Workshop - Roswell, NM – 1975 - Part 1 of 4

Roswell ’75 – CD 1 of 4

...he couldn’t get here today.  And so while we're waitin' for everybody to get in, I'm very glad to be here and very happy to see all the wonderful people that I've seen so many times.  So we'll wait just a second ‘til everybody else gets in and we will be ready to start.  We do want – if Miss Marie will get from everyone – your name, address, phone number, zip code number, and so forth so we have a complete address.  If you have a nice little contribution to pay our way in the world for some of the things, we’d appreciate it.  If there’s anybody that don't have a dime, you're more than welcome and don't feel “em-bare-assed” or any other thing, okay?  Marie will take care of it over here and as soon as everybody gets in we'll start.  [rustling sound of trying to open something]  We got an engineer here – he can open one of these.  He has the easiest time openin’ things – take it over to Dave, he’ll have it open in about two seconds.  You may record all you like.  You may take notes.  I hope you have time in between your recording and takin’ notes to hear a word or two from us; but please feel free to record all you like and take all the notes you like.

We're going to talk today basically on “ideas.”  Now, ideas is basically what we all live by whether we are aware of it or not.  And we will try through the day to come up with what ideas are – which are the ones we talk with all the time, the ones that you unknowingly use, and maybe the ones that we could use. 

Now, we're going to first start with just a little diagram for a little bitty bit.  This is I with a line drawn under it – real I.  Now, all it has – it has not one idea, it has never made an idea, it has never originated an idea, it only has one purpose and that purpose is “survive.”  Now, it has never made an idea, no matter how many times you say “my idea,” it didn't make it – you just borrowed that one somewhere.  And no matter how many times you have come up with an idea in the head and fallen in love with it and wasted all your money and went broke or whatever else happened to you, you did not originate that idea. 

Now, there's two sources of ideas available to us – one is conditioning.  It imitates some other things that you've heard – we call this not-I.  It is not-I with a line drawn under it.  It is sometimes called “I” with quotation marks around it – it is a false “I.”  Now, it has gobs of ideas all which purport to tell us how to survive.  Hello, Rick!  I’d hoped to see you – the Phoenix son coming from Montana.  He apparently keeps himself warm out there.  Claudia along there?

(No, she’s down in Rodey now.)  

Okay, okay, great to see you.  So the not-I (or “I,” the false “I”) has a bunch of ideas which it constantly suggests to I.  Now, I is very subject to suggestion (I with a real I) because it's looking for ways and means to survive.  It's lookin’ for tools, you might say.  So the first tool we got, of course, was the Four Dual Basic Urges that (which you're all familiar with) that it is the purpose of living is to gain pleasure and escape pain, gain attention and avoid being ignored or rejected and oh, what terrors it is when we are rejected a little bit.  And to gain approval and escape disapproval and to have a sense of importance and escape the sense of being inferior or useless or unnecessary.

Then it suggests that as being the whole purpose of living, the way to survive.  It tells us that is the only way we can survive is to have pleasure and comfort and escape pain on all levels.  And if you didn't ever have any pain you wouldn't survive very long.  You would pick up a hot skillet and would never know it until you smelled the fresh meat cookin'.  You would eat something that was poison – you wouldn’t get nauseated and upchuck, you would just die a little bit.  If you come across some nice lovely little bacteria or some little microorganisms that like to set up housekeeping and throw…use our bloodstream for their sewage disposal, there would be no adaptation to it.  There wouldn't be any effort to throw it off and very shortly they would destroy you.  But, thank goodness, we go through an effort to destroy them (X, Life does) and we feel pretty rugged don't we, ladies?  Hmm?  But we survive – only by the fact that we have pain or discomfort. 

