Cosmic Delivery System
Memo 011
26 Sept 1975
C D S
(COSMIC DELIVERY SYSTEM)
Various Spaceworkers for the Cincinnati (Utter) Space Program have reported an interesting phenomenon that has been tentatively labeled the Cosmic Delivery System. We call it CDS for shorthand reference and so’s you can space out friends who are not hip to the Spaceperson’s fancy, yet productively cryptic language.
CDS is in operation when you get just what you needed. Typically you find yourself feeling grateful and bewildered, if not absolutely ecstatic, and you find yourself saying something like, “Wow! I feel grateful and bewildered, if not absolutely ecstatic! I just got what I needed (a tricycle, a package of cigarette papers, an “A” in Turgid Field Theory, or a small dog who loves you, etc.). And I didn’t have to go nuts or beat people up to get it!” When that happens, you have been served by none other than CDS.
So far, Spaceworkers unanimously insist that the only critical ingredient involved in CDS is CLARITY about what your dream is, since your dreams involve, at some level, just what you really need, not what is advertised on Johnny Carson or the Fritz Bangfelter Show, or told to you by an alcoholic family doctor. No one else can tell you what you need, only you know, and if you don’t know, only you can learn it.
We now hypothesize that the Universe provides you everything you need. If you need Cosmic or Terrestrial Horseshit to step in, you get it (say Thank You)> If you need cigarette papers, you get them. If you need confusion: you’re confused. Get it?
CAUTION: Knowledge of the CDS hypothesis leads some people far astray into Cosmic Confusion and we know, metatheoretically, that that is just what they need. Many people jump at the chance to get everything they ever wanted by the strange but true tactic of just laying back and waiting for a delivery. You will be a long time with loose tobacco and no papers if you think this is how it works. Get clarity! Pay attention to what is happening. CDS is in operation in direct ration to your GETTING ON WITH IT. Do what you have to do. Do it now! Be what you have to be. Be it now! Dream what you have to dream. CDS works when you are working, not when you are idly daydreaming about the day CDS will deliver free tickets to Utopia. (*) CDS materializes your dreams when you are being you, when you are being real, when you are CLEAR about what is really going on. When you are not being you, the Delivery System gets mixed up, just as you get mixed up when you are not being you.
Now you can forget about CDS. As one Spaceworker put it, “Quit worryin’ buddy. It just works thataway.” In fact, it has been noted that working to get the CDS operative actually defeats the way of CDS. What we want to emphasize is letting things take their own course. The clarity that is necessary comes from forgetting about CDS, and getting on with it. The best Christmas present comes when you don’t have expectations about what it will be. Just be empty. Just get on with it.
Well, there it is. CDS. The Cosmic Delivery System. May it bring you all the cigarette papers or small dogs that you ever dreampt of.
Pleasant Dreams,
Mot Atnab, Director
CUSP, Alpha Module
(*) Utopia is a small town in Ohio somewhere between Cincinnati and Aberdeen.
Footnote: I got this incredible document from my psychologist friend Robert Hoffman, who had been a professor at Cincinnati, in the same department with Tom Banta, the author. I never met him – just spoke to him on the phone, I believe. But wherever he may be now, I doff my hat to him.