School Talk 40 - Levels of Food

(*Audience participation is in parentheses--notations in brackets have been added for clarification )

[I wanted to add this school talk due to all the suggestion we take in each day; not only from people around us, but mostly because of all the violence on TV. When young, I though I liked being scared by movies. I have observed that they often lower the mood which leaves an open door for not "I's."]

Today we're going to talk about food. We've said levels of food; however, we don't necessarily mean by food the stuff we put in our mouth--however, we're going to take that one too. So, we'll take it first and then we'll talk about the other.

Food that's taken in, of course, does nothing to the body until it's digested and assimilated which seems to be done rather automatically within ourselves unless it is something that is not digestible. I've had two calls already today about people who put something in there that didn't digest. Today they're very uncomfortable and want some immediate relief. So what we're interested in is that we begin to understand that all things that come into us--first has to go through some process--for today's purpose, we will call that process digestion.

In the case of steak and potatoes, salad, and bread, it is digested with a process--which we don't go into--but then it's assimilated into the body and becomes a part of this physical being. It may be used as energy. It may be used to repair, rebuild or what have you; but we are, of course, somewhat particular about what we put in here--at least some of us are. We don't eat tainted things. We don't even eat things that don't look good, do we? Even at lovely places like the Sheraton, we don't eat them if they don't look good. We leave it, or send it back. So we do know that something--the appearance of food has something to do with whether it is delightful to eat. I could imagine that if I went into a restaurant and ordered a filet; and it came out dyed blue, it probably wouldn't go down very well. If it did go down, it wouldn't set well--even though the dye was harmless. It's just that blue steak is not into our idea of things to eat--even kids peel their colored Easter eggs before they eat them. So the appearance of things--the purity of it--is accepted as valuable to all of us.

Now by the same token, we take in "impressions" of various kinds. They have a tank around these days that they lay someone in warm water--they call it sensory deprivation. Have any of you ever experimented with that situation? Well, they put salt water in a tank so that it's as near you're internal salt water level and the temperature is exactly your skin temperature--you can't even feel it. You lay in this water which has enough salt in it to float you a little bit. Even a fresh egg will float in salt water. So we float a little bit with no sound, no light and no nothing. It's called sensory deprivation, and people can't stand it very long. It's was used as a therapeutic tool, but produced more havoc than it did therapy. Most people became unglued--simply put--when they were put in this sensory deprivation.

So we take in many "sensory impressions" through the day and usually we pay very little attention to what kind they are. We may go and expose ourselves to a movie that is full of violence and noise because we have become used to being stimulated--but all that material goes into the person and in many cases, it is not digested.

Now if you read a book, you basically digest it, is that right? You read an article in the newspaper--you digest it. Or you may listen to television and be doing something else and not digest it very well. Then we have dreams of various and sundry kinds that go on, and we dream through the night. I'm talking about night dreams, not daydreams.

Night dreams are basically all based on undigested "sensory impressions" that you took into yourself--which is a form of food.

People used to come to me and tell me they would like for me to interpret their dreams. So, I'd listen very carefully to the dream. There's nothing more boring to me than dreams, but I would listen to these dreams. Then I would try to reconstruct what that person had thought about or been exposed to in the last 48 hours--and you could usually come up with what the dream came from. Now there's a "dreamer" in there that works very much like the colon does in the body. It's an "elimination" organ. Did you wake up with a great start in the middle of the night and didn't know what it was about--jump up and all? All this is a form of elimination--and be thankful for them.

If you would just as soon not have that kind of diarrhea, it would be a little interesting to see what kind of "impressions" you took in and "paid attention to". Some of the more unnecessary impressions, I think, most of us could get along without--especially if we're interested in evolving our states of consciousness.

Now if all your doing is muddling through and want to get as many "stimuli" as possible, why that's all right; but I think that none of us here are working on that.

Now another form of food that we take in is what the conscious awareness mind or whatever you want to call it--all the not "I's" carry on with about all the day. So shall we say what you're habitually "occupied with mentally" is also a form of food that, again, has to be digested and assimilated or gotten rid of. I prefer to get rid of it--if it happens to come up in the first place.

I think it behooves us to pay attention somewhat to that kind of food that we take in. What our mental apparatus is occupied with most of the day. I'm not talking about every fleeting thought that comes by--but those thoughts we get occupied with.

Some people are occupied with revenge--might be occupied with that for weeks or months on end.

Some are occupied with showing people off--well, I'll show those so and so's, or that so and so, that I don't have to put up with this.

