind of factory which produces change. We do not care what the factory looks like, or what others think about it. We are not interested in using the machine as an expression of our personality, which is in fact just another part of the machine.

Before we can use any method at all for the awakening of the machine, we must clearly recognize that it is the machine, and not the essential self which is asleep, and that only an awakened machine can produce transformation. We must also realize that nobody can activate our machine for us; we must activate it for ourselves. In the beginning, the essential self cannot exert the will to directly awaken the machine, although it can exercise a special type of will called will-of-attention which has the effect, over a long period of time, of gently awakening the machine just by the inexorable pressure of unremitting attention upon it. The work of a school will cure us once and for all of this lack of will, by giving us the means to awaken the machine, providing us with new equipment for life. At its best, the human biological machine should function as a chemical and electrical factory through which we pass in a definite series of processes, entering at one end of the factory in what we call birth, emerging at the other end during the death of the machine as something quite different, in much the same way that any raw material would enter a factory and emerge as a finished product at the other end. We say in both cases that a transformation has occurred; in the first instance an extraordinary inner transformation visible only to a trained observer, and in the second case, an ordinary transformation visible to the untrained eye. While in human form we take upon ourselves all the attributes, aspects, and knowledge of a human being. If the machine has been dead during our passage through it, when we leave it at the end of life, we lose everything, all the knowledge and all the experience we had accumulated. If the electrical force of transformation is activated, the essential self is changed, transformed, so that we retain the knowledge, the attributes, of a human being. But this is true only if we have passed through something living, something which has had a definite electrical effect upon our essential self. If we have passed through something dead, something cold, something lifeless, something dark, the electrical transformational effect is absent. In this case, the essential self emerges at the end of life completely unchanged.

It is a terrible waste of the opportunity of human life, a genuine sin, to have failed to use the human biological machine for our possible evolution. Most people feel that they are wasting their lives, and at one time or another recognized that if they really wanted to, they could find out quite easily the real purpose of human life. It is not a particularly well-kept secret, and even a superficial search soon reveals the answer. If we understand that most human beings do in fact know that they could know their purpose…

CHAPTER 6 Beginning Work The purpose of beginning work is to bring the machine into the waking state and to enable it to function as a transformational apparatus. Transformation is not an aim in itself but a stepping stone to a whole new way of life which we seek. The purpose of the majority of our special exercises is not particularly mysterious. It is the aim of all our beginning work to bring the machine to life, to raise ourselves from its hypnotic and compelling biological fixations, to shake off the coils of desire, our immersion in its wasteful sleep, thus producing from the ordinary human machine a functioning transformational apparatus. Since the transformational process is cumulative, the periods of awakening add up. In a sense, it makes…

In this sense, we must keep in mind that our real aim is not transformation. Transformation is a stepping stone to the Work, a special way of life which is possible for us only after our essential selves have been transformed, and our machines are more or less stable in the awakened state. When our transformation is complete, the machine becomes a tool for work. It has cleared itself of those things which made it non-functional as a work tool. The Work can only be seen and understood through an awakened machine. We cannot see the Work if our machine is asleep, so one of the purposes of awakening the machine is to be able to study…

It is the task of a school to act as our temporary guide, and to introduce us to the transformational apparatus, our true teacher, to help us develop a working relationship with the machine toward our possible evolution. To awaken the factory and turn it toward its transformational function requires knowledge—exact knowledge.

We will soon discover, as we begin to gather serious conclusive evidence of the machine’s sleep, and the exact nature of this sleeping state, that the essential self—which is not in the sleeping state but a state quite apart from anything belonging to the machine—possesses no attributes of its own other than its impartial presence and the simple will-of-attention which, in the early state, is unexercised and therefore weak. We will also soon realize that in spite of its higher aims and aspirations, the essential self has no will in the ordinary sense by which it can compel the machine to live according to its higher nature. So we must use what we actually do have in the essential self, the two genuine attributes of the essential self—presence and will-of-attention—to bring the machine into the waking state, and for this we will be forced to develop a strategy, an exact strategy by which we can effectively activate the transformational properties of the human biological machine without also at the same time inadvertently triggering the machine’s defense mechanism against the waking state.

We will talk more about this defense mechanism, what it means and how to disarm and de-activate it later, but first we must understand several things. On the biological level, the human biological machine is a chemical factory just like any other chemical factory, operating under the same basic chemical laws. It is regulated by very small electrical pulses coursing through the myo-neurological system, which is to say, the muscles and nerves. In addition, we must have some idea of how the factory operates, what it actually is, of what it is capable, and how to make it function as an apparatus for the transformation of energy, the stuff of which our essential selves are made. We will study the machine as a chemical factory in the course of our beginning work.

Our exercises are intended strictly for the purpose of bringing the machine into the waking state, from which state it is possible to activate the machine’s transformational functions. If we expect to awaken the machine and activate it as a transformational apparatus, we must develop the higher faculty of discernment; we must recognize periods when the machine is awake and, more importantly, periods when it is not.

(Working in sleep using the elements of sleep)

CHAPTER 7 Sheep in Sleep Because the machine—although fully functional in the ordinary sense—lives its whole life in the sleeping state, our work begins in sleep. We must learn to use the elements of sleep to overcome the machine’s defense mechanism against the waking state.

We must recognize that if the machine is asleep, and we are to work seriously to awaken it, we must begin our work in sleep, using the elements of sleep. But, even while immersed in identification with the machine’s sleep, if we know that it is the machine which is asleep, we can use special work methods which are specifically designed to be used in the sleeping state. Because all work must necessarily begin in sleep—after all, if our machines were already in the waking state, we would have no need for work on ourselves in the first place—we must use all the elements of the sleeping state to overcome the sleeping state: the weaknesses, desires, hallucinations, fixations, organic pursuits of pleasure, and suggestibility of the sleeping machine. Sleep in itself is not bad. It is our fixation on sleep while at the same time thinking that we are awake, which can cause unconscious suffering, and we remain fixated in the machine’s sleeping state because we do not know how to overcome the machine’s defense mechanism against the waking state.