And certainly I don't want everybody's attention.  It would smother me very quickly.  Sometimes you need a little privacy and don't need so much attention.  And certainly I want to be ignored by a whole bunch of people – bill collectors, various and sundry other obnoxious agents that walk through the world.  And I don't care whether I have approval of everybody because some people’d only approve of me if I get drunk.  Some people would only approve of me if I helped ‘em rob a bank.  Some people would only approve of me if I go dirty – don't clean myself up at all.  Other people only approve of me for various and sundry other things that I'm totally disinterested in.  And I don't want to be important because if I'm important, everybody's gonna be shootin' at me.  I like to be very low profile, unnoticed, make no ripples, and go merrily on my way. 

So, if we look at those, we see that that was not a means of survival for a grown person.  Now, for a baby it was possibly very accurate.  I would say for Larry and Ann's little one, that to gain comfort and escape pain is necessary – to try and have some attention because it can't take care of itself.  They can't very well ignore it and resent it and leave it sittin' out in the barnyard at this moment.  And, of course, they have to give it a little approval, tell it how much they love it because they don't believe it.  And, of course, it is the most important person in the household.  Right, Larry?

(Yes, sir.)

Right on.  But in two years from now that's all gonna change, don't you forget it.  Don’t you?  And we've all passed the two-year mark by quite a bit.  So then all of these suggestions – now, constantly “I” is lookin' for anything that tells it its survival.  It accepts that as suggestion.  You can tell it something that has nothin’ to do with survival and it doesn't pay any attention to it; but “I”’s got its ear out flaggin' and listenin' for everything that says will keep me survivin’.  Right, Brother Joe?  So it buys all these suggestions that are in here that makes up the Picture of Man, in order to gain all the Four Dual Basic Urges – to complain, stick up for rights and blame one way.  The other one is please everybody, believe and do as we are told by our authorities, and to be different at all times.  It goes through a program of “self-improvement.”  Now, when we see that those ideas are false – they have nothing to do with my survival, with me existing, I standing up here – then we can eliminate them or put no value on 'em or dis-identify pretty rapidly.  Now, I'm sure that most everybody here at one time or other believed in Santa Claus.  Did you, Corita? 

(You bet.)

And you fully bought it right down the line and, of course, Santa Claus is gonna bring you all kinds of goodies and give you attention and everything.  So that was survival, so you bought it.  Now, one day by some hook or crook or other means, you caught on to it that it was a game bein’ played on you, right?

(Right.)

Now, they still promote it.  So don't say, “Well, it's not because it's not around anymore,” because it's promoted every year for several months.  But do you have any business with Santa Claus anymore? 

(None.)

None.  How about you, Darrell? 

(He's not here.)

Do you go buy it, Brother, or do you still think he's gonna bring you something if you're good?

(I think I have well enough, too.)

Okay, then as long as that sounds good to me, why we're hooked with it.  Now, as long as we accept these ideas as going to give me survival, obviously I will still be identified with ‘em and I will still be controlled by a not-I.  Now, most of us know what a not-I…we're going along and suddenly there is an idea pops in the head that I've done something wrong – I'm terrible guilty.  In other words, I'm gonna get caught and not survive, you see?  So we want to struggle to get away from that.  Then there's another one comes along and says, "Why, go mow those people down – they picked on me, they abused me, they tormented me!” – so then we're ready to go commit every kind of violence on ‘em.  If nothing else, we'll give ‘em a good tongue lashin’, won't we now?  We'll tell ‘em how they're crooked.  But all of that sounds like survival to us. 

Now, if we were ever to see that that is non-survival, that day, that day the not-I's are totally dis-identified from and have absolutely no more effect on you than the propaganda about Santa Claus will have startin’ sometime this next month, will go on for two or three months.  Now, Darryl will still be goin' down to the department store, sit on Santa Claus's lap and tell him what he wants, but I bet he don't get it.  (laughter)  I bet he don’t get it.  And then he'll think that, well, it’s because he didn't do somethin’ right – you know, that's the way Santa Claus operates – he don't bring you what you wanted, isn't it?  Darryl's been thumbin' through Playboy Magazine for quite a while and he knows real well what he wants but I bet he don't get it.  (laughter) 

Then there is another source of ideas, which we call “Teaching” ideas.  Now, the Teaching ideas are very simple.  They also tell us that if we use them, they don't promise very much; but they indicate that if they are used, it is survival – in fact, infinite survival.  But they don't sound quite as interesting to us and as familiar to us as the other ones. 

