G. Spencer-Brown
Bertrand Russel
Gandhi
from Cutting through Spiritual Materialism by Chogyam Trungpa
Lao Tzu
As we prize peace and quiet above victory, there is a simple and preferred method: run away.
Perceive the way of nature and no force of man can harm you.
Do not meet a wave head on, avoid it. You don't have to stop force, it is easier to redirect it.
Learn more ways to preserve, rather than destroy.
Avoid rather than check; check rather than hurt; hurt rather than maim; maim rather than kill, for all life is precious nor can any be replaced.
from the pilot film of Kung Fu
from Virtual Reality by Howard Rheingold
| Question Authority, Think for Yourself! |
This is your copy of the agreement you made when you elected to live in this world. Don't forget to take it seriously.
from A Handful of Zen by Camden Benares
Practically all religions and all philosophies have started thus crudely, by promising their adherents some such reward as immortality.
NO RELIGION HAS FAILED HITHERTO BY NOT PROMISING ENOUGH; THE PRESENT BREAKING UP OF ALL RELIGIONS IS DUE TO THE FACT THAT PEOPLE HAVE ASKED TO SEE THE SECURITIES. Men have even renounced the important material advantages which a well organized religion may confer upon a State, rather than acquiesce in fraud or falsehood, or even in any system which, if not proved guilty, is at least unable to demonstrate its innocence.
Being more or less bankrupt, the best we can do is to attack the problem afresh without preconceived ideas. LET US BEGIN BY DOUBTING EVERY STATEMENT. LET US FIND A WAY OF SUBJECTING EVERY STATEMENT TO THE TEST OF EXPERIMENT. IS THERE ANY TRUTH AT ALL IN THE CLAIMS OF VARIOUS RELIGIONS? LET US EXAMINE THE QUESTION.
from Book 4 by Aleister Crowley
Who is the you that is doing things that are not in your intelligent self-interest?
If you can't be yourself, who can you be?
If you aren't here now, are you nowhere?
Why do you expect more of yourself than you expect of others?
Why do you expect more of others than you expect of yourself?
from A Handful of Zen by Camden Benares
International Language
He was then entrusted with a second school of orphans. From these he did not directly demand obedience and respect. Instead, he enslaved them to his will by telling them that mental culture was the sole aim of education and by appealing to their self-pride. "The mind," he told them, "will give you universal understanding."
"This must be true," thought the children. "After all, why should we not be able to solve all problems by ourselves?"
He supported the doctrine by demonstrations. "This man." he said "is enslaved by his emotions. What a disastrous case! Only the intellect can control the emotions. That other man, however, is ruled by his intellect. How much happier he is, how free from emotional frenzy!"
He never let the children guess that there was an alternative to the choice between emotions and intellect, namely intuition, which could, however, be overcome or blurred by either of these, and always dismissed its appearance as irrelevant or guesswork. There are two kinds of "habit": one is derived from mere repetition, the other from intuition harnessed both to the emotions and the intellect. But since intuitive habit is associated with true reality, this villainous old man simply abolished it in favour of repetitive habit.
Some of the children, nevertheless, suspected that certain miraculous aspects of life did not fit into its fragmentary pattern, and asked him whether there was not, perhaps, something else undisclosed, some secret power. He told one group of questioners, "Certainly not! Such a notion is superstitious , and due to faulty mental processes. Do not put any value on coincidence. "Coincidence" means no more than accident, which, though of emotional interest, lacks all intellectual significance."
To another group he said, "Yes, there is more to life than you will ever know; because it cannot be acquired by honest extension of the scientific information which I gave you, or which you manage to collect under my direction."
But he took care that the two groups did not compare notes and so realize that he had given them two contradictory answers. Now, from time to time, when the children reported inexplicable events to him, he consigned these to oblivion as having no scientific relevance.
He knew that, without taking stock of intuition, the children would never escape from the invisible net in which he had bound them, and that the intuitive knowledge of secrets excluded from their education could only be won only when they were in a certain harmony of mind with the emotions. So he taught them to ignore variations in their mental condition; for once they discovered that powers of apprehension vary from hour to hour, they might guess how much he had concealed from them. His training confused their memory of such intuitions as they had been granted and as they were willing to think along the logical lines he had prepared for them.