For this we are forced to come to a school, where we can find an outside guide, a helper, to objectively observe the machine and tell us exactly which leverage to apply. We cannot depend upon our own mental apparatus for this. It is, after all, just another part of the machine, and if we depend upon it to make its own rules by which we are to guide our work, if we trust the machine to invent methods for its own awakening, its sleep will only become deeper and finally, in the end, we will drown in the machine’s dreams. If we really wish to seriously work toward our possible evolution, we must clearly realize that we are sheep in sleep, that the sleeping machine is a completely mechanical apparatus, responding strictly by reflex to a variety of inner and outer influences.

In addition, there is a greater danger. If we allow ourselves to become victims of a hallucinatory method which provides the illusion and sensations of imaginary awakening, we may try to use work methods which properly belong to an awakened machine.

To our astonishment, as we study the activities of the machine, we see the hands gesticulating wildly, seemingly with a mind of their own, the mouth issuing proclamations which do not even vaguely resemble our real feelings and attitudes, while the whole machine busily follows the daily routine of life, fanatically obeying artificial and arbitrary schedules and timetables that somebody made up out of the blue, and wallowing in one upset after another about some imaginary trifle or other. We quickly come to understand the sinister purpose of social ritual; we see how it helps to perpetuate the machine’s sleep! We see that life in the ordinary sense is ritualized because a sleeping machine works only for its own survival, and it must continue to function day after day, without a master.

If our work is to really begin in sleep, we must somehow bring ourselves to the realization, with the full impact of truth, that the machine is really asleep; then we will have taken the first real step toward crushing that personal vanity behind which is insecurity, behind which is a deep fear which we can only allow to express itself as vanity, which will not allow us to admit even to ourselves that we have fallen from our higher state, that we have become corrupted by our biological baptism, our total immersion in the sleep of the human machine. Our vanity convinces us that the machine is awake and supports this illusion with activity, sensation and associative thought.

When the machine is asleep, we cannot be convinced that the machine is asleep. It is even more difficult for someone else to convince us because at the moment they call our attention to the machine’s sleep, we become more alert, more on guard and, in spite of ourselves, the machine begins to awaken. Then, when we relax, sleep begins to reassert itself and once again we think we can make our own rules for ourselves, but the truth is that we cannot even walk a straight line. If we can only destroy this vanity in ourselves, if we can bring ourselves to actually know that the machine is really and truly asleep, we might be able to awaken it. Using the sensations of the machine, we will try to sense our immersion in the sleep of the machine, even though our mental apparatus lies to itself and to us, that we seem to be awake, to have volition, free will. If we can only obtain some definite proof that the machine is asleep, then we will know that we are walking around in a dream, just as in the children’s rhyme, “Row, row, row the boat, Gently down the stream.

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, Life is but a dream.”

Before we go any further, we should try to understand what the words of this rhyme actually tell us. This is not an ordinary children’s rhyme. When used in a special way, it can stimulate definite alterations in the brain and nervous system.

We will next remove the social mask which is held in place by facial tensions, noticing in passing the extreme amount of energy we ordinarily commit toward the maintenance of this social mask. We have no need to be social in this situation, and in any case, we need this energy for our work just now, so we should be able to allow ourselves to relax the facial mask, which should go completely limp. The eyes are to remain open during the whole of this exercise and each time we repeat the rhyme, we will try to sense the sleep of the machine, with a mood of mild astonishment, as would a very young child. If we hope to enter this special dimension, we must become as children, and re-learn consciously what we have forgotten about ourselves and our experience of the world. Now, very softly, and in a very relaxed tone we will repeat: “Row, row, row the boat, Gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, Life is but a dream.”

In the same slow cadence, we will repeat this mantram over and over again until the sensation comes over us that it is the machine which is asleep. In this beginning exercise, we will try to sense the sleep of the machine, using this mantram to remind ourselves that it is not us, but the machine, which is asleep.

If the sensation of the sleeping machine goes away, we must try again until the sensation remains. This exercise is the very beginning foundation of work. If we do not have a good foundation, we cannot build upon it, so we should take the time to realize, to actually sense that the machine is in fact asleep, not just in an abstract philosophical way but in a very real sense.

The sensation of the sleeping machine will make all intellectual argument for work unnecessary. In our daily life, regardless of the circumstances in which we find ourselves immersed, we must try to actually obtain, and then hold, the sensation of the sleeping machine, at first doing nothing to awaken it directly. Observation alone will act upon it to awaken it slowly and gently.

Our intellect may tell us that we are awake, but our sensing tells us that the machine is asleep. Our beliefs may convince us that we are awake, but our sensing tells us that the machine is asleep. Our vanity may insist that we are awake, but our sensing tells us that the machine is asleep.

Until then everything in our lives, especially our work, is imaginary, just fantasy. If we can only sense the machine’s sleep in everything we do, no matter how complex, how rapid, how exhilarated or seemingly exalted!

CHAPTER 8 Inner Aims By making our formulation of our inner aims toward transformation more exact, we may eventually develop a real work aim, not something mental and subjective, but an aim which is practical, immediate, accomplishable and which could actually serve a greater, more objective aim.

Even if we were successful in life in the ordinary sense, we probably very quickly realized that the things that we could accomplish in ordinary life simply would not satisfy us in any serious way. Above all, we became dissatisfied with life as we were more or less forced to live it. We knew that there was more to life, but we didn’t know what it might be.

We discovered that they are quite satisfied with the aims, pursuits, and pleasures of life as it is, and do not expect any more from life than they have been told to expect. They are happy enough with the petty satisfactions of organic pursuits and the predictability of the daily routine.