The first idea, of course, is “Self-Knowing.”  Well, that don't sound like it's gonna get me to survive very well, does it?  It don't sound like a pill.  You see this is only for grown-up people, not for little folks.  Little folks want to be told that if they get this pleasure and that pleasure and the other pleasure, they will survive, or that they will get all of this – but this one comes out and says, “Self-Knowing.”  And I have kind of rearranged that so that instead of calling this self [conditioned man] “not-I”, let's call it what it is – the enemy.  So it [Self-Knowing] is knowing the enemy.  The enemy is all the not-I's, all the conditioned ideas that we accepted as being survival.  That when practiced, produced non-survival.  Now, they don't produce non-survival for the baby over here…or Colonel Rowan…  [Dr. Bob is referring to the character Rowan in the story “A Message to Garcia,” written by Elbert Hubbard in 1899]…but they do produce non-survival for ever’ one of us.  You know, Rowan was the guy that carried the message to Garcia.  And one day Larry has a message he wants delivered to some Garcia down the road.  So he's got Colonel Rowan there – he's gonna carry it without askin’ any questions.  So, without any ideas of Self-Knowing or knowing the enemy – now, maybe knowin’ the enemy will make it a little clearer that it has something to do with survival.  Doesn’t that make it a little more clear to you, Jim?  That if you know your enemy, you have a better chance to survive?

(Uh-huh.)

How about you, Warren?  If you know the enemy, you got a better chance to get by.  Now, the enemy is anything that is trying to put me down, put me under, eliminate me.  Now, if it can just get me to complain enough, I'm gonna be all full of emotions.  I'm gonna have self-pity, misery, agonies, the terror of it all.  And, of course, those are non-survival.  They set off a Vicious Cycle, so where we have to adapt.  If I'm stickin’ up for my rights, I'm gonna get in a fight and fightin' is non-survival – for somebody (or one of us is gonna get clobbered before we get through with it.)  That's why wars go on – they are the epitome of non-survival, aren't they?  Now, if I’m going to blame, I'm going to have to hate you and criticize you and be in an upset.  I will again be full of emotions and am quite prone to commit violence.  Now if on the other side I'm tryin’ to please everbody, I'm just as much non-survival because you'll sooner or later, somebody will come along and want me to help them rob a bank.  Or they say, “Let’s you and him fight,” and I get in a fight.  I’ve got reason, you know, to do what he says.  Right, Darrell? 

And I got to believe and do as I'm told by authorities, and authorities, of course, always want me to be subject and not free… and tell me I should be different, which puts me in a turmoil of trying to change something.  Now, if we can see that those are definitely non-survival and only an enemy would lay those ideas on me – day and night – I would recognize the enemy and I would have no value put on any of his advice because isn't that what it all is – advice, suggestion or preachments?  They tell you what you should have done or ought to do or etc. 

So the not-I's we can say is the enemy.  And the enemy is intent upon my non-survival.  They're intent upon annoying me, aggravating me, tormenting me and, therefore, having non-survival.  Has anybody here had a not-I bounce up and torment you for a while – like how bad you are?  Or what terrible thing's gonna happen to you?  It tells you it knows the future.  It tells you it knows exactly what's gonna happen in the future and it's gonna be pretty rough for you sometimes, huh?  Did you ever feel frightened of the pictures that the not-I's throw up to you as what's going to happen down the line a little ways.  You're gonna be old and decrepit and knobby-kneed and you're gonna be weak and nobody's gonna like you and nobody's gonna have anything to do with you and you gonna starve.  Hmm, is that right?  Did you ever hear those? 

(A few times.)

A few times you did.  How about you, Ann?

(Once in a while.)

Once every little now and then the enemy comes by and says, “You’re right.”

