The Pendulum

April 23, 2005

...you look at yourself so closely that you expose yourself to yourself.

Steve: So there is a part of the book The Opening of the Way we read on Thursday where this guy is seeking aspects of himself, trying to figure out who he really is. He goes and talks to an enlightened man who happens to be in a cave. What I liked here was the guy in the cave says to the seeker "I did not advise you to put into practice all of your instincts, only to uncover and recognize them." That is interesting to me, because of how I have felt around here. No rules... well, not really no rules, but there is an atmosphere here that encourages seeking out who you are and not hiding it. Like if you have something that you are interested in knowing about, then go find out about it and do it. Don't be afraid of it, don't talk bad or evil and smother it and hide it, but also just recognize that there are these things and look at them and understand them, but don't necessarily practice them.

Corky: Maybe look at them and understand them and don't caught by them. Liberate yourself and emancipate yourself from them.

Steve: Right. Then she followed up this chapter with a sexual chapter that we did not read. I think there is a lot of good stuff in here and there is a lot of weird stuff in here. She says: "Sexual energy has the same origins as the subtle fire which gives life. It is for man to use it wisely or else expend it thoughtlessly." You know different religious paths talk about holding your ejaculation and she is saying the same thing. I don't think she is really saying that sex is just for pro-creation. She says that if it is just going to be animalistic sex then it should be done for pro-creation. She says there is a power in sex that is dangerous and it can be addictive. "In any case, and therefore to desire an emotional shock is to desire the loss of equilibrium."

Now this is something that really speaks to me, because you know I have always been seeking that emotional shock. I mean, I came here in the first place to receive more emotional shocks.

Corky: Because they said that we did those things here and you thought that we didn't. Isn't that funny? It is quite a paradox.

Steve: Yeah. If everyone hung out for a week and found out that it's just not happening they would not stay. But it does cause a lot of loss of equilibrium. That is not just my experience here, I was doing a lot of different drugs and it was to get that emotional shock; "Wow the world is not how I thought it was." I could take a little pill and all the sudden existence is completely different. That is an emotional shock, and it did cause a loss of equilibrium.

Anyway again out of the book, "Any excess can do this, but erotic excess does it to increase the heat of sexual feeling." I liked this because it is talking about surrender; "A man who risks his life for an impersonal cause may find exultation in the fear of danger because of the joy of sacrificing his purely selfish security."

That is you want to save face and I have really had to get over a lot of personal fears. Corky tells me "You gotta take the camera and film this person and do this and do that." And I was thinking "holy shit, I can't do that! I can't do those things." But to just surrender that selfish security for an impersonal cause, something greater than yourself. There is a great exultation.

Then we skipped into the part of the book about the pendulum which we talk a lot about here. "The law of reaction - the higher the rise, the more grievous the fall. Instead of this, one can learn to live the pendulum and therein can wisdom be found."

I've always liked to talk about the pendulum. Am I on the pendulum, is it hitting me? But to learn to live the pendulum, to actually be the pendulum, I've never looked at it like that before.

"To recognize it is to abolish the anxiety that comes of ignorance. To have its measure is to be able to master it, not to resist it is to obtain peace, and to use its impetus is to increase one's vital force."

The part that struck me was "not to resist it is to obtain peace." That is just being the pendulum, not resisting the swing, the motion. Just to be in the swing. To recognize that it is shitty over there, and great on the other side. It is just the way it is.

Corky: Yeah, but you have to be sort of honest. When you are way over there, sometimes it is really a bummer, and when it swings back it is sort of good. Don't you think that riding the pendulum is also a sort of admittance or a recognition or a surrender to the down side and the upside. Because you can't try to distort what it really is. You have to admit what it really is.

Steve: So you acknowledge and accept that opposition.

Corky: Is it difficult? Don't you think it is difficult most of the time, and that is where most argument always comes from? The seat of argument is the downside of the pendulum. The uncomfortable side of the pendulum swing is the argument source; it is the seed of it.