The children whom this villain had mistaught in his first schools were now grown up, and since he had let them come nearer to understanding the true nature of life, certain casual remarks that they made to members of the second school disturbed their faith in scientific truth. So he hastily gathered those of the first school who remained loyal to him and sent them out to preach incomprehensible doctrines purporting to explain the hidden mechanism of life. Then he directed the attention of the second school to these teachers, saying, "Listen carefully, but never fail to use your intellect."
The intellectual children soon found that there was nothing to be learned from these doctrines and said, "They contradict logic. Only with logic are we on firm ground."
Yet some members of the first school who had broken away from the old villains teaching reproached them, saying, "We, too reject these doctrines, but that they fail to explain the secret mechanism of life of which you are in search does not deny its existence." They answered, "Can you, then, put the secret in logical terms?" but were told that to do so would be to deny its truth.
So they protested, "Nothing is true that cannot face the cold light of reason." A few, however, cried out, "We are ready to believe everything you tell us. We think you are wonderful." But they were as hopelessly lost as the intellectual children and the teachers of incomprehensible doctrine, because they trusted to slavish credulity, not to the habit of intuition.
A state of educative chaos supervened. So many different ways of thought were current that it was often said, "I cannot trust anyone, I must find out for myself by the exercise of my supreme will."
The old villain who had bred this confusion thrived on it like a madman rejoicing in deeds of violence. Especially this cult of the intellect encouraged egotism and discord. And to those who still felt an inner uncertainty, a sense of incompleteness, or a hankering for something whole and true, he said, "Distract your minds by ambition!" He taught them to covet honours, money, possessions, sexual conquests, to compete with their neighbors, to immerse themselves in hobbies and diversions.
It is said that when a horse cannot find grass, it will accept hay. For want of the green grass of Truth they accept the dry hay with which he filled their mangers.
The old man devised more and more distractions for them: vogues, crazes, lotteries, fashions in art, music and literature, sporting competitions and all kinds of achievements which offered them temporary relief from this sense of lack. They were like a patients who accepts palliatives from his physician because he assures them that his disease is incurable. Or they were like the monkey and the crab-apple: he clutched the crab-apple inside a bottle, but the neck was too narrow for him to withdraw his hand and the crab-apple too. Unable to escape because hampered by the bottle, he was soon captured and put into a sack. But he proudly cried, "I still have the apple."
The fragmentary view of life forced on mankind by the old villain was now accepted; and the few people who tried to point out where Truth really lay were thought insane and readily refuted by the old argument, "If what you say is true, then prove it to us logically!"
False coin is accepted only because true coin exists, and deep in their hearts many people know this. But they were like children born in a house from which they had never been allowed to stray, doomed to walk from one room to another without knowing that there could be another house, elsewhere, with different furnishings and a different view from its windows.
Nevertheless the tradition that true coin exists, that there is another house, and that some horses eat grass, not hay, survived in a book which was not a book, delivered by direct succession from an ancient sage to one of his descendants named Hussein. Hussein searched the world until he the man through craft and guile would give the teaching of this book fit expression: namely the incomparable Mulla Nasrudin. Thereupon this book which is not a book was interpreted by the actions of a Mulla who was no Mulla; who was both wise and a fool; who was both a man and many men. And the teaching was thus brought to the attention of the children who had been misled.
Mulla Nasrudin broke out of the net which had been cast by the old villain. For how can one burn a book which is not a book? How can one name a fool who is no fool? How can one punish a man who is a multitude? How can one strike a man who is oneself?
Study the adventures of Mulla Nasrudin, plumb the depth of the subtleties! He is like a tree which has nourishment in its root and an edible sap; whose leaves are pot-herbs, whose flowers, fruit, branches and seeds are all variously the same!
Can a tree be a man, or a man a tree?
from Thinkers of the East by Idries Shah
from The exploits of the Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin by Idries Shah
| Organizations maintain themselves by rewarding obedience with privilege. |
But the grandfather died, a developer bulldozed the woodlot, loggers clear-cut the forest, the lake is polluted and posted against swimming, smog has deadened my ability to detect subtly odors, and pencil boxes aren't what they used to be.
Neither am I.
There may be a quiet spot in my mind where nothing moves and the places of my childhood remain unchanged, but everything else moves and changes. There's dangerous temptation in the nostalgic dream, in the expertise of yesteryear. The nameless animal that is all of us cannot live in places that no longer exist. I want to address myself to the survival of that nameless animal, looking back without regrets at even the best of what was and will never be again. We should salvage what we can, but even salvaging changes things.