(My knees are cracking now so –)

Yeah, you're gettin' old and decrepit, fallin' apart.  Poor thing.  You ever hear those, David?  They tell you that things are gonna get all rattled up and torment you and aggravate you and make you miserable and so forth.  You ever hear that?  So, here is the enemy.  Now, over here says…the Teaching says “Self-Knowing.”  So, we'll put “knowing the enemy” [on the board].  That's all we got to do is know the enemy.  Now, that's not so hard to do – you can kind of see that.  I think most everybody here has the Picture of Man.  If you don't, somebody will sure fix it up for you, right quick, okay?  Now, can you see that is as nebulous as the idea of Santa Claus?  They have no more reality than Santa Claus does. 

They were fine for little kids.  In fact, I think we needed ‘em when we were little.  We needed to complain.  That's the way the baby gets Mama's attention – it cries.  It complains and if that don't work, it starts stickin’ up for its rights and tryin’ another way.  And I'm sure there's a lot of blamin’ goin' on and etcetera.  A little later, in order to live with these grown people, it has to try to please them.  It has to try to put on a different front of bein’ good ‘cause grown folks never worry about gettin' him conscious – they only want it to be good.  Don't love the kid – just get with it.  And they certainly tell it it should believe and do as told by his authorities – that's the way it's gonna get good grades in school and make a success and be acceptable and not embarrass the parents.  I think that.  Do you all agree?  “Don’t embarrass us – just go on and do it to our plan.”  They're real good at it.  They know how to embarrass you with the greatest of ease. 

Now, these ideas are available to I.  Now, I has a chore.  It’s been laid out for ages and eons of all time.  It says “here to pass” – choose what you will, Life or death.  Now, if I see that this is gonna lead to death instead of survival, how long do you think I'm gonna pursue livin' with it?  Now, the whole thing is that none of us has ever seen that that's deadly.  We've only thought it was aggravating a little bit of the time, and that most of the time it must be right because it ended up bein’ good ideas – is that about right?  We’ve never seen that that was deadly.  If we did, we'd a let it alone.  Would it be deadly for any of us to expect that if I'm good all year, Santa Claus will bring me enough for Christmas [that] I can live all next year?  Anybody feel that that's deadly?  How about that, Jesse Lee?  You believe that if you're real good all year, Santa Claus will bring you enough Christmas that you can live in the style to which you'd like to become accustomed all next year?  That'd be pretty fatal ‘cause you’d go broke and die – you’d starve to death.  How about you, Jim?

(Yeah, I think it would be pretty deadly.)

It'd be pretty deadly.  How about it, Corita? 

(Right.)

Anybody else think it would be workable?  That if you just have lots of sound gullibility (which is usually called faith) and live for the idea you're gonna be good all year, and Santa Claus is gonna bring you enough that you can live in the style to which you'd like to become accustomed all next year, how many of you think you'd survive through the year well that way?  We probably would – but we’d be locked up…somebody feedin’ us through the bars.  They’d say we flipped our gear – call the guy with the straight jacket or somethin', huh?  That about right?  Now, these things here [pointing to listed not-I’s on the board] tell you they're gonna make you survive; and they tell you they're lookin' out for your interest.  They tell you how entitled you are to complain because you haven't been treated properly.  They tell you how entitled you are to stick up for your rights and scream and holler and get all emotional and angered.  They tell you how entitled you are to be full of blame.  They also tell you how terrible you are if you don't please everybody at all times.  They also tell you that you got to believe and do as you're told by your authorities and everything will be fine; but if you don't do it, boy, look out!  And they also tell you that you can be different right now if you was only different right now – but you really can't.  Now, can you see any of those as having any survival value?  Diana, do they look like survival to you? 

(They just want to bury me.)

They are.

(They’re not gonna; but they’d like to!)