Steve: Saying that, wouldn't you be saying that there is no escaping argument?

Corky: I did not say there was no escaping argument. I just said that is the seed of it. I didn't say you had to bite on the seed.

Steve: So that would be going back to where it says "I did not advise you to put into practice your instincts, only uncover and recognize."

Corky: You have to recognize that it is there, but you can't get off of it because you are stuck in destiny unless you transcend.

Steve: Can you transcend the pendulum?

Corky: Yes. If you learn the right meditation you can transcend anything.

Steve: Aren't you just transcending one pendulum for another?

Corky: No, you go into the nothingness where there are no pendulums. There is no up or down, it is just plain and they call that bliss. But you sacrifice the high and the low for the nothing. That is the void, the vacuum as she calls it in the book. But not many people want to do that, they think that is like Osho's abyss. When you read the book of Revelations in the Bible, the Christians are running from that sucker. That is just their hell. It is not really hell. Going out of existence, or losing control of their ego, dropping their ego is hell.

Steve: So they are unwilling to accept the pendulum, they want to stay on one side.

Corky: Riding the pendulum is like riding the bull at the rodeo. I've been on a bull before, but not at the rodeo, I was on a bull in a field and the sucker took off like a horse! It didn't buck, it just ran.

Steve: When were you on a bull in a field?

Corky: When I was a missionary I did everything. I did all the things I was not supposed to do. I was in jail when I was a missionary. I jumped off a cliff on a horse bare back, holding onto its reins into a lake. I rode a bull through a field. God, I did all kinds of weird stuff. I don't know what I was doing. But I was in the Carthage county jail in '74. They didn't shackle me up, they just put me in a room with a bunch of guys and then took me to court and then let me go after I said I was guilty.

Steve: So when you are in jail and you are accepting the descent of the pendulum, do you find at the bottom the "fruit of awareness in serenity and balance?"

Corky: Yeah, sounds good to me.

Steve: Because when the bad side of the pendulum hits and you are accepting it with full awareness of it being a pendulum, I think it is full surrender in a way. Witness it, be aware of it and go "wow, yeah, things are going to get better."

Corky: I don't know if you could think that at that point. I think you have to be going the opposite direction before you think things are going to get better. When you are headed into the depths of it, do you think that?

Steve: I'm thinking of Tijuana all of the sudden.

Corky: Did that freak you out?

Steve: No, that's the thing. It was looking really shady. It was looking really bad. But I just had this peace and calm serenity about it that I was just going to have to go through it.

Corky: Did you like going to jail, was it fun?

Steve: You know, I thought it was a little extreme.

Corky: You thought it was an intense experience?

Steve: I don't regret that at all. Because...

Corky: Thank Ron, because he bailed you out. He paid your bill out of his pocket.

Steve: I knew my dad wasn't going to send money.

Corky: Remember the ones they put the real people in? Did you go over there? They had two jails and we got to go to the good jail. Remember the bad jail?

Steve: Oh god yeah!

Corky: That is where they put most of the teenagers they arrest on the weekends for getting drunk, and they keep them there for five or six days until their parents pay five or six thousand dollars to get them out. A lot of my friends in high school got put in jail in Tijuana till their parents paid the money to get them out. That is why I knew I was just going through something that I didn't do in high school. I just waited until I got old to do it. I must have had 15 friends that got put in the Tijuana jail.

Bob got put in jail for peeing on the leg of a police officer in Tijuana. It cost him $15,000 to get out, way back in 1961. They tapped his parents because they had lots of money. He was the only one that had to pay, because only if you had money, did you have to pay. There were three of them that got put in there, Bob got them arrested because he was drunk and pulled his weenie out and peed on an officer's leg. I think they clubbed him, and then they threw him in that pen area. He stayed there for about a week and then his parents paid to get him out.