The way of this change is called "process" and it requires that we be prepared to encounter a multi-form reality. Line up three bowls on a table in front of you. Put ice water in the one on the left, hot water in the one on the right and lukewarm water in the middle one. Soak your left hand in the ice water and right hand in the hot water for about a minute, then plunge both hands into the bowl of lukewarm water. Your left hand will tell you the water of the middle bowl is warm, your right hand will report cold. A small experiment in relativity.
We live in a universe dominated by relativity and change, but our intellect keep demanding fixed absolutes. We make our most strident demands for absolutes that contain comforting reassurance. We will misread and/or misunderstand almost anything that challenges our favourite illusions.
It has been noted repeatedly that science students (presumably selected for open-mindedness) encounter a basic difficulty when learning to read X-ray plates. Almost universally, they demonstrate an inability to distinguish between what they are shown on the plate and what they believe will be shown. They see things that are not there. The reaction can be linked directly to the preset with which they approach the viewing of a plate. When confronted by proof of the extent to which preconceptions influence their judgments, they tend to react with surprise, anger, and rejection.
We are disposed to perceive things they appear, filtering the appearance through our preconceptions and fitting it into past forms (including all the outright mistakes, illusions, and myths of the past forms). If we allow only the right hand's message to get through, then "cold" is the absolute reality to which we cling. When our local reality has attached to it that other message: "This is the way out," then we're dealing with a form of "holy truth." Cold becomes a way of life.
We must begin to see ourselves without the old illusions, whatever their character may be. The apparent sound step can drop us from the ladder when we least expect it.
The man with broken bones stretched out beneath his ladder doesn't need to look at the rotten step to know what he did wrong. He believed a system that had always worked before would work once more. He had never learned to question the mechanisms and limits imposed by his perceptions.
In questioning those mechanisms and limits on a larger scale we move into an arena dominated by powerful impositions of genetic heritage and individual experience, the unique influenced by the unique. Here is the conglomerate of behaviour-biology, the two so entangled they cannot be separated if we hope to understand their interlocked system. Here is "process."
You and I, while we strive for a one-system view of this process, are at the same time influenced by it and influence it. We peer myopically at it through the screens of "consensus reality," which is a summation of the most popular beliefs of our time. Out of habit/illusion/conservatism, we grapple for something that changes as we touch it.
Frank Herbert
Our personal perceptions of these objects would also depend on much more than just the different positions from which we looked upon them. For example, one or more of us might suffer from colour blindness, or from weak eyesight. Either of these two physical differences would influence our perceptions of the objects.
There are levels upon levels of perspectives we must consider when we try to understand our individual perceptions of things, or when we try to relate our perceptions to those of our brothers and sisters. Every single one of our previous experiences in life will affect in some way the mental perspective from which we see the world around us.
Because of this, a particular object or event may appear fearful to you at the same time that it gives pleasure to me, or appears completely uninteresting to a third person. All things that we perceive stimulate our individual imagination in different ways, which in turn causes us to create our own unique interpretations of them. Love, hate, fear, confusion, happiness, envy, and all the other emotions we feel, act upon us to paint our perceptions of things in different colours.
If the thing I were to place within our circle should be an abstraction, such as an idea, a feeling, or a philosophy, our perceptions of it would then be even more complicated than if the object had been a tangible thing. And further, the number of different perceptions of it would become greater and greater as more and more people were added to our circle. The perception of any object, either tangible or abstract, is ultimately made a thousand times more complicated whenever it is viewed within the circle of an entire people as a whole. The understanding of this truth is the first lesson of the Medicine Wheel, and it is a vital part of the Sun Dance Teaching.
This brings us back again to the Medicines. Each of us has his personal Medicine a particular animal reflection. The characteristics of this reflection are determined by the nature of the animal itself, and also by the location of our individual beginning Place on the Medicine Wheel. These two things, our Medicine Animal and our Beginning place on the Medicine Wheel, together are the Beginning Gift to each of us from MIAHEYYUN. For example, there are Eagle People, Elk People, Bear People, Wolf People, Pheasant people, otter people, Buffalo People, mice people, Rock People, Cloud People, and as many other kinds of People as there are kinds of living beings on this earth. And within each these different kind of People, there are other differences of the four Great Directions. Thus an Elk Person might be born a White Elk of the North, a Green Elk of the South, a Black Elk of the West, or a Yellow elk of the East, depending upon the Direction of the Beginning Gift.