Many other kinds of people will have business transactions that, we will say, went sour. Somebody didn't do what they were supposed to do or had agreed to do something, somewhere along the line and now the person spends all their time occupied totally with how terrible they were treated. How they've been victimized and how they're going to get even with that so and so that caused all this difficulty and trouble.

Now that is a form of food, it is assimilated into the body and it is highly toxic, and it requires considerable adaptation [see Expectation and Adaptation Cycle in "Basic" on the main page] on the part of the body in order for it to continue to survive.

However, we can see that I refuse to take that form of nutrient into the body. Now I don't care how somebody treated me, that is his problem. If he causes me difficulty, it wasn't to his advantage, and I don't have to do anything to get even with him. Life will take care of that very nicely. I don't have to do a thing about it.

So it can be said that here is a form of food or nutrient that comes into the body that even one look at it would be like eating toxic beef or soured potatoes and you wouldn't hardly eat that, would you? You wouldn't knowingly take that in.

One time I unknowingly ate a piece of tainted pie. Along with the pie I drank a cup of coffee. Before morning I had considerable physical difficulty, and that difficulty went on for many hours.

After the acute stage was over, I couldn't stand the smell of coffee. [there was and "association" set up between the experience with the tainted pie and the coffee being consumed together]

I would drive down the street and smell coffee in people's homes--I'd never done such before, but it kept happening. If I walked into a hotel--it was overpowering--the coffee from back there somewhere gave me horrible nausea!

Another thing that went on while I was still in that [acute physical state] was that I was to take a state board exam in New Mexico--and so I went to take the exam. I sat at the table and here's the monitor of the exam--a lady with her coffeepot perking away right next to me. I spent more time in the wash room than I did writing the exam.

I did pass the exam, but at great agony, I will assure you! I made frequent detours. Test takers couldn't leave until the paper was handed in. I had my "necessity" increased/! That paper was in in a hurry and correct--but with agony.

So finally one day I decided I didn't want to live that way. I did like my coffee. [So one day I took some time to get over the "now is then" association which was creating nausea every time I was around coffee.]
I sat with a cup of coffee and a little teaspoon. I would take a half a teaspoon full of coffee and tell myself that "now wasn't then." It took three hours of that [procedure] before I got any "action" to understand that "now wasn't then."

Since then, I haven't smelled coffee in people's homes [with the result of nausea).

We wouldn't knowingly take in a toxic substance from our ordinary everyday food--is that right?

You wouldn't knowingly do it?

(No, I wouldn't.)

You wouldn't eat tainted fish, and you wouldn't eat beef that had been sitting around and turned green.

But now here we go and read all sorts of garbage--newspapers and magazines and so forth. We read that with the greatest of ease.

We listen to it on the radio. We listen to it on the television. In other words, we take in things that anybody knows is pretty tainted, is that right?

Now what do you do with it? Do you digest it and assimilate it?

If you do, it puts a whole different feeling in your inner state of being--a whole different situation of what you're aware of.

You're no longer in charge of your total inner state of what you will do. You haven't set up a "guardian of the gate" that's going to watch it. You haven't organized a state of being that says, "I will be in charge of a whole purpose." You haven't set it up--you're just being exposed to filth.

Most of us here, I don't think, would go out and gather around the garbage pail up at Landmark where John threw it out at noon today--if he didn't want it, it's bound to be bad. So we wouldn't go in there and pick up items out of that garbage can to eat, would we?

Now by the same token, do you feel that it is harmless to take in violence and lewdness and what have you just because it's there? Do you think it has no affect on you?

Do you see that it has about as much affect--if not more so--than the stuff we eat with literal food?

[There is] one nice thing about it. If you eat a piece of tainted pie, X goes into a terrific effort to eliminate it--I'll assure you that--knocked me out in the process, but went into a terrific affect to eliminate it.

Now nothing seems to go into a great effort with the garbage except a few dreams or what have you to eliminate all this unclean, unwholesome stimuli that we take in all the time. Nothing goes to work on that. So it seems to lodge very much like cholesterol or something. It hangs around and you're totally unaware of it except that it acts up in many ways for it to eliminate.

Now another form of food would be activity. It's a stimuli that we're all urged by some inner urge to take some activity every day. we can't just stay laid out in the sack all day long just barely breathing; but you ordinarily have an urge to get up and do something, is that right?

(Yeah.)

No matter how much your wife says you're lazy, you still get up sometime through the day and do a little something because we are impelled to activity. Now there are many kinds of activity that we all know are not very beneficial to us.