They’d like to.  They're on the job of buryin’.  How about it, Juanita, would they bury you if they had a chance at it?  But they want to torment you first.  They’re in no hurry to bury you.  They want to torment you, hmm?  Now, we don't have to accept a one of these ideas as being true from this moment on – any more than that we have to accept that Santa Claus is real ‘cause there's a lot of value in the point right away.  Hmm?  Do you have to accept any of it as being true?  Well, then anything you don't accept as bein’ true and havin’ any value – and the value is always to survival – it has no survival value to you.  Why do you bother with it?  Do you know any of those ideas that concerns you at all, huh?  Now, recently there was an article in this weird sheet they call the Enquirer told about the killer bees comin' out of South America.  Did any of you read that thing?  You read it, huh?  And how'd you feel, John?

(Frightened.)

Because it threatened your survival.  They said, "Man it’s comin'!”  So you begin to feel complain, stickin' up for your rights, and blamin' and hopeless and helpless, is that right?  It was the suggestion of non-survival.  Now, the real scientific article about it only said that the bees are a little more jittery than the common class of bees we’re used to (and they're jittery enough.)  And that you're no more apt to die from a sting of this than anything else and there's twice as much coming.  And that each time they breed with the American bees, they still retain the trait of makin’ twice as much honey and get more docile.  Big deal, you know?  But as this goes along – “All the bees,” it says.  Now, can you at this moment without any further effort see that those have absolutely no survival value to you?  How about that, Marilyn?  If you do, then well, they can rattle through you ‘til their heart's content.  Now, they're gonna sit around and rattle; but, you know, there's all sorts of fantasies runnin’ through the head.  But as long as you know they have nothing to do with survival – I, the Real Being, knows they have nothing to do with survival – they don't even pick up and pay one iota of attention to it. 

If somebody comes along and gives you some historical bit of trivia, I'll bet none of you could remember it tomorrow because you see it as no survival.  Now, if you’re goin' to school and they're liable to flunk you then it’s called “survival” if you don't have it – then you might get flunked; but right now it would be nothing.  Rick could come show me a whole bar of music and I know that my survival is not goin’ to come from music ‘cause I don't have any talent in that direction – it would mean absolutely nothin’ to me – nothin' – drop it. 

Now, can we do the same thing here?  That we can see that all of these ideas has absolutely no survival.  Now, can we also begin to see that there is survival value in knowing the enemy?  That's the first one out, hmm – knowing the enemy.  Now, we'll work on that in several discussions today and we will give a few methods of knowing the enemy, being aware of him, and being aware of the ideas.  Now, please as we give these various ones that we will talk about through the day – only use one of 'em – the one that most appeals to you because they're all just alike – they all do the same thing, but just one of 'em may appeal to you that you could use and not be any more subject to the not-I's. 

Now, many months ago we put out some tapes – they’re still goin' out – 48 in number – which had everything that we thought was necessary in it for the ideas of the Teaching and to show the enemy.  And we are talking today on the tremendous amount of mail, telephone calls, personal interviews, and etcetera that I have of people who have the tapes and still are going around and saying "My not-I's are buggin' me.”  Well, obviously, as long as you "own" the things – now, this is not "my" enemy, it's THE enemy and they sure don't belong to me.  Once I look at ‘em and see that I have no use for those ideas because while when I was a baby, they had a survival value of sorts for me.  But when I became a man, they have absolutely no survival value for me.  In fact, they have nothing but destructiveness.  Now, a baby and a grown person are two entirely different kinds of creatures.  If you will even take measurements of 'em, the baby's head is about a third the size of his whole body.  Thank goodness, the head’s not as big as a third of a regular body – you’re three heads tall when you're a baby and your’re seven heads tall as a grown person.  So you're an entirely different shape, height, and everything of a creature.  And certainly there is a different means of survival.  You got little ones, Marie…did have – they're growin' up, thank goodness.  And there is something entirely different for their survival now than it was when they were under two years old, right?  But you see that unknowingly, just mechanically, sound asleep, machine-like, we have continued to live by these old ideas, accepted ‘em as suggestions.  They come in and we are using ‘em day by day as having value for our survival.  Is that right, Jim?  You get scared by listenin’ to one of 'em and feel that your survival depends on runnin’, hmm?