It would be impossible for me to tell you here of all the different Medicines, but I will speak to you of one of them, the Mouse. Mice live all their lives next to the ground, building their nests and gathering their food among the roots of the tall grass and bushes of the prairie. Because of this, Mice never see things at a distance. Everything they see is right in front of them, where they can sniff at it with their noses and touch it with their whiskers. Their lives are spent in touching things in this way, and in gathering seeds and berries to eat.
But since it is really people that we are talking about, the Medicines must be understood within the ways of the people. A Mouse Person would be one who saw everything close up, and whose vision would be limited to the immediate world around him. He would be a gatherer of things. He might gather facts, information, material objects, or even ideas. But because he could not see far enough to connect his world with that of the great prairie of the world around him, he would never be able t use or understand all that he was and gathered.
If a Mouse Person were to be born into the North, his beginning Gift would be the Gift of the Mind. His name might be White Mouse. He would be a wise Mouse Person, but he would not yet be Whole. To become Whole, he would first have to seek the South, the place of the Heart, and find the Marriage of this Gift with his Beginning Gift. Then he would have to visit and have Intercourse with the things of the East, Illumination, and travel to the Looks-Within place of the West. He would be able to Grow and become a Full Person only by doing all of these things, which would give him an understanding of his own Nature.
In this way he would become able to make his decisions within the Balance of the Four Directions. A person with the Beginning Gift of the Mind must always try to include his Heart in his decisions. When he does this, he begins to turn upon the Medicine Wheel. A man can live out his entire life without ever finding more than what was already within him as his Beginning Gift, but if he wishes to Grow he must become a seeker and seek for himself the other Ways.
When you have done this for yourself, and when you have reached a full Understanding of the different Medicines of men, you will never feel surprised or threatened by the actions or decisions of your Brothers and Sisters. This Understanding is held within the meaning of the Shields carried by the People, which were the mirrors of their Medicines.
from Seven Arrows by Hyemeyohst Storm
A lot of people think or believe or know they feel -- but that's thinking or believing or knowing; not feeling. And poetry is feeling -- not knowing or believing or thinking.
Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to be. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you are a lot of other people: but the moment you are being, you're nobody-but-yourself.
To be nobody-but-yourself -- in a world that is doing its best night and day to make you everybody else -- means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting . As for expressing nobody-but-yourself in words, that means working just a little harder than anybody who isn't a poet can possible imagine. Why? Because nothing is quite as easy as using words like somebody else. We all of us do exactly this nearly all of the time -- and whenever we do it, we are not poets. If, at the end of your first ten or fifteen years of fighting and working and feeling, you find you've written one line of one poem, then you'll be very lucky indeed.
And so my advice to all young people who wish to become poets is: do something easy, like learning how to blow up the world -- unless you're not only willing, but glad, to feel and work and fight till you die. Does this sound dismal? It isn't. It's the most wonderful life on earth. Or so I feel.
E.E.Cummings
J.Krishnamurti
| Question Authority, Think for Yourself! |
J.Krishnamurti
Nina Graboi
| Life is a disease, sexually transmitted and invariably fatal |
All we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts and made up of our thoughts. If a man speak or act with an evil thought, suffering follows him, as the wheel follows the hoof of the beast that draws the wagon.
All we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts and made up of our thoughts. If a man speak or act with a good thought, happiness follows him like a shadow that never leaves him.
"He reviled me, struck me, defeated me, robbed me." In those who harbour such thoughts hatred will never cease.
"He reviled me, struck me, defeated me, robbed me." In those who harbour no such thoughts are free from hatred.
Hatred does not cease by hatred; hatred ceases only by love. This is the eternal law.
Many do not realize that all must one day die. In those who know this fact all strife is stilled.
If a man is dear to himself, he will guard himself carefully. For at least a part of the night he will keep watch.
Let the wise man first go the right way himself, then teach others. So he will have no cause to grieve.
The man who makes himself as he teaches others, being himself controlled will be able to control others. The self is hard to control. Who else but the Self can be the master of the self? With the self well-controlled another master is hard to find.
The fool thinks anxiously, "These sons and this wealth are mine." But he is not even master of himself, much less of sons and goods.
The fool who knows his folly is wise so far, but great is the folly of the fool who thinks himself wise.
As a rock remains unmoved by storm, so the wise man remains unmoved by praise or blame.
Hearing the Law, the wise become like a calm, unruffled lake. The wise walk on, clinging to nothing. They are neither elated by happiness nor cast down by sorrow.
Neither for himself nor for others will the wise man crave sons or wealth. He will not wish to gain by others' loss.