Everything we have learned so far is information about our purpose for being here. We are accumulating information about how to work. But how to work is not just the accumulation of work ideas. We must come to understand very quickly and very clearly that communicating about the ideas is not actually using the ideas, and we came here not just to discuss ideas but to learn to use them. In our work it is demanded of us that we understand exactly what we are trying to do. The outer form may change radically tomorrow, and yet the underlying thread must remain the same; the sub-text underneath our changing work-forms must remain the same. When we first come to a school, the question is put to us, why are we here, what do we wish for ourselves, what do we seek here, why do we impose ourselves upon this community? Our original aims in our work will change, and they may change surprisingly often. There are only two reasons to change our aim. The first reason is that in the course of pursuing one aim, our vision has grown. We are able to formulate our aim more clearly and more to the point. As we begin to learn, our temporary aim will change with an understanding of the greater purpose of the Work. When we change our aim, we must be absolutely certain that we are not abandoning the aim just because we feel like giving up. We change aims only when the previous aim no longer serves the greater purpose.

However, in this country, we aren’t turned away from community after community. We are accepted with open arms regardless of our vague gropings for meaning in our lives, because we don’t have communities with high ethical, high-integrity standards. Only if we express an aim which is actually against the aim of the work community are we asked to leave. So now teachers are forced to take it upon themselves to educate pupils from the first beginning groanings of discomfort with ordinary life to the formulation of higher aims which could realistically be achieved and applied to this life right now.

CHAPTER 9 Study of the Machine Although we are separate from the machine, we have become hypnotized, immersed in the sleeping state of the machine. One of the purposes of studying the machine is to gather evidence which can help us define the exact nature of this sleep. The idea that the machine is asleep does not automatically call for belief or faith, because we can easily see for ourselves that the machine is asleep. Although as essential beings we have separate existence apart from the machine, we have become distracted from our native state which lies far beyond space and time, hypnotically attracted to the machine by some glittering fascination, and we are presently held in its grip by the power of sensation and emotion, entirely immersed in its sleep, and as a result of our total identification with the life of the machine, partaking—whether willingly or unwillingly—of its sleeping state.

Study of the machine’s sleeping state can also serve a second purpose, helping us to define the exact nature of this sleep. But first of all, before we can even set out to gather evidence of any kind about the machine, we must agree that we do in fact live our lives in a human biological machine. We must see that, although we have spent our whole lives immersed in total identification with the machine, and the very fibre of our beings has been since birth inextricably woven into the life of the machine, offering plenty of opportunities for study, we have never actually studied the machine and its life.

To our utter astonishment, we come to realize that everyone else regards this dark and gloomy sleeping state as quite acceptable and even comfortable and agreeable. We eventually come to understand that our first faltering steps into the waking state are only the beginning of real awakening. But to our disappointment, we soon find that our first objective aim in a school is not, as we would expect, to awaken the machine, but to allow the machine to remain in the sleeping state while we gather evidence to satisfy ourselves that we do indeed live in a machine, and that the machine is definitely asleep.

We speak of the sleeping and waking states in terms of perceptions and sensations because it is a machine-state. Because it is a machine state and the machine has two definite and distinct experiences which are measurable by its senses and sensations, the difference between the two states of waking and sleeping are very clear. In one state we really see, hear, feel, taste, touch, know, remember. All our senses and mental and emotional functionings are clarified and magnified, thousands of times. In the sleeping state, we live in darkness, we feel disconnected, harsh, angular, trapped and isolated; we live and breathe in darkness. This is a good beginning definition of sleep in relation to waking.

In our little glimpses of the awakened state, because they are only glimpses, and therefore momentary and incomplete, we should remember that our experiences of these states are imperfect. Secondly, we should realize that, because the machine was not fully awake during these glimpses of awakening, the machine still exerted its will, and because the machine was not fully awake, and vestigial traces of the sleeping state remained somewhat active to a greater or lesser degree, we inevitably experienced some discomfort which would not be part of a complete waking state. This initial discomfort during the process of entering the waking state from the sleeping state is the principal reason we fall back into the sleeping state. In our first glimpses of the awakened state, because we were identified with the sleep of the machine, we must have felt some apprehension, a feeling of impending doom, of being on the top of a roller coaster that was about to let go, or of having been pulled back on a slingshot, just at the point of hurtling through a corridor toward some unknown destination. We didn’t know what was going to happen if we allowed ourselves to go all the way, but we can understand this experience; we can know exactly what will happen if we allow ourselves to be carried all the way through the experience, through what the ancients called the Cave.

This is a very important experience because it produces exactly the same sensation as does the awakening machine. In the sleeping state, the whole machine, including its emotional and mental apparatuses, perceptions, senses and sensations, are completely numb. We can barely see, we can barely hear, we can barely sense; in a sleeping machine, although our activities may deceive us, we live life at the absolute minimum. As we begin to massage the machine awake, the…

This is a nearly perfect analogy of what happens to us in the awakening process. We may not have the courage to continue the process of awakening past the point of discomfort. Certain alarming sensations will definitely occur as the machine begins to awaken: tingling, falling, vertigo, dropping, collapsing, exploding, expanding inside a skin that is stretched too tight, pins and needles, flaming, curling, shortening and lengthening, agitation, weakness, confusion, coldness, sweating, restlessness. We may recognize these symptoms as the same symptoms which signal the death of the machine and, in a way, the waking state is very much like the death of the machine, because in the waking state, the machine has lost face, in the sense that it…

The machine is so near death when it is asleep, that when death comes, we will hardly notice it, and it won’t be so bad. But when death comes to a living machine, the difference is so much greater that we will, in fact, be acutely aware of its passing. Because we are alive, life is more precious to us and death will be that much more poignant. We can…

When we awaken the machine, it will not be near death, but other machines will be near death, limp, limber, closed, running automatically in darkness and this in itself will also be terrifying. Perhaps we have had a glimpse of people as automatons, empty puppets, running on mechanically, so near death as to be all-but-dead… What keeps the machine in sleep is our fear of the discomfort of awakening. This is the real meaning of inertia. But what is it that keeps us—the essential self, which is not the machine—immersed in the sleep of the machine?

