“Inside yourself, right?” I asked.
“Well, I process the information inside myself, yes, but theyare
outside of me. I don’t have 50 million people in me.”
“Actually, you do,” I said. “You experience them in you, so they
don’t exist unless you look within yourself.”
“But I can look out and see them.”
“You see them inside yourself,” I stated.“Everything you process
is in you. If you don’t process it, it doesn’t exist.”
“Is this like if a tree falls in a forest and no one is there, does it
make a sound?”
“Exactly.”
“This is crazy.”
“Exactly,” I said.“But it’s the way home.”
I then decided to test him even further. I asked,“Can you tell me
what your next thought will be?”
He was quiet for a moment. He wanted to blurt out an answer
but realized he couldn’t.
“No one can predict their next thought,” I explained. “You can
verbalize it once it occurs to you, but the thought itself arises from
your unconscious.You have no control over it. The only choice you
have is once the thought appears, to act on it or not.”
“I don’t follow.”
“You can do any number of things once the thought arises, but
it’s being generated in your unconscious,” I explained. “In order to
clean the unconscious so you get better thoughts, you have to do
something else.”
“Such as?”
“Well, I’m writing a whole book about it,” I replied, referring to
this book you’re reading.
“And what does this have to do with the 50 million people out
there?”
“They’re no more out there than your own thoughts are,” I said.
“It’s all inside you. All you can do is clean in order to clear out theCigars, Hamburgers, and Killing the Divine 169ccc_zero_163-176_cigs.qxd 5/4/07 1:00 PM Page 169