If I wanted some activity and distraction, I can go down to the bar this afternoon and sit there all afternoon and sip away on margaritas, and that will get your head buzzed before long. I could sit with the margaritas and I could talk all kinds of weird things to other people who had fuzzed their heads with some similar libation. We could do that, or we could go out and get involved in a whole bunch of other things that easily we could find to be involved in.

So now if you have a "suggestion given to you", it's pretty apt to have some reoccurrence in your head", is that about right? Somebody suggests something to you--it's going to reoccur to keep on doing something here and there.

You don't have to be the person doing the suggestion, it doesn't have to be a professional hypnotist or even a parlor variety, anyone can make the suggestion. It's going to reoccur and operate in your head a little bit unless you throw it out now.

It is as if you got a bite of food that's tainted, what would you do with it. Would you be very polite and go ahead and swallow it, or would you spit it out. I don't care whose house you're in. By the same token, if one refuses to allow this kind of stuff in, one is beginning to build what we call a "frame of reference" or a new "guardian of the gate".

The old "guardian of the gate" is merely the not "I's" which take in about anything, but they argue over it and so forth.

The new "guardian of the gate" would be a consciously chosen purpose that says--this is my purpose in Life. When I run across all these "suggestions", I'll realize these "suggestions" obviously have toxic functions coming from it and I will experience toxic reactions from it. Now the "guardian of the gate" can drop these "suggestions".
The "suggestions" can be rejected immediately regardless of what you'd run into.

If somebody says what you really "should do" is get over your problems and feel really wonderful is to have a few snorts of coke. If one takes in that suggestion, they act on that "suggestion" and pretty soon they're doing it. But the person with an adequate "guardian of the gate"--self chosen--put in place--would say "No." You can get as high as you want--I can get high without it. I can get myself there anytime I want to, but I don't want "that kind" of a high--so then one could leave that alone.

But otherwise, we do know that "suggestion"--that all these various and sundry chemicals that people call drugs and dope and what have you have a wide usage. Now it didn't come because I had a craving for it before I got to it. It came because of a "suggestion" that implied that I was missing something very worthwhile if I didn't use it; and that if I did use it, it would give me a great reward.

So that's the nature of all "suggestions" that anybody "suggests". Something is implied in the "suggestion"--it doesn't even have to be said, but implied--that there is a penalty for not doing it and great reward for doing whatever it may be.

So the human race is involved in taking into themselves tremendous amounts of things that is "demonstratively harmful to the person"--some of which very few people are aware of. People who have studied these things are well aware of the harmful nature of many of the things that are taken in--not only in the form of the physical food one has, but what the mind is totally occupied with--or occupied a great amount of the time with.
It is occupied with all the various impressions and sensory things , and the ideas are subscribed to.

So it would be that if we are going to be at the most hygienic living, we would be first particular about the food that we eat for nourishment of the body. We would be extremely critical of what kind of nourishment we take into the inner man--regardless of what it is. We would be extremely critical of it. And in that fact of being critical, we are at the same time building a "frame of reference" which is what we live by and it's what sometimes has been called a soul.

Man is considered in some esoteric teaching--called the fourth way--that man does not have a "soul" unless he builds one.

What he builds is a "frame of reference" which consists of his purpose and his action upon that preposition until it becomes, shall we say, second nature or "first nature" or it is spontaneous. One doesn't have to stop and think it over every time it comes along--it's just there.

So it's referred to as the new "guardian of the gate", and that is what the person really is. It possibly has extreme survival value, but we would say "soul". A synonym for "soul" is a "self-chosen purpose" which becomes the "guardian of the gate."

Now nothing goes into the "mind" unless it agrees with that--or is in "purpose" with it because it sits there. It's been chosen--it's acted upon. Now that's what you would call a complete transformation. It is a whole new person from what was originally which was that anything that came in was just allowed to be. The ordinary person hasn't taken the time and effort to build a purpose and act upon it until it becomes nature. He just simply allowed everything to go through. So you could say that there is no interference [guardian of the gate] between not "I's" and the "awareness function" of man. The "awareness function" is mostly loaded with not "I's" and X. Anything that happens just goes "zip" through [without any discernment], and X always does the appropriate thing for the misinformation it receives which can result in undesired experiences.

But if one has taken the activity to build a purpose and acted upon it, then you have a "guardian" between the "sensory impressions" that come in and are reported to X. Now unless the "sensory impressions" pass this "soul" or "guardian of the gate or" or "frame of reference" things just go banging on through to X and X acts upon it.