At this point we made one of two possible decisions—either we continued past this stage, at our definite risk, or returned to the sedentary state. We knew that if we persisted, there was a distinct possibility that the machine might have dropped dead. Perhaps we were right not to push the machine too far. However, if we had the courage or stupidity to push on further, it seemed to us as if we had broken through an invisible barrier to a new, higher dimension; we may actually have felt that we could circle the entire globe with hundred-mile leaps and bounds.

The states between sleep and waking are not at all calm. Some of them are quite painful and we must learn to endure certain types of pain without inflicting it upon ourselves or being stupid about it. We must learn to endure the severe sensations of the awakening machine, knowing that it leads to the eventual cessation of pain.

Very rapid methods of awakening the machine do exist, but their percentage of casualties and failures is very high. Between the casualties and the failures, the chance of success in these methods is far too small. A very popular school existing today is founded on the principles of just such a cathartic method. Its founder must have attended a school for a short time and accidentally discovered or overheard one method for awakening the machine usually reserved for cases of dire emergency. He evidently thought that one single technique would make a marvelous method, so he quickly left the work community and founded his own community, where he applied this technique, which he called the fast path, to everyone who came, obviously thinking that it would be just wonderful for everyone to wake up their machines really in a hurry by next Saturday at the very latest. He did not understand that cathartic techniques are reserved as a tool only for the desperate, for those who have a very short time remaining to them in the machine, and who are forced to work quickly in a desperate race against time. Ordinarily our system is noncathartic and extremely mild, developing the will of the essential self gently, and awakening the machine slowly, so that it does not go too far out of balance. At the same time, because we use a noncathartic method, we can begin to study the Work while the machine is in a waking state. It is only in the waking state that the Work can be studied. We will discuss this in detail at a later time.

Of course, because the machine was not completely awake, some vestigial traces of the machine’s ordinary states would have remained, but unless we give them force, they cannot produce an imbalance which would send us down into the sleeping state once again. In our early experiments with the waking state, we will undoubtedly notice the presence of phantom thoughts, phantom beliefs, and phantom attitudes, but we should easily recognize them as phantom, nonreal…something generated by the intellectual or emotional functions of the mental centrum, a leftover from the sleeping state. If these did happen to have noticeable force, then we would have been driven by them, by what is called in some traditions, the wind of karma. These phantom reverberations of organic habits of the machine may tend to remain with us for quite some time, long after we have extricated ourselves from the machine, and if we do not deal with them now by repeated awakenings, they will tend to persist long after the end of our organic sojourn in the life of the machine.

This is an accomplishable aim. All we need for the gathering of evidence of the machine’s sleep is a minimum of attention; we don’t even need the help of any supernatural agency like the mysterious “soul” or some other ethereal observer. All we really need is sufficient ordinary attention of the mental apparatus to gather enough good evidence to satisfy ourselves that we do in fact live in a human biological machine and that, in relation to another, much higher state, it is asleep.

We gather this direct evidence by contrasting our present experience of perceptions, senses, sensations and knowledge against the background of those expanded perceptions, sharpened and magnified senses, tingling sensations of real, living tissue, and vast all-encompassing knowledge which we remember vividly from the partially awakened state. Even if we have never experienced a single glimpse of the awakened state, we need not proceed just on faith alone; even without a direct experience of the awakened state, we can compile more than sufficient indirect evidence of sleep to convince any judge and jury that the machine is asleep beyond a shadow of a doubt.

(The machine as a living electrical dynamo)

CHAPTER 10 The Machine as an Electrical Field The human biological machine is a powerful dominant electrical field which can, if its transformational functions are activated by the waking state, act electrically upon the essential self … another, less powerful but more subtle electrical field which forms the true self.

Schools have long taught that the human being under ordinary conditions, living with ordinary habits of life, is only partially able to generate this electrical force, but that the human biological machine can quickly be transformed into a powerful living dynamo, capable of generating enormous units of electrical force, vibrating with this pure life-force in every nerve and muscle fibre. This living electrical dynamo which has been verified by science, is only a small part of the evolutionary process, yet this secret, drawn from ancient teachings which have remained hidden for tens of centuries from the mainstream of human life, can be used to build up the human biological machine’s storage of vital energy. Eventually we inevitably discover that true mastery of the self is mastery of the electrical field of which the self is composed. Not only are most human beings unable to function as a living electrical dynamo; they are running on dead batteries, because their electrical force is dissipated by nervous fidgeting, agitation, worry, wrong foods, ragged breathing, melancholy, deep irritability, emotional upheavals and other destructive habits of the machine. Electricity is stored in the nerve centers and brain masses, but it is easily possible to increase the potential of these energies simply by eliminating these bad habits and then awakening the machine.

Think of the human biological machine as a transformational apparatus which, because it is a powerful dominant electrical field, can—if it is properly activated, by which we mean awake—act electrically upon the essential self, which is another, less powerful but more subtle electrical field. Under the influence of the awakened human biological machine, the essential self will undergo a series of transformations which are electrical in nature. Very minute electrical changes occur in the machine in microvolts and microamperes of current. Almost all this electrical activity is in the four to twenty-eight Hertz, or cycles-per-second frequency spectrum. Some electrical fields are very destructive to the subtle electrical activity of the machine, and we must take this into account if we expect it to operate as a transformational apparatus.

These currents pass through the atmosphere and are destructive to transformational efforts. Our work must take into account the effect of a variety of transmitted frequencies ranging from standard waves to microwaves coming from a variety of electrical sources such as radios, electrical appliances, power lines, automobiles, telephone lines; anywhere we have a flow of electricity, we also have its corresponding electro-magnetic wave, and both the machine and the essential self are affected by this, particularly by wires which carry electrical energy. The flow of electricity in a wire creates a relatively tremendous electrical field along its axis, setting up a new pattern in the field surrounding it such as appears on a computer disc when placing a paper clip upon it, producing an electrical anomaly, a local variation in the field caused by the appearance of a new, smaller electrical field within the body of the larger electrical field.

through us at any given moment causes an unending series of profound topological distortions in the body’s local electrical field. Radio waves, x-rays, ultraviolet radiation, high-frequency transmissions and very low frequency transmissions such as those used between submarines and their home bases, and many other artificial radiations produced by human ingenuity, radically alter the whole electrical field of force of the Earth from moment to moment, twenty-four hours a day. The earth is a giant magnet and wherever we find a magnet, we also find electricity. Wherever we find gravity, we find electricity and magnetism. Microchanges in the body can alter not just the body’s health, but its higher function as a transformational apparatus.