Steve: Yeah, so that was like the pendulum swinging over to this dirty cell, and I thought "god, do I have to go there?"

Corky: You ought to go to jail as a missionary. Because it is more intense! Because you are supposed to be doing good things and you are really bad then. When you drink a whole bottle of tequila and are going 130 miles an hour down State Street on a stolen motorcycle.

Steve: That is just in complete opposition to this right here in the book: "For the humility of the sage is to understand that power is only knowledge of the law." You get to experience that a lot around here. "Power is only knowledge of the law."

Corky: Thank you Steve! Everybody be prepared now when you come to class, it could be your turn next Saturday to do class. Okay, back to Isha Schwaller. Riding that pendulum out is really difficult. I think she even talked about the dark night of the soul, but she used different words for it. I call it the dark night of the soul or your essence. I think she talked about it, she said you look at yourself so closely that you expose yourself to yourself.

Su: She said if you were to confront yourself, would you recognize yourself?

Corky: Right, that is the dark night of the soul. When you confront yourself would you really recognize it? She didn't get into the depth of the process of it. There is a thing that happens to everybody just before they awaken, it might happen several times, but it happens one time really intensely, where their attention is so focused in looking at themselves that at the beginning of it, you call yourself green slime. That is the beginning of it, the beginning stage of it. But once you really take a look, it doesn't have any terms. It is out of the realm of terms, it is on the other side of terms. It is an experience rather than a terminology. Because as soon as you put terms on it, you have a justification on it, you can't put terms on it. And you get close glimpses of it, when you get glimpses of it you can call it things or put names on it and describe it and everything. But the experience of it is the only real thing. It is an experience rather than a glimpse. Osho talks about it, he called it jumping into the abyss of the self to lose the self. That is a bad way to say it, because it sounds dangerous. But he always calls it dangerous doesn't he?

It is very dangerous. It kills you. It kills the you that you didn't want to kill. The one that was going to go to heaven and sit on the right hand of Jesus, or the one that was going to become a millionaire or famous or become something, rather than being a nobody. That is a classic the way that he said it in there, becoming a nobody. That is the only path, becoming a nobody.

It is too bad that people didn't recognize Osho while he was alive. Just think, the woman who was his personal secretary, she stole all his money and did all those bad things, she tried to kill him. She got somebody to put a poison dart together, and shoot at him, but they missed Osho and shot his doctor instead. Osho had an antidote for it and everything because he had heard rumors going around that someone was going to try to assassinate him. It was just a tiny dart, with Ricin on it. And it hit the doctor on the butt, and he knew what he was hit with and took an antidote for it. It was the same poison that the Russians killed that guy in England with, it was a tiny bit of the poison that got on his skin. It is in the center of a castor bean and is one of the most deadly poisons in the world. Sheila arranged that. His personal secretary. Amazing huh?

One of the things that I have always said was that when coming to class it is not what is said here, it is what is felt here. Because, all of the words have already been said, and you've probably read them all in books. You can come to one class here and everything that is necessary to hear you can hear, in one class. But it takes a lot of years of being here, for some people to feel it. Al, you didn't feel it when you first came here did you? So it took awhile to feel it. Does Donna have a hard time with feelings?

Al: Yeah, it's amazing. She talked to her family really, really hard to see the truth in it, and she turns her back on it because she can't feel it.

Corky: She has blocked all her feelings, everything is mental. She is thinking about it, discussing it in her mind, she has an argument going on. It is really funny, the people who think they feel the most usually feel the least. The people that think they can feel the least usually feel the most, which is funny. It is a paradox. Donna thinks, she doesn't feel. Her mind is going a million miles an hour; you can see it on her when she is here. She is thinking the whole time when class is going. She is thinking about everything that is being said, there is a discussion going on in her mind about it. There is a discussion.

