All the various valuations that are put on [life] by the social game are illusory, basically. Because it’s only in play that we say this is good, this is bad, this is advantageous, this is disadvantageous. We would go on to say after this, “I cannot imagine anything more difficult than overcoming this hypnosis. I am so enchanted by this system that the idea of treating it as not very serious seems to me unthinkable.” Of course you have to think that. It’s like a hypnotist working on somebody and saying you are not going to remember any of this conversation after you come to so he put the suggestion into you that you forget the whole thing.
In the same way the suggestion that’s been put into all of us that these rules that we have learned are sacrosanct. They don’t say “you won’t be able to think otherwise.” They say [the rules] are true! That they are the truth and that is the same function as the hypnotic suggestion put in to us ever since we were receptive children.
It’s all part of the conspiracy that we are playing on ourselves. We cannot blame our parents for this because their parents played it on them and they bought it. And don’t forget that time goes backwards. You can’t blame this on the past because you in the present are creating the values of the past and you are buying them all along. There is no ‘out’. You see in a way psychoanalytically one is given an ‘out’ by saying “the parents didn’t bring up their children properly” and american people are consumed with guilt about the way they bring up their children.
We must abandon completely the notion of blaming the past for any kind of situation we’re in. And reverse our thinking and see that the past always flows back from the present. That now is the creative point of life. It’s like the idea of forgiving somebody. You change the meaning of the past by doing that. And also when you watch the flow of music. The melody, as it is expressed, is changed by notes that come later just as the meaning of a sentence is changed by the words as they are spoken. When I say “I love you” you do not know what “I” is doing. I could say, “I hate you.” So we don’t know until later. The word love or the word hate changes the function of the word I. The present is always changing the past.