(Repairing the electrical field stored in the muscles)

CHAPTER 11 The Repair of the Machine Because life experiences—mnemonically stored in the muscles of the body—have distorted the electrical field of the machine, repair of these anomalies in the general electrical field are necessary in order for the machine to function effectively as a transformational apparatus. The machine stores all its memory electromagnetically, and releases it according to electrochemically transmitted instructions.

Take a moment to realize the implications of this. It means that the entire experiential history of the machine is stored in the smaller electrical fields of the muscles. Each new experience tends to overlay and refer to all previous similar experiences or experiences which seem similar whether they are or not. The storage mechanism is incapable of determining the actual reliability of its estimation of similarity, and often the seeming similarity is completely false.

With repeated aggravation, the muscles tend to remain more or less permanently constricted, which radically distorts the shape and function of the muscles, in turn distorting the electrical field of the machine as a whole. Stored information distorts the muscles because the muscles store information as an electrical field whose shape represents the information. This shaped electrical field can be expressed as a geometric and algebraic mathematical function which reflects the exact informational content of the muscle. The muscles are shot through with very small low-resistance electrical transmission lines which behave more or less like electrical wires and, just like wires, they develop electromagnetic ridges and valleys around themselves which reflect their function and which are altered by, and reciprocally alter, any adjacent electrical fields within their sphere of influence.

It is the neural network which controls, directs and monitors the machine in its separate functions, and the thalamus blends this information into a balanced whole; then transmitting its analysis to the reasoning centrums, which may respond with further instructions. Unfortunately, the thalamus does not listen to reason. Extremely localized intra- and infra-cellular current may or may not pass into the neurological network, but when they do, this also affects the general electrical field of the machine.

Alteration of the electrical field of the muscles alters the function of the machine as a transformational apparatus. If it is not functioning effectively even though awake, we can intentionally make alterations by stimulating specific portions of the brain and myo-electrical systems with special exercises, to repair the machine as a transformational apparatus. Ringing out the wires of the nervous system is in the category of repairs to the machine. We must not only look at the transformation of the machine but the repair of the machine as well. Any biological machine, if awakened, will function as a transformational apparatus, but blind transformation of the essential self by the machine doesn’t mean anything specific, and even very minor variances in the machine’s functioning and electrical field will alter its transformational function. Even a crude instrument such as a galvanic skin response meter—originally called a Glame-Meter, which measures the conductivity of the skin in terms of all the machine’s electrical changes,

can give us an accurate picture of the functioning of the machine as a transformational apparatus.

We must understand that we are not considering the artificial alteration of function of the machine in the sense of its behavior, but the repair of the machine’s dominant electrical field which has a complex influence upon the more subtle electrical field which we call the essential self, which effect can be expressed as a continuously variable complex exponential equation. We need very little theory to be able to use this idea. For example, we may have no idea of the theory of automotive design and engineering, but with the right information, we are capable of driving and even repairing a car. In the same way, we need not understand the exact electrical equations which reflect the influence of one electrical field upon another in order to use the principle for the repair of the machine as a transformational apparatus.

For a complete understanding, we would need a background in Reimannian space theory, Wavicle Theory, theory of local gravitational effects, the low-energy plasma theory, the General and Special field theories—within which we will find the Law of Relativity in a very different form from its popularization—the gravitational attraction of nucleic functions and non-charged particles, functions of probability, indeterminacy, quark-quark relationships, vector analysis, energy transfer, non-Euclidian geometric functions, topological functions of complex-connected volumes, beat-frequency oscillation, electromagnetic relationships to the light and sound spectrum, and other brain-boggling mathematical concepts which relate to the impingement of two slightly dissimilar electrical fields.

But all this is unnecessary. We need only enough information to understand the basic mechanics of the repair of the machine as a transformational apparatus, not the repair of the machine as a machine regarding its physical, emotional and mental functions.

The content of memory itself is not important; we are only interested in the distortion it produces upon the electrical field of the essential self. We do not know

where memory is stored, nor do we really care, because with the meter we are able to locate and gain access to any part of memory, not by its content and significance, but by its electrical impact, its distorting effect as an interference, a blockage, in the general electrical field of the machine.

But we do not have time to analyze every little detail of the functioning of the machine. A complete analysis would be too time-consuming and far too complex. And the fact is that this is unnecessary. It is quicker and more efficient to repair everything in the machine’s functioning as a transformational apparatus, whether it needs it or not. In our repair work, we stimulate the brain and nervous system in very specific ways, until the anomaly, the displaced charge or blockage, disappears. Because this electrical energy which had been stored in the muscles as resistors is now available to the machine at large, the neural network enlarges, becomes more active and activates more fully as the electrical potential increases. At the same time, blockages in the neuro-muscular system also…

The electro-magnetic anomalies do not recur once they have been eliminated. Information and memory are not lost. Actually, they are enhanced because they become more accessible now that we have eliminated the painful and…

CHAPTER 12 The Essential Self as an Electrical Field Information in the evolutionary sense is transmitted by impingement of one electrical field upon another. The electrical field of the essential self undergoes the exact change necessary to free it from its compulsive electrical affinity for the human biological machine. In our beginning work with the machine as an electrical field, we will work on the dissipation of distortions which have impacted themselves in and around the muscles. Later on, we will disarm the data-processor in the machine itself, after…

We will discuss more about this later, in relation to the machine’s tendency to impose its own will when in the sleeping state and its total lack of will in the waking state, during which the relatively weak will of the essential self becomes active in the sense that it…