Leaving the way of darkness, the wise man will follow the way of light. Giving up his home he will go into the solitude of homelessness, which is so hard to enjoy.
Putting away pleasure and possessing nothing of his own, the wise man will cleanse himself from every evil thought.
They have attained Nirvana even in this life whose minds are full of regard for truth, energy, concentration, and calmness, who cling to nothing and have overcome all evil thoughts.
excerpts from The Dhammapada
Suzuki Roshi
For numberless centuries society unquestioningly accepted the proposition that certain men were created to be slaves, whose natural function was to serve priests and kings, nobles and great lords, men of substance and property that were appointed slave-masters by almighty God. Further this system was reinforced by the established doctrines that all men and women were owned, their minds by the church, their bodies by the state. This convenient situation was supported by a considerable body of authority, morals, religion, and philosophy.
Against this doctrine, some two hundred years ago, was openly raised the most astonishing heresy the world has ever known, the principle of liberalism. In essence, this principle stated that all men were created equal, and endowed with inalienable rights. The words inalienable rights mean rights which cannot be taken away, which belongs to man, as his birthright.
This principle appealed to certain intractable spirits, heretics, atheists and revolutionaries, and has since, in spite of the opposition of the majority of organized society, made some headway. As a doctrine, it has become so popular that it is rendered lip service by all the major states.
But it is still distasteful to persons in authority and seeking authority that it is nowhere embodied as a fundamental law, and is continuously violated in letter and spirit by every trick and expedient of bigotry and reaction. Further, absolutist and totalitarian groups of the most vicious in nature use liberalism as a cloak under which they move to re-establish tyrannies and extinguish the liberty of all opponents.
Thus religious groups seek to abrogate freedom of art, speech, and the press; reactionaries move to suppress labour; and communist to establish dictatorships, all in the name of freedom. Thus, because of the peculiar distinction given to freedom by some of these camouflaged tyrants, it seems necessary to redefine freedom in terms in which it was understood by that depraved cynic Voltaire, the dirty atheist Paine, the traitor Washington, the radical revolutionary Jefferson, and the anarchist Emerson.
Freedom is a two-edged sword of which one edge is liberty and the other responsibility, on which both edges are exceedingly sharp; and which is not easily handled by casual, cowardly or treacherous hands. For it has been sharpened by many conflicts, tempered in may fires, quenched in much blood, and although it is always ready for the use of the courageous and high-hearted, it will not remain when the spirit that forged it is gone. Now since all tyrannies are based on dogmas, that is, on fundamental statements of absolute fact, and since all dogmas are based on lies, it behooves us first to seek the truth, and freedom will not be far away. And the truth is that we know nothing.
Objectively, we know nothing at all. Any system of intellectual thought, whether it be science, logic, religion, or philosophy, is based on certain fundamental ideas or axioms which are assumed, but which cannot be proved. This is the grave of all positivism.
We assume, but we do not KNOW, that there is a real and objective world outside our own mind. Ultimately, we do not know what we are, or what the world is. Further, if there is a real world apart from ourselves, we cannot know what that is; all we know is what we perceive it to be. All that we perceive is conveyed by our senses and interpreted by our brain. And however fine, exact, or delicate our instruments may be, they are still perceived by these senses and interpreted by that brain. However useful, spectacular, or necessary our ideas and experiments may be, they still have nothing to do with absolute truth or authority. Such thing only exist for the individual, according to his whim or fancy, or his inner perception of his own truth in being.
The witches and devils of the middle ages were real by our own standards; all reputable and respectable persons believed in them. They were seen, their effects observed, and they perfectly accounted for a large body of otherwise inexplicable phenomena. Their existence was accepted without question by the majority of men, great and humble, and from this majority there was not, and still is not, any appeal.
Yet we do not believe in these things today. We believe in other things, similarly explaining the same phenomena. Tomorrow we will believe in still other things. We believe, but we do not know. All our deductions, for example the theory of gravitation, are based on observed statistics; on tendencies observed to occur in a certain way. But even if our observations are correct, we do not know why these things happen,or if they have always been so, or that they will continue to do so. All our theories are only assumptions, however reasonable they may seem. There is a sort of truth, based on experience: we know that we feel hot, or hungry, or in love. But these feelings cannot by any means be conveyed to anyone who has not experienced them. We can describe them in terms of other things familiar to him, we can analyze their cause-and-effect according to mutually acceptable theories. But he will not have the vaguest idea what the feeling is like.
