Fools

If a man can be fooled by others, then he is a fool.
If a man can be fooled by himself, then, is he more than a fool?

Teachings, systems of thought, religions and philosophies invented by others are stories - they exist only in the realm of thought (regardless how much or how often they "refer" to physical, material objects.) They exist only in the conscious part of the brains keeping those teachings alive, generation after generation.

If doesn't matter whether some teaching is encoded into the form of books, and more recently, tapes and videos, if people stop thinking about it, it is forgotten. All you have to do is look at history, and what has made it to the 21st century. Very, very little.

That which has made it, is not necessarily correct, or even reasonable, it's just >>remembered<<. And that is the first test of one who becomes interested in the direct way to knowledge. If a person is only thinking about what others have previously thought about, then they are partially responsible for it's continuation, but IT lives because YOU die, and IT lives because Life wants it remembered. (Not, for the automatic "reason" you think!)

It was suggested by the mystics that man lives in a dream but can awaken, that man is born into prison - a slave - but can escape, and if he is "properly" interested in thinking about that further, then that is the first step toward gaining knowledge.

Most NEVER take even the second step, because they don't KNOW what is the second step. So, they spend what seems like the rest of their lives (or, until they finally give up in despair, or get distracted) thinking about what OTHERS have said about what the mystics said before them.

There's a big difference between thinking about topics - however they "arise" - and thinking about the process of thinking. It's a difference between nouns and verbs. Everybody's got access to the nouns - the terms, the charts, the graphs, the images, the books, the theories - nobody has access to the process of verbalization, or more specifically, how the conscious part of the brain operates.

The grand assumption is that it doesn't actually matter, anymore than knowing how the heart operates matters - as long as it pumps blood, and the blood doesn't clog up the veins and arteries.

That is, ordinary routine consciousness, with which everybody thinks about this very idea, maintains absolute control over the BELIEF that as long as a person CAN think, talk, write, that that is enough to discover knowledge. But, sadly, they are wrong. All that's occurring is memorization of that which is/was fed to it.

Ordinary routine consciousness is clogged consciousness, the neural juices do NOT flow, and direct access to something else is blocked. That is the source of the idea, of the mystics, that man is born into a prison, from which he MAY escape.

The mystics knew that thinking about information is not how the prisoner escapes. Action is how the prisoner escapes. Thoughts about the action are ropes around your limbs, and only cutting the cords will free you.