In the waking state, we will effectively reproduce the experience of the higher dimensions; we will learn what we need to do to work and…

The essential self is an electrical field and the machine generates an electrical field which impinges on the essential self’s electrical field. The crystallized electrical field of the being replaces the machine as a body of matter. The machine as matter is replaced by a steady-state electromagnetic image of…

What can the essential self learn from the machine? Nothing in the intellectual sense, and we must realize that learning in the electrical sense, which is called “understanding” in our tradition, means something quite different…

In addition, another factor is necessary if the machine is to function as a teacher to the essential self, imposing its field functions upon that of the essential self. Even though the machine wishes, in a way, to fulfill its function as a transformational apparatus, in the same way that all living organisms “wish” to fulfill their genuine objective functions, it also has developed a powerful defense mechanism against the waking state. We will discuss this at length very soon, in relation to the practical method for bringing the machine into the waking state. The greater the similarity of the electrical field of the machine to that of the essential self, the greater the possibility for the principle of contagion to alter the electrical field of the essential self. Like affects like, and then eventually, like becomes like, indicating the exact method for the possible evolution of the essential self.

We may experience a situation in which the machine’s electrical blockages are temporarily removed by artificial means—drugs, hypnosis, or some sort of shock—and the machine functions momentarily as it should, as a pure, vital, living electrical apparatus.

A normally functioning human being should have the ability to perceive and function in several dimensional levels at the same time. Perceiving in single dimensions produces the illusion of separation but if we are able to function as a multidimensional being, then we will view ourselves and our surroundings as miniature electrical fields, anomalies within one giant electrical field, and eventually the electrical field of the essential self will stabilize itself in the transformed state.

(Real help makes the machine squirm into evolution)

CHAPTER 13 Help Real help is not someone doing something for us, or a lessening of our personal suffering and struggles. Real help has no calming effect—quite the contrary—it makes the machine squirm itself into evolution-by-reflex. We have such high, wonderful ideas! Such complicated and exalted psychological and philosophical explanations, such noble intentions for ourselves… Then, all of a sudden, in spite of our best intentions and our strongest wishes, things go wrong and we sink into deep, dark negative states. From the depths of the volcano of the deep self, an explosion erupts, destroying all our noble dreams and illusions in its wake. What became of our high ideals and noble intentions? Deep down in the darkest, most primitive levels of the machine, someone or something, the most inaccessible part of ourselves, makes it impossible for us to actually carry out our highest aims and aspirations. The will of the machine toward self-gratification and sleep is very different from the high ideals of the essential self, which has marvelous plans. Periodic emotional storms constantly serve as reminders that the machine has a will of its own. The essential self, with its great ideals, is unfortunately not the director of the machine and, under ordinary circumstances, can never be the director of the machine or anything else including itself. As it is, the essential self is a slave, not a master, and yet it was made to be master.

The machine exercises its destructive will, completely disregarding the intentions of the essential self. This conflict gives the illusion of many different identities each acting on its own. Really, there are only two: the intelligence which formulates the higher aims and aspirations, and the primitive brain, which is the real director of the machine, because its savage will is completely dominant. We are in the grip of the machine’s private insanity, forced to live as we would never live if we were able to actually exert our will upon the machine, to control and direct its activities every moment of the day. Yet we tell ourselves the lie that the mental apparatus is the director of the machine. Originally, the meaning of virtue was that the noble aims and aspirations of the essential self had reached down through the mental apparatus and rooted itself into the deepest part of the machine and that the aims and aspirations of the deepest darkest part of the machine had in fact become the same as those of the essential self.

Once we have seriously studied the machine and clearly understood the real nature of our situation, we will see that we have only three choices.

We can refuse to acknowledge our total lack of will over the machine, and pointedly ignore the inner emotional storms and external upheavals caused by the machine against all our higher intentions. The second choice is to lower our standards, to make ideals for ourselves which conform more to the actual swinish behavior of the machine. The third choice is the most difficult. We can search for a method, a practical means, by which the machine is brought to a state which actually reflects the highest ideals of our essential self in the deepest fibers of its being.

An awakened machine cannot possess negative force, and since negative force provides the force for the exertion of its will, an awakened machine has no will of its own. Without the force of its own will, the machine comes to a standstill. When the machine is awake, even the subtle suggestions of the essential self, which has no weapon but attention, is sufficient to direct the machine.

We must accomplish two things. First, we must find some way to define, delineate, clarify what are our exact ideals. Then we must see that we do not have the will to bring the entire machine into action as a unified whole. When we formulate an aim, if the machine has no will of its own, we are unified, a true republic. This inner unity of higher aspirations of the essential self and the deepest most primitive part of the machine, is the real meaning of the ideal of Utopia, the perfect republic.

When we make the outer as the inner, the inner as the outer, then I and the father—the essential self and the human biological machine—are one. It must be clearly understood that the Work cannot be studied through a sleeping machine; the Work means nothing to a sleeping machine. A sleeping machine cares only for itself, its aims, its problems and its pursuits. A sleeping machine is hypnotized by its own subjective fixations and beyond those fixations there is no objective reality. It is deaf and blind to the Work and even to higher ideals, because it is asleep. The Work cannot be defined because it is living, growing, and changing. The word “living” was once the same as the word “awake”.

If we refuse work, we refuse help. Work is help. If we want real help, and not our imaginary ideas of what help is, we must accept it in the form it comes, not in the form we expect. Real help is not someone doing something for us, or a lessening of our personal struggles. The sleeping machine cannot recognize help. Help makes the enemy squirm; if the enemy does not squirm, then it is not real help.

(Alchemy as a roadmap of the essential self’s evolution)

CHAPTER 14 Alchemy Alchemy is not a way of producing behavioral change in the machine; it is a way of notating change that occurs on a much deeper level. It is not a cause, but an effect, a reflection of the inner evolution of the essential self.