You do that don't you Al Greco? You have a discussion in your mind rather than just being in it. There is nothing wrong with that, most everybody does that. That is the difference between being here, and out there. There are very few places where people can just feel and not think. It is a rare humanoid that is capable of not thinking. Rare. The reason being is that they are born to think. They orbit around their thinker. And the more they can think the better off they think they are. Society programs them into believing that thinking is where it is at, because the more you can think the more money you can earn. You can put yourself into a position like going to Las Vegas, okay, if you can count the cards you can become a winner at black jack. You are a thinker, you beat the game. So if you are a thinker of life you can discover the universe and beat the game, put all the formula's together and everything. There is an interesting sentence in the Summum book that says that the scientists and the physicists and the astrophysicists and all those guys will never get it because they are trying to think their way into it. You can't find it by thinking about it or putting it in a formula. You have to feel your way into it. And the reason you have to feel your way in, you can't go in with eyes, you can't go in with words, you can't go in with fingers, and a body, your essence has to feel its way in to it, not your body. You do it without your body. You are stuck with your body but your essence feels its way in through the body.

I don't know how to explain it. It is an experience and every one of you will have it, when you decide to. That is what I have always said to Ron, it is a decision. It is a decision of surrender. But as long as you are holding on, you can't surrender. You are holding on to something and you can't let go. You are using your mind to hold on in some way, you are using your hands and your body to hold on. You are holding on. Osho says to just drop it. Surrender and feel your way in. But don't feel with your fingers, you feel it with your essence, which is your real self. The only way you can feel it with your essence is if you get rid of the obstacles that are in the way.

Because your essence is hidden, all those obstacles stand around your essence and protect it, like clothing. That metaphor where Jesus talks about this, it is a metaphor. There really weren't a bunch of kids dancing around on a blanket with their clothes off. The event did not happen. That is a metaphor. He said to undress your ego, take your ego off and all your beliefs and ideas like Isha Schwaller was saying. Take all those things off and once you are totally naked, not physically naked, but essence naked, it has nothing to do with your clothes. It has to do with your hermetic wisdom and all the books you read Pilar, the more books you read the worse off you are.

It's the magic pill. Read these books and say the right incantations and you will have it. Is that what Pilar is looking for? If you read enough books and get the right amount of knowledge then suddenly you will become a master and be enlightened.

Wow. I think most people that read the books are honest and sincere about their path. But they are not honest enough to take the leap away from themselves. Because if they do that, then they become a nobody, and only nobody's are enlightened.

When did you start feeling in here Chris, instead of thinking in here? When you came back? Before you were mostly thinking in here, trying to figure out what was being said and what was being talked about and thought about rather than just feeling it. Do you think there are many people out there that can come here and feel? You have to be relaxed. I'm really disappointed in the young kids these days. They remind me of Serena, but they aren't as bad as Serena. I don't know how she landed here. Mike brought her and he met her in a bar. Serena was intense. She could beat you up and put you in the hospital!

Al Martin: She said that she eats men alive.

Corky: Oh no. I'm glad I'm not a man! It's easier being a nobody. Don't you think it is easier being a nobody than being a woman or a man? Being neutral is much easier.

I see a dramatic pulse building. Someone talked about it the other day and they called it the roaring twenties. I see a dramatic pulse building, not like the roaring twenties, or the sixties or anything like that but an evolutionary pulse. It is not in the current young generation it must be one that is coming up, because the ones that are there now who are in their twenties and teens that I know of are really bizarre. Maybe it is in Amanda and Gabby's group. Vernon's children are pretty aware and Shekinah is aware. Maybe it is in that group. That group is going to pulse forward and change civilization dramatically. Compared to what has been around for awhile, it is getting so tight it is going to pulse and spring forward. Then maybe that group with a huge movement will blow over and clear everything. The ones we have now are very stuck here, or stuck in the past but they are just making it worse. It's weird.

Al: I watched a show this past week on global warming and political stuff, and the mindset that we are going down the drain and nobody is doing anything about it. As a society we're just headed to a real bad place.

