"I did it... *my* way."

Frank had it right, you know - he did it his way.

And became a "fully realized" (from Life's point of view) Frank Sinatra - his image lives on in the minds of all those who know (and admire (and love)) him. Funny how that works out.

Same for Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Gurdjieff, Ramana, Nizargadatta, and the list of images you can conjure up from memory is (seems almost) limitless. It all just depends upon... "you" and your "understanding", which is the same as *memory*. Whatever you presently have "in memory", is all that you can draw from. (Consider: there are not *just* six+ billion humans alive today, there are 6+ that memory-list conjured up from above. Might we... jeez, here it comes... >>calculate<< about 100 billion?)

Now - that is, this present instant !bang! (which includes all living humans and their ilk) - can only "move forward" into the mental comprehension of "the future", by the acquisition, and digestion, and tranmutation of "the new". That is, only the New can energize and move the Now. (Not understanding all this, is the source of the shallower idea, "the eternal now" - "the eternal now" is stuck on one spot, or at least "the idea of that" is stuck somewhere in your own brain...

...and you can't get to that "location", to delete it. (note, it was not suggested to, digest it, or try to transmute it.)

Ordinary consciousness is a topology of brain-space - 100 billion neurons : some used for thinking, some used for storing - and as one is, as everybody is until they aren't, ordinary consciousness can't locate the place of any given idea, for the idea seems to move around like mercury.

[topology: \To*pol"o*gy\, n. [Gr. ? place + -logy. The art of, or method for, assisting the memory by associating the thing or subject to be remembered with some place.]

"You can't prove an idea wrong, you can only move it out of the way."

Try to observe a thought and it moves out of the way, like a pencil would move mercury out of the way when trying to touch it. (Interesting clue here: to move a thought out of the way, just try to observe it directly, and when it starts moving, PLACE a flag there - claim it as your own.

In this way you are populating virgin territory, in your own brain, wherein you can shift the duties of ordinary thinking, into that new, fresh, part of the neural map (those 100 billion mostly underutilized neurons).

Interesting notion: 100 billion new rons, are capable of interconnecting into more possible connected pathways, than there are stars in the universe, that is many trillions of interconnections. And when these many interconnections are interconnecting - there, you have a !big bang!

"Big bangs" are often referred to, by the unwashed and semi-literate, as waking up, or englightenment, or nirvana, which are by themselves, not "bad words", or "inappropriate in any way words", but Irrelevant with a capital I, once their individual locations have been flagged. That is, you don't need to use them anymore, because you have *NEW* information-generating skills and powers.

The drive to acquire these skills and powers, is precisely what is driving all humanity forward, inches at a time at best of course - where miles, hell, parsecs at a time are possible. Science, medicine, religion, the arts, music, literature, even politics and the legal system and the educational system (all of civilization as we know it), are all possible ONLY because the mind in ordinary men, is Driven to acquire the skills of generating *NEW* information out of the old and ordinary.

Ordinary men don't know how to do this, and since there's no one in there with them who doesn't need to be, there's no one who can teach them the "method" or "proper tool", which when applied would result in new skills and powers. Ordinary men stay the same, from birth to death, and the only "changes" noticeable are a dramatic LOSS of skills and powers.