We normally think that we have our whole lives to accomplish this work, but the fact is that our energy for transformation will have dissipated itself by the time we are older. We must have completed the transformational process before we run out of the resilience and flexibility required to complete the alchemical process of transformation. Alchemy is a discipline in which an individual uses the machine to refine different substances, combining and separating and processing them by various means, over a long period of time, through the use of slow heat—by which is meant the application of inexorable and unwavering attention—producing a chemical and electrical mutation of the machine which is only a reflection of a much deeper internal mutation of the essential self. With ordinary methods, we can learn chemistry, a very simple subject, wherein we pour a chemical substance from one beaker to another. It is easy to see and measure our results because the process is all external. In the process of alchemy, however, we are dealing with the chemical factory hidden within the human biological machine. In this case, we cannot just pour from one beaker to another. To obtain exact results, we must stimulate by very precise means definite sectors of the brain and nervous system, which in turn stimulate muscle and nervous system interactions, releasing chemicals through the use of heat and electricity, causing substantive changes in the machine.

All the apparent complexity of alchemy disappears when we realize that all of the alchemical notations are results, not causes, of real changes in the essential self, which occur in a cumulative sequence. So the alchemical sequence notated in alchemical notebooks is a roadmap of the evolution of the essential self. When an alchemical event occurs in the machine, we can check it against our roadmap to see our progress and determine our next step according to our work-strategy.

The catalyst is the machine which produces transformation in the essential self, which is then reflected in the machine which is then capable of additional transformational effects upon the essential self, provided the machine is awake to exert these transformational effects, which are reflected by the transformed essential self upon the machine.

If the machine falls asleep, the process does not stop, it simply ceases to continue. The alchemical process is cumulative. It does not regress, but it may not continue for a hundred-thousand years. At each complete alchemical process, the process is stabilized. There is no reversal so, once begun, it must be finished, otherwise we will be forced to live in pain; the cup will not pass from us.

(The machine as beloved: adoration as the force of awakening)

CHAPTER 15 Bringing the Woman to Life If we follow the machine as a lover would, unrelentingly fixing his gaze upon his Beloved, filled with astonishment, rapture and gratitude, the machine will come to life, awakening and responding to the power of adoration with a profound emotion which will in turn bring about our own transformation.

A woman wants a man’s complete, utter, totally non-wandering attention to be placed entirely upon herself. She wants to bathe in it, to immerse herself in it, and when she is able to receive this from a man, she in turn responds with adoration. She does not really want anything else from him, and everything she does—from cosmetics and having babies to going with him as a sailor on a barefoot cruise or sitting grimly under a blanket at a homecoming football game—serves this aim. She will do anything necessary to obtain this attention, and the more deeply profound the attention, the more centered on herself it is, the better.

And if this is what a woman really wants, what does a man want? He wants his attention to be free to wander wherever it will go. He wants to be distracted and amused. His attention is scattered and fickle. It is almost as if the two genders were entirely different species, each the opposite of the other. In order to anticipate the many directions his wandering attention will take, a woman will accommodate herself to his interests as they suddenly change tack and direction. If he is interested in computers, she will unaccountably develop an interest in them even if she had never been interested in them before. If he is interested in sciences, she, too, will find some way to be interested and to be useful to him so that she can appear in his field of attention as he pursues his momentary fascination. A woman who is really a woman wants this attention, and she will do absolutely anything, no matter how degrading or debased or self-effacing to her own interests, to gather the scattered attention of her man and draw it to herself. Of course she may eventually give up entirely and pursue her own interests if she is unable to obtain this attention from a man by these artifices. But if she has any success at all in this game, she will remain interested in one thing and one thing only: a complete, deep relationship. She wants to be reached, to be touched, to be fulfilled.

Fulfillment is a very weak word which cannot really express the intense anguish which characterizes a woman’s experience in her relationships with men, and words alone cannot do justice to the deep feelings of incompleteness and disappointment that haunt her.

With the deepest part of herself, with all her heart, she wishes to be found and to be known. And so every woman has learned to become yet another glittering attraction, hoping that a man’s attention will someday fall upon her, even if only accidentally—and finally come to rest upon her, warming her heart and bathing her in the intense radiation of total adoration.

To fascinate means not only to put under a spell, to charm, to captivate, but also to hold motionless, to hold someone’s attention by being very interesting or delightful, or even annoying, bitchy, argumentative or congenitally ill. Anything that compels the attention can be a method, and when everything seductive fails, then nothing remains but the sad, plaintive and bitter mechanisms of neurosis, psychosomatic illness and little personal tragedies which are the common weapon of the contemporary housewife. Seductive or nagging, both mechanisms serve the same function. A woman knows instinctively that her life can be completed through a man, but she may be unaware that this can never be achieved through an ordinary relationship with a man. She knows that something unusual must somehow occur, but just what this may be escapes her, and her search among men in ordinary life is doomed to end in failure. She does not know how to get his real attention, but without the Work, even if she were able to obtain and hold his attention, she would not really know what to do with it. She does not know, and in the ordinary course of life cannot know, that what she wants from a man can only be obtained through the process of mutual initiation and transformation. A man is in general even more ignorant than she is about this, because his interests lie completely outside the domain of deep relationships. All he knows is that he wants a new toy, and then, when he finally obtains it, he quickly tires of it and no longer wants that toy…then he wants another new toy, and yet another.