But as soon as this new barrier is there--the keeper of the gate is there--the "sensory impressions" don't go through until it agrees with that chosen purpose. In that case,
X doesn't operate upon every thing that comes into the sensory world because the "junk"
doesn't go through. It gets stopped at that point--maybe like the lymph system does in the human body. It stops toxic stuff from going through. The "suggestion" doesn't agree with the purpose one has chosen.

If you wanted to use a common terminology today, you would say that the person has been reborn. They have a whole different way of dealing with all the stimuli that comes in from outside. What usually happens is somebody comes up and gives you a "suggestion."? You will act upon it if they are good enough at their "suggestions". You can make the "guardian of the gate" or this new thing which is a purpose and acted upon until it's second nature. Now when something or someone offers you an undesirable "suggestion", the suggestion hits a blank wall because the "guardian" says, this one don't go through.

Now then we have a barrier between all the things that come to us. We can't keep all of them from happening, but we can eliminate the biggest pile of them. We could then have a protection. If you don't have that, you are a sitting duck for anything that comes around. You are like the person with a big whole in his skin just about every thing that comes around can move in--the skin's a great barrier for bacteria and virus and all these many things, they're covert, but they don't get through.

It's the same thing with the mind--the mind could be protected by a form of a skin--which is now protected by the "guardian of the gate" which is this thing that we have consciously built of our own volition. I have said this is my purpose, and I'm going to carry it out, and I have acted upon it until it is an actuality.

Now there is a barrier between "sensory impressions" no matter where they come from, and X acting upon them. There is something that filters out the "junk" and only lets through those "impressions" which fit one's purpose. It does not allow all this "stuff" through which goes on incessantly and creates the biggest part of the chaos in the world.

Let's have little comments here, there and elsewhere? Somebody put me down or tell me to get out or do something over here with it. We've talked about what we take in.

(When you speak of not wanting to use the word "soul" because it's been bantered around….)

Yeah, I said it's used all the time, so I use something else.

(So what would you say?)

What would I use for soul? I would use Life or union with Life. I could say it's a barrier or a purpose--a conscious purpose. I don't think it's a terrible word--don't get me wrong-- the only reason that I'm not particularly interested in using soul is because it's been thrown around so much--it's like the word love. Nobody knows what it means anymore. So I would rather have some new word in order that we could agree on a definition.

So if I were going to put the thing up somewhere, I'd say we have a picture of man like this. Here's X, here's awareness and ordinarily in the usual case, every impression from the environment goes banging in there.

(Right)

Now I would say in this, we would have a new man. This person now gets impressions from the environment, but he has formed a purpose and has acted upon it until it is reality.

Now then, the impression goes there like into a lymph gland and then it is filtered out, and that's what goes to X after it's been looked over; and if it doesn't fit, it doesn't go. So now we say that we have a soul--if you want to use that term. I could also say the "guardian of the gate" or what have you? That the King, X, doesn't get a bunch of misinformation, ok? That help all right?

(Could you compare that to the observer?)

The "observer" is the awareness--this is a new thing. It is a person who has chosen a new purpose. You see most people have never chosen a purpose. They are waiting for one to show up. They are waiting for something they could be interested in and do.

If you ask a person, "What are you interested in?" or "What are you going to do?" They say, "Well, I don't know, I'm waiting for something to come along and grab me." Most often nothing comes along that grabs one except the desire to escape and so forth and so on. Sometimes necessity grabs one.

If you get hungry enough, necessity grabs you and then you can do about anything you know--that help answer your question.

(Yes it does)

(The place where it says something like, body thou aren't like self-awareness. Is the difference between the "guardian of the gate" and "self-awareness" consciously chosen?)

Right--consciously picked up and chosen by due consideration. Another word I don't use very much is "meditation" which means in my book to think about something, consider it from all aspects where I understand in many cases means to get the head quiet and see what dreams go on in it.

I'm not interested in that kind of "meditation." So we generally don't use that word because any word that has been publicized sufficiently has lost it's meaning. Everybody has interpreted the word so much that we try not to use the word for the simple reason that we're no longer communicating the same meaning when we use those words.

But when a person has carefully--with some knowledge and a lot of information come in and has considered it and used it, decided there must be some purpose for living, and they determine that some purpose for living has to come into being………….(end of tape)

[Unfortunately, the rest of the talk was not taped so we must stop here. Fortunately, the message is covered very thoroughly.]