(Sometimes.)

Sometimes.  And sometimes they'll put a bunch of stuff together and make an idea out of it.  Now, we never made an idea – we only accept ‘em or reject ‘em.  Some of us put together an idea and it tells us how wonderful and great and how much attention we're gonna have; and how much approval we're gonna have; and how important we're gonna be when we activate this idea.  Did you ever have one of those come by?  You spend everthing you can get on it and work at it and get struggled up in it and caught in it, huh?  Did you ever have one of those go by, Jim?  They can break you, can’t they – quick.  So we call that “fallin’ in love with an idea.”  Now, we didn't make the idea, we never invented one in our whole life.  It's like we never created any of the things that make the cake.  We just throw the flour and the sugar and the salt and the flavoring and the liquid and the shortening and everything in there and we stir it up.  And that's something “new,” we say; but really it is not – it’s just a bunch of old ingredients rearranged, right?  

And so this is what we do when we say we had an idea.  They just pop in the head ready-made.  Did you ever notice that, Darryl?  They just pop in there ready-made from out here.  Now, without knowing the source of those ideas, of course, we can be hardily confused with 'em.  And, obviously, we begin to believe that they are very great prophets because they tell us what's gonna happen in the future, and we make all manner of preparations to protect ourselves from imaginary dangers.  They tell us what's going to come about in various and sundry people.  They tell us how everybody's thinking about us.  They say what everybody's thinkin’ about you, don't they, Darryl?  They tell you what so-and-so is thinkin’ about you every now and then?  Did you ever have ‘em do that, Dave?  Now, they don't know a thing in the world about him; but they bop it in there and we buy it – and how is our survival then?  We're full of emotion, full of turmoil; we have the Vicious Cycle. 

You know what the Vicious Cycle is?  We are in a state of emergency.  We have a false feeling of emergency.  Immediately the Life power in the body prepares us to fight or run, fills us full of thyroxin, pituitary extract, adrenalin, the whole works – big shot of glycogen – and we don’t go nowhere.  We just sit there and worry and stew instead; and then that has to be burned up and we generally call that being “ill.”  And then, of course, we get very excited about that and around the horn it goes again.  And we have a feeling of emergency about how terrible ill we are.  We're probably coming down with at least with nothing less than Multiple Sclerosis, more likely cancer or some of the other beautiful names that we call the dread diseases…that tells us already – we gotta dread ‘em.  You dread having one of the dread diseases?  Did you ever have those?  You dread havin’ the dread diseases?  Now, it's all right to have the fatal kind.

The other night I was in a place and a man fell down on the floor – a little incline on the floor and he fell.  Well, he was somewhat inebriated on alcohol, regardless of what else he might’ve had; but he said, “Forget it, forget it, it’s all right, it's all right, it's all right.”  But his wife decided maybe there was a little possibility of makin’ a buck.  So she started makin’ some big noise about it and said this man had a “fatal condition.”  I said, "Well so's everybody else."  And she said, “He’s got it terminal.”  “Terminal,” I said, “so's everybody else.  Bein' poor's terminal.  We've all been born so we all got it terminal.  It don't matter when.  We got it all the time.”  She said, "You're terrible."  I said, "I know it."  (laughter)  Nothin’ wrong with that.  So, we all got a terminal condition, you know, we was born.  So what difference whether you have a dread one or un-dread one?  Which one did you like, you know?  It’s all the same.  But they keep us upset because they say what?  You're gonna get one of these things and you're gonna non-survive more terribly than you non-survive some other way, hmm?  I can’t see much difference there myself; but that's the way it works out. 

Okay, we will stop here for a few minutes and we'll have questions before we conclude this moment.  Who has a question?  Now, we're talking about ideas and that ideas are never originated by I – the real I – I only accepts them or rejects them.  I only has one purpose – survive.  And, of course, all the ideas we're talkin’ about have been touted as survival ideas somewheres along the way.  All the not-I's have been touted as a way of survivin’.  Yes, John?