These may be negative considerations, but within their limits we can deduce very positive principles.
That much for positivism. But other things remain. There are necessity, expediency, and convenience. If these are illusions, they are still very popular illusions, and it is usual to consider them. Politics is concerned with necessity and expediency whereas science is concerned with convenience. But it is necessary that we defend freedom, unless we all wish to be slaves. It is expedient that we achieve brotherhood, unless we desire destruction. And it is convenient that we grant others the right to their own opinions and lives, in order to maintain our own.
The intelligent individual will not base his conduct on an arbitrary or absolute concept of right and wrong. It may be argued that all motives and all actions are selfish, since they are intended to satisfy some requirement of the ego. Perhaps this is true of self-sacrifice, abnegation, and the highest altruism. We engage in these things in order to satisfy ourselves, to attain some object.
But the stupid man will assign arbitrary values to all things, in order to protect and justify his own position. His morals are based on things which he wishes were true, or which someone else wishes were true. His philosophy pays no attention to relative facts or realities. But in his life he must deal with relative facts and realities, and consequently he is constantly involved with pretenses and evasions.
The enlightened liberal needs no such justification. He will realize and accept his inherent selfishness, and the inherent selfishness of all men. He will understand living as technique, the technique of getting what he wants on the terms he wants.
from Freedom is a two-edged sword by John Whiteside Parsons
from the Holy Bible - Genesis 3:22-24
"Everybody defines and meet their needs for security, status, knowledge and sex in different ways; the content of these needs are universal, the way of how they're met is personal. When needs aren't met, we are frustrated. This basic knowledge also forms the backbone of a successful advertising ploy: PROMISE THEM ANYTHING BUT SELL THE PRODUCT. By associating any product with the promise of more security or more status or more knowledge or more sex, the consumer's own unmet needs are touched and they're 'hooked.' Advertising is the business of promises, fantasies and dreams; truth has never sold that well"
"By redefining 'security' and 'status' and 'intelligence' and 'sexuality' according to what is most truthful to oneself, an extraordinary thing occurs: one begins to actually exists. And only that which really exists is subject to real change, real life. By defining ones term, one stands a chance of living by them and cultivating the ground for the birth of a real being. Until then, we non-entities at best ... wanna-bees out for our next celebrity fix. Are we intelligent enough to confess ignorance, you know: the specific idiocy expressing our particular area of vacancy?"
Antero Alli
| Question Authority, Think for Yourself! |
When a man does something his fellows would strongly object to, and decides to keep the misdeeds a secret, he mentally withdraws somewhat from others, because now he has to watch himself to make sure he doesn't mention what he did. More misdeeds bring further withdrawal. The intensity of the misdeeds and the secrecy surrounding them can increase to astonishing proportions. It has actually reached the point where certain very powerful men, to ensure their personal safety and the perpetuation of their empires, plan to kill off two thirds of the world's population and overtly enslave the rest. Since most of the general public just somehow don't feel right about genocide, the blatant exterminations of the '30s and '40s have been replaced by artificially induced wars, plagues, accidents, and "natural" disasters. Earthquakes can be induced artificially by precise placement and timing of nuclear "tests." The shock waves spread out over the globe, then recombine at various harmonic intervals around the sphere to deliver a strong jolt at the desired location within forty-eight hours of the initial blast.
It is important to appreciate the attitude of the "ruling class" toward the main body of mankind. They view themselves as a sort of royalty. They "own" the planet, and have no more reservation about exploiting the rest of humanity than they do about using any other natural resource on their property. These people have been brought up to believe their special privileges are deserved because they are superior to the rest of us, and in some ways they are. They have shown far greater financial and political cleverness than most humans. To maintain their positions of control, most of them must operate at a much higher energy level than the sluggish masses; they must think and react faster. They have pulled off the most brilliant scams in the planet's history, and fooled nearly all the people, all of the time.
A rarely considered option is to simply forgive the ruling elite. Strike an agreement granting them complete amnesty, in exchange for a total end to the incarceration and abuse of all political prisoners, full disclosure of all information that has been concealed, and the diversion of the bulk of their fortunes into projects designed to improve conditions for all mankind, using available technology. It might be worth it to them, not having to constantly be on guard against their victimized public, and each other. People do enjoy life more when they don't have to lie and worry about getting caught all the time. Just acknowledge that they have won the game they've been playing, where the goal was to concentrate control of the planet into as few hands as possible, by any means available. They got us, they proved they could pull it off and get away with it, so let's congratulate the winners like good sports and start a new game with a more interesting goal we can all get into, like making Earth a paradise for everybody.