Corky: The question I have about that, is why is society saying that you should get married, have children, get a house and everything, and why are parents saying that to their kids, and people are doing it and then they get unhappy and they get divorced?

Al: We were talking about this last week about people putting their thing on somebody else. That is what we do in this society is perpetuate our heritage, and morals and ways of thinking and try and give that to our children so that things stay the same. Nothing is going to change.

Corky: They are trying to stop evolution. They are trying to stop the flow of creation. Trying to stop change. Oh they don't want stem cell research, why? Resisting change. Why do they fight stem cell research? It's the only thing that is going to make real change. They can't use drugs for changes anymore; they have to work on the cell level. You can't cure the body from the outside you have to cure it from the inside. You have to cure it from inside the cell and it works its way out. The only way it will do that is to change it.

Steve and I were watching it the other day on TV, they are going to use stem cells in such a way that they will have neuro-transplants, and all kinds of transplants to take information from the outside to the inside, differently than the way they take it now. It will be in Steve, Shad and Cami's lifetime. It will be like Dick Tracy's watch cell phone. When they first started talking about his watch being a cell phone, it used to be a joke, and now everyone have cell phones. They are going to be doing the same thing with stem cells but they are resisting it. People didn't resist the cell phone did they? It was safe enough. It had nothing to do with their religion.

Al Greco: I think the root of it is getting back to separation of church and state. Because our political leaders make it really well known all the time what their religious views are.

Corky: It is why we are involved in those ten commandment cases. Do you see this little statue of Anubis? That is a metaphor. It is not a man with a dog head on. The metaphor is that this type of being has sensory different than a normal man. It doesn't look like that. You wouldn't dare make it look like an alien. If you made it look like an alien back five thousand years go they would say "What? What's this thing?" It looks like an alien to me. And it is a metaphor.

It is an advanced being, an alien with senses of a human and an animal combined. An animal can still feel. It can sense earthquakes and large events that humans can't tell are coming. It is in touch with nature. A human being is so out of touch with nature, they are in their head. An animal is not thinking it is feeling. That is what it represents, a feeling alien. They are just metaphors. They are metaphors of senses of advanced beings that do not exist. The sphinx is a metaphor; it is the cat and the human together. Not that the human has a body like that, it is just a metaphor.

But I don't see many feelers out there. Everybody has their hands out to grab on, attain something, and put their hands on something physical out there. Why is that Chris?

Chris: They are not involving, they are going outwards.

Corky: They are not involving. Even the intellectuals are evolving right, they are going out. Even if they give up money and material things they are still going that way, outwards. They are trying to think their way to it rather than feeling their way to it. I think you have to feel your way to your essence rather than think your way. If it could be done by thinking, it would have been done by everyone already. Einstein would have done it.

I don't tell people out there these things. They come to the door with video cameras and ask to make movies of Summum. I tell them to come back and attend a Thursday night class. They want to do home movies or something like that. But they want to do it on the outside, they don't want to come here on Thursday night and feel it. They want to make a movie of it and make a dollar out of it or something like that. What do they do when they go to the Catholic Church, do they feel when they go there?

Bernie: Guilt.

Corky: Really? That is why I say it is like a bubble getting ready to pop. It's going to get even worse. That is how it happens. There is going to be some kind of pop with a new generation and they are going to really rebel against the old one, and the old people are going to be really pissed about it I guess.

Most people go places to be something, or to learn something get a degree, or go somewhere to get a husband or a wife, or get something. I have always told everybody when they come here they shouldn't plan on taking something away. You come here and get nothing. The more you can get nothing, the better off you are. What a paradox. People that come here to get something, when they come here they decide "I can't get anything here," because there is nothing there to get. They miss it. They miss it. They want something. It's weird. I don't know what they are going to do with the something they get. They could pack it under their pillow. Put it in a box and sell it to someone. Or you could just leave here with nothing.