(A minute ago you were talking about the adult and some of the ideas the adult is having about not wanting so much attention and not needing so much approval.  Were you talking about conditioned adults?)

I was saying that…I didn't say that – that it was either conditioned or unconditioned.  I said I didn't need it – I wouldn't want it.  I don't want constant attention.  It would flood me, it would drown me.  Would you ever have it where you had constant attention? 

(Do I want it, or…?)

Did you ever have it?

(Yeah.)

How was it?

(Not very good.)

Okay, does that answer your question?  It was non-survival, wasn't it?  You didn't have time to breathe.  I said if one really looked at the situation – now, the idea came from outside; but if you really looked at constantly having nothing but gobs of attention, would you like it?  If you had nothing but approval – endlessly – would you like it?  If you was very important and had constant people strugglin’ around you to shoot at you – some of ‘em, you know?  President Ford is “important” these days, you know, so some people's breaking their neck to shake his hand so they can say, “I shook hands with an important man,” but somes out there with a gun going “pow,” you know?  Either way it's non-survival as far as I'm concerned.  That answer your question?  I didn't say it was an idea that came out, it's just an idea that you can look at – would you want it, okay?  Now, we didn't say whether it was conditioning or non-conditioning – a conditioned person can get torn up with constant attention.  Did you ever have constant attention, Lenelle?  You wanted to run, huh?

(I tried to get rid of him.)

Right, hurry up and get him divorced and get him out of the house.  A lady came to me the other day and said, "I've waited for years to be with my husband more and he got retired and I can’t stand him in the house all day long.  What am I gonna do about it?"  I said, "Go away."  She said, “Now, I love him dearly."  "Yes, I know, but you’re goin’ right on beatin’ up on him."  "Yes!"  So, you see, you can't have this constant attention.  If you ever had it, it'd be bad.  But the idea is always that you never have enough, okay?  Another question, comment?  Anybody?

(How do you separate, Bob, the idea that you might fall in love with and go broke, and the idea that you might make money with?)

Well, both of 'em I put 'em down and see that they're both ideas and not worth very much.  Then I will go to work at tryin’ to find out a little somethin’ – I'll run an experiment before I fall in love with it.  Okay?  I want to experiment first.

(Right.)

Okay, and then I’m not gonna fall in love with it, it's still gonna be very tentative every day.

(Right.)

Anytime it goes the wrong way, drop it, okay? 

(Beat it.)

Beat it, Dion.  In other words, if I fall in love with the idea that I'm gonna make a million farmin’, I'm sure gonna consider that a while.

(You better believe it.)

And then I'm gonna sit down and maybe experiment of maybe puttin’ a seed in a little pot and settin’ it over on the window, and if it grows, why I say, “Well, that was nice”…and go on about my business.  (laughter)  Hmm?  Now, it tells me I'm gonna make a million, but I've been noticin’ a lot of things.  The biggest greenhouse operation in the west is in Glendale, Arizona – it went into bankruptcy last month.  The second biggest is Toltec over in Las Cruces – it went in receivership a few days ago, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.  So now I’m gonna make a million according to the figures.  But anytime somebody tells me I'm gonna make a million, I'm gonna look and see how much he wants for me to pay him to get me started in this million-dollar racket.  Then I’m gonna put my money in my pocket – if I got any – and walk away. 

(He lives in greed.)

Yeah, he's a con artist and so the con artist, of course, is always offerin’ great super survival. Okay?  Come down here, come down the line and we buy those things very easily, okay?  Another question, comment, point?  Okay, let's take a break for about 15 minutes and we will start again.  I would suggest that while Miss Virginia is the gracious host and supplyin’ coffee that we put a little kitty back here and pay for the coffee, okay?  
[End CD 1 of 4 – Roswell ‘75]

ROSWELL WORKSHOP PART 2
ROSWELL WORKSHOP PART 3
ROSWELL WORKSHOP PART 4