As long as his attention continues its incessant, restless wandering, he can never be initiated. How are these two unrelated but mutually reciprocal species to be brought together? Shall the woman say to the man: Put your full attention on me. This is how you can accomplish what you are after. I know what you are after. Be with me, be fully with me, don’t take your attention away from me for a single moment. Thread your way through my labyrinth of love and find me. If you find me you will find what you are after, what you have been after all your life. Were a woman to actually say this to a man, his body would make a hole in the wall exactly corresponding to its momentary shape as it hurtled through, because he could not open the door quickly enough! How can a woman convince a man that by this mutual reciprocal initiation, something genuine can be achieved; that initiation is not out there somewhere, that it is not even deep within himself, that it is within her? This has been the dilemma of women for tens of thousands of years, how to communicate to a man what a woman so deeply intuits about the process of mutual initiation, without causing his fragile ego to hopelessly fragment. Yet a woman is willing to sit and wait very patiently for years for a man to develop from the state of restless activity, chatter and excitement, to a state of calm where he is able to just sit and be with her, where his attention stops its restless wandering and falls completely and utterly upon her. A man can become, if he is willing to make the sacrifice, a special type of alchemical fuel to be consumed in the warming of a woman’s womb, her heart of initiation, and in the process of his annihilation he is totally consumed, annihilated, as the woman comes to life. Only when she comes to life is she able to resurrect him. Like Osiris, he must trust in his Isis, offering himself up unselfishly as fuel for her…

him. She knows what he needs. She knows what he feels. She knows his heart more than he himself does. She has learnt to read him like a book. She knows his movements, his postures, his voice, his intonations and facial expressions, his breathing. Even the smallest detail reveals something to her, and she is able to follow it and be there with him. A man, on the other hand, is usually totally oblivious to a woman’s changes. He does not see and cannot sense her inner moods and outer movements; he does not know how…

He must lose his breath, his heart, his mind to her, cleave to her, follow her, be one with her; move as one, breathe as one, think as one, feel as one, sense as one, as she does instinctively. He must learn the woman’s most basic secret—“wheresoever thou goest, there also will I go”. So long as a man chooses the imaginary outer freedoms, he is choosing the life of cattle, doomed to wander from one glittering…

If a woman hopes to accomplish her own fulfillment, she must find a real man who is willing to penetrate these deep inner secrets of a woman in order to attain the real depth of a…

Now, in the same way, if we could view the human biological machine as a woman, as our initiator, our true teacher, and we could effectively place our restless, wandering attention completely upon it, the machine would come to life, just as a woman comes to life when a man’s attention is placed upon her, completely, absolutely, unwaveringly. The essential self is uneducated. If left to itself, it will remain passive and do nothing. It will just continue to exist, patiently waiting things out.

We may be surprised to discover that it is actually the machine which seeks a school. The essential self is too detached, too complacent, for such concerns. The machine behaves oddly in ordinary life. As we study its patterns of behavior, we discover that these peculiarities are signs of anger and frustration. It falls into the pursuit of trivia because we rarely allow it to perform its objective function.

To obtain this intensity of attention, we must provide ourselves with an outside source of force; we can borrow the will to place our full attention on the machine by adding something to it. This additional force which gives us the extra will necessary to fixate our attention on the machine is called adoration. Adoration is an emotional ingredient, but not the emotion of the machine. It is a higher emotion which can be aroused in the essential self.

In other words, before we can bring the machine to life, we must have brought to life the one centrum which is ordinarily dead in every human being, the feeling centrum. We assume that the essential self, because it is spiritual, is endowed with special higher powers, that it is capable of many wondrous things. But the fact is, the essential self, in its present state, is quite limited. It has only two characteristics: presence and the ability to place and fixate its attention.

Rubbing the edge of the bell, a vibration begins and, once the bell is vibrating at full pitch and resonance, we must continue rubbing the edge of the bowl without interrupting the vibration if we wish the vibration to persist. If we are careless, inattentive or hesitant, we will break the flow and the ringing will cease. We must then begin afresh. We must continue this exercise until we are able to make the bell ring and keep it ringing indefinitely. If we lose the vibration, the singing bowl must be brought slowly and carefully back up past a definite barrier, a threshold of vibration before it will again produce the full sound. It is not easy to make the bowl really sing and, like a woman’s awakening, requires patience and subtlety. Another demonstration used by schools to visualize the process of bringing the machine to life is the Japanese Shakuhachi. The Shakuhachi is a type of flute. It can be made of bamboo, rosewood, maple, mahogany or even plastic. The easiest of all to play is the plastic flute, and its sound is perfectly adequate for ordinary music. However, the real Shakuhachi is a teaching mechanism and is difficult to play. The bamboo Shakuhachi with a root base is the true teaching instrument, because only perfect effortless breathing and no-mind mindfulness—which we call pure presence and the unremitting attention powered by the essential higher emotion of adoration—will produce a vibrant and mellow sound from it. The Shakuhachi teaches how to breathe a perfect breath, how to breathe one’s last breath into the flute, as if giving one’s final breath to death, the ultimate lover. All of these devices are vivid examples of the quality and heightened level of vibration of an awakened machine.

(Condensing effort into one daily moment of awakening)

CHAPTER 16 Attack at Dawn: A Beachhead into the Fourth Dimension In our beginning work, we often attempt to accomplish too much at once. Our efforts are scattered and our energy quickly dissipates itself. We must discipline ourselves to improve the quality and potency of our efforts by condensing them at first.

Our attention wanders here and there, or is distracted by many inner and outer influences, and we do not seem to have much will to awaken the machine in spite of our serious work efforts. Our attention becomes scattered when we work with too many exercises and we insist on dissipating our energies toward work efforts during the entire day. We can condense our efforts during the day into one major effort at one definite time each day, until we get a good grip on it.

If we were locked away in a room with only a single chair, plain white walls and a bare light bulb, even if we were a fish in a tank, we could still do our work if we knew how to awaken the machine without the need for special exercises.

But the main point is that, if we intend to try to awaken the machine we must not do anything else at the same time. We must place a pure hermetic seal upon the time we have set aside for this effort. We have got to make up our minds that we will tolerate no distraction during this time. This firm decision, which tolerates no exception whatever, is the only discipline we need at this time. Even with an untrained attention, anyone ought to be able to set aside five minutes a day during which nothing else enters to distract or attract the attention—no outside worries, no business concerns, no anticipation of the day’s problems, no nervous agitation, no upsets, no daily problems, no emotional outbursts, no arguments, no amusements, no entertainment—just for five minutes out of a whole day!