Furthermore, it is most unlikely that no contact has occurred between members of some space-going society and some earth government or quasi-government. It is even less likely that news of such contact would be shared with citizens under that government. How could political leaders maintain their status as senior authority figures if it were known that there are others far more intelligent and capable that citizens might turn to instead? The "king of the playground" loses his status and reverts to being another child when the teachers show up. Space is big, and hard to police. There is at least as much political, cultural, and moral diversity among space-going civilization as there is on Earth. We have more ethnic variety here than on many other planets with fairly homogeneous populations; as has often been pointed out, Earth is a sort of dumping ground for souls from many other locations, who are too brilliant, stupid, creative, domineering, imaginative, or criminal to fit into other societies without their non-conformity being disruptive. Awareness is growing that one's own survival depends on that of the entire earth. Soon it will be broadly recognized that our well-being depends on the well being of all life.
excepts from Waves Forest
Anyone who see why she or he has been a victim in a dangerous world will cease to be one. Victimization is caused by something wrong and unseen within the person which attracts something wrong outside of her or him. Get to know these misleading magnets and you will no longer attract danger. A victim is a victim because he or she :-
from Be safe in a dangerous world by Vernon Howard.
Man has almost always been property to one degree or another. A piece of property can be used by its owner, sold, leased or rented. A FREE man cannot be treated that way, unless, of course, he consents. A FREE man can take his own life. A FREE man can ingest what he wills and live as he sees fit. He can choose to help another or not. If he chooses to live with others, we assert that he must obey one rule: not to initiate violence to get what he wants. Thus evil, if such a term is needed, is simply, for us, the initiation of violence. This is, of course, what the government and the church do to you if you disobey, since they have a monopoly on "legitimate" violence. Thus, though we have promised not to invert the classical meaning of good and evil, we inadvertently have.
An important quality of evil - as it is commonly understood - is that people are hurt. This fact can not be helped. To give up being a "free" man in order not to be hurt is no guarantee that "bad things will not happen." Besides, it the act of a coward.
Every modern government makes a "social contract" - a pact - without, of course, the consent of the populace - that it will protect and care for its citizens if they give up their right to care for themselves. Each government has certain sectors of human life which "belong" to it and things which do not. Government has taken for itself the monopoly on initiatory violence. For example, you can own property as long as you pay taxes. This is "ownership" based on the contingency of obedience. Thus, in one sense, NO ONE owns property. The government provides for taking your property - by force if necessary - if you don't pay your taxes by claiming that you have violated the social contract (i.e., "the common good.") This refusal to obey by a magical act of metaphysics is transformed into the "right" to do violence.
To promote the idea of a social contract, something other than overt power has to be invoked to make the contract absolute and inviolate rather than simply arbitrary. The power is usually God, or in the case of America, "the will of the people" together with their vision of God. Thus for men to accept their status as property, a metaphysical assertion is needed. Some principal is required which can both stir and terrify people. Also, a history is required to legitize keeping people as property. Each government or church has its particular wonder stories which are fed to the children when their critical faculties are weak. At the base of all "evil empires" is the ability to inflict punishment. Without it the slave would be less inclined to obey.
To refuse the services of the politician, the priest, or the psychiatrist is an insult - to them. To negotiate for yourself, to be your own priest, your own psychiatrist, your own politician, is sacrilege, insanity or criminality. What label they apply to you is a function of who has the most power as well as the accident of who apprehends you first.
In our "free" (as long as you obey) society, each mediator - politician, psychiatrist and priest - are in competition. But they also cooperate in a larger sense to assure that society - their power structure - is being served. Regardless of which of the three is deciding what to do with you for violating the prevailing "customs" of normalcy, SOMEONE IS DECIDING FOR YOU. You are an object being processed. You are not a real person, but simply a function - a piece of property. Most people rarely experience this because AS LONG AS YOU DON'T VIOLATE THE RULES OF SOCIETY YOUR REAL STATUS AS PROPERTY IS NOT INVOKED. Yet deep within each of us, we are aware of how little it takes to come to the attention of the authorities. Once they focus on you, your status as property is revealed and you are PROCESSED - thus revealing your status as: non-person.
Before the reader thinks that this is a book about politics, let us say that politics addresses the issue of whether or not you are property or a "free" man. The area on which this book focuses is the realm of the spiritual. Are you the property of some God or are you a "free" man?
In the spiritual realm there are owners, keepers and shepherds of men - as well as friends. The latter include those groups of spirits - at least in myth - who are relatively friendly towards man and want him to have more power.
The Promethean myth is but one example of a God-force that wants man to be intelligent instead of ignorant. Prometheus' "father" (Zeus), on the other hand, wants to keep man ignorant - a simple slave.
Prometheus is the divine rebel - a "Satan" who commits godlike crimes against the patriarchy. This is the critical point: that Prometheus, like Satan, is not man's enemy but the enemy of the authoritarian tyrant whose desire is to rule man.
A similar myth is repeated in the Garden of Eden story. The Serpent (often called Satan) tempts Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge and become God-like. In some quarters Eve's temptation is seen as an initiation by the serpent Nechesh whose number is 358. Coincidentally, this is also the number of Messiach (Messiah)
The idea of preventing man from becoming a God is nowhere better exposed than by the Gods themselves when they decided to refuse man access to the Tree of Life. Genesis 3:22 says, "And the Lord God said, behold, man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever." Genesis 3:23 and 3:24, "Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken, so he drove out man; and he placed at the east of the Garden of Eden Cherubims, and with a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the Tree of Life."
The Christian-Judeo religion system views man as property. The evil-one, the tempter is seen as a force which "makes" man disobey his master. The evil-one tells man not to obey his master, but to follow his own will. This, too, is folly since most men do not have a "will".
Disobedience, as well as pride (independence), are the two fundamental sins of the "evil-one." In fact, sin in the religious as well as the secular context is simply DISOBEDIENCE - the refusal to be a slave.
As children we are taught by our parents to obey, most often without question. The attitude of obedience is so deeply implanted by the time the child is seven that the "arguments" against his being a free man are well sown. In many instances, children and adults will argue against their own freedom. When the child reaches adolescence any rebellion against its early training is seen by adults as dangerous and disrespectful. Most adolescents retire from their rebellious behaviour by the time they reach their mid-20's. Their "wild oats" have been sown and they begin to take their place in society as adults. By the time their own children are born they have a full blown case of amnesia about their own childhood feelings and experiences. Now, as parents themselves, they inculcate their children with the beliefs and attitudes they learned when they were brainwashed. Although some changes are made by each generation, the primary attitude of obedience and allegiance to a particular master are implanted into each generation. Each adult acts as if his particular programming is unique to him and somehow superior to other people's brainwashing.
from Pacts with the Devil by S, Jason Black and Christopher S, Hyatt
In mentations one places one's consciousness plus a specific idea in a specific part of one's body as follows.
In one's ears place the idea of SUBSTANCE (the unique objective reality of something, such as a person's SUBSTANCE); in the eyes the FORM; in the nose, one's POSSIBILITIES (alternatives); in the mouth, one's NEEDS; in chest, one's IMPULSE (automatic energies); in upper belly, one's ASSIMILATION process; in lower belly, one's ELIMINATION process; in the genitals, ORIENTATION (either towards evolution or towards regression); in upper legs and upper arms, one's CAPACITY; in knees and elbows, one's CHARISMA; in the lower legs and lower arms, one's MEANS; in the feet and hands, one's GOALS.
When you want to stop a habit (such as smoking, drinking, sex) use the following mentation:
from the centre of the cyclone by John C. Lilly, M.D.
Everyone could write a book entitled "My sad experiences in seeking safety where it could not be found." What would your book include? People seek safety in an incredible variety of useless places. They include marriage, career, pleasure-seeking, fame, travel, money-making, mechanical religion, retiring inside oneself, exciting daydreams, seeking public power.
from Be safe in a dangerous world by Vernon Howard.
Can you, concentrating on your breathing, make it soft like that of a child? This is called the mysterious power.
Soft and weak overcome hard and strong. Fish cannot leave deep waters, and a country's weapon should not be displayed. Tao abides in non-action, yet nothing is left undone.
Knowing ignorance is strength. Ignoring knowledge is sickness. How do I know the universe is like this? By looking!
People usually fail when they are on the verge of success. So give as much care to the end as to the beginning. Then there will be no failure. Keeping to the main road is easy, but people loved to be sidetracked.
He who knows he has enough is rich. To die but not to perish Is to be eternally present. One must know when to stop.
Lao Tzu
| Question Authority, Think for Yourself! |
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Nothing is true. Everything is permissible
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| Love is the law, love under will. |