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Fanatics believe they are powerless

The fanatic does not trust his/her own self-structure, or his ability to act effectively. Joint action seems the only course, but a joint action in which each individual must actually be forced to act, driven by frenzy, or fear or hatred, incensed and provoked, for otherwise the fanatic fears that no action at all will be taken toward “the ideal.”

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Through such methods, and through such group hysteria, the responsibility for separate acts is divorced from the individual, and rests instead upon the group, where it becomes generalized and dispersed. The cause, whatever it is, can then cover any number of crimes, and no particular individual need bear the blame alone. Fanatics have tunnel vision, so that any beliefs not fitting their purposes are ignored. Those that challenge their own purposes, however, become instant targets of scorn and attack. Generally speaking in our society, power is considered a male attribute. Cult leaders are more often male than female, and females are more often than not followers, because they have been taught that it is wrong for them to use power, and right for them to follow the powerful.

We have religious and scientific cults, and the male-oriented scientific community uses its power in the same way that the male Jehovah used his power in a different arena, to protect his friends and destroy his enemies. Some of our sexual beliefs affect our behavior.

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The male scientist considers the rocket his private symbol of sexual power. He feels he has the prerogative to use power in any way he chooses. Now many scientists are “idealists.” They believe that their search for answers, however, justifies almost any means, or sacrifices, not only on their parts but on the parts of others. They becomes fanatics when they ignore the rights of others, and when they defile life in a misguided attempt to understand it.

Women make a grave error when they try to prove their “equality” with men by showing that they can enter the armed forces, or go into combat as well as any man. War always makes us less as a species than we could be. Women have shown uncommon good sense in not going to war, and uncommon bad sense by sending their sons and lovers to war. To kill for the sake of peace only makes us better killers, and nothing will change that. In any war, both sides are fanatical to the extent that they are involved. I am quite aware that often was seems to be our only practical course, because of the set of beliefs, war will seem to have some practical value — a value which is highly deceptive, and quite false.

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Fanatics always use ringing rhetoric, and speak in the highest terms of truth, good and evil, and particularly of retribution. To some extent capital punishment is the act of a fanatical society: The taking of the murderer’s life does not bring back the victim’s, and it does not prevent other men from [committing] such crimes. I am aware that the death penalty often seems to be practical solution — and indeed many murderers want to die, and are caught because of their need for punishment. Many, now — and I am speaking generally — are in the position they are because they so thoroughly believe what all of us believe to a large extent: that we are flawed creatures, spawned by a meaningless universe, or made by a vengeful God and damaged by original sin.

Criminals act out those beliefs to perfection. Their “tendencies” are those that each of us fears we possess. Science and religion each tell us that left alone we will spontaneously be primitive creatures, filled with uncontrolled lust and avarice. Both Freud and Jehovah gave us that massage. Poor Darwin tried to make sense of it all, but failed miserably.

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Fanatics cannot stand tolerance. They expect obedience. A democratic society offers the greatest challenges and possibilities of achievement for the individual and the species, for it allows for the free intercourse of ideas. It demands much more of its people, however, for in a large manner each must pick and choose from amid a variety of life-styles and beliefs his and her own platform for daily life and action.

There are periods in which it certainly seems to some that all standards vanish, and so they yearn for old authorities. And there are always fanatics there to stand for ultimate truth, and to lift from the individual the challenge and “burden” of personal achievement and responsibility. Individuals can survive without organizations. Organizations cannot survive without individuals, and the most effective organizations are assemblies of individuals who assert their own private power in a group, and do not seek to hide within it.

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Organized action is an excellent method of exerting influence, but only when each member is self-activating; only when he or she extends individuality through group action, and does not mindlessly seek to follow the dictates of others.

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Fanatics exist because of the great gap between an idealized good is projected into the future, while its exaggerated opposite is seen to pervade the present. The individual is seen as powerless to work alone toward that ideal with any sureness of success. Because of his/her powerlessness [the fanatic] feels that any means to an end is justified. Behind all this the belief that spontaneously the ideal will never be achieved, and that, indeed, on his/her own man and woman are getting worse and worse in every aspect: How can flawed selves ever hope to spontaneously achieve any good?

Is “good” an absolute?

When discussing the nature of good and bad, we are on tricky ground indeed, for many — or most — of man’s and woman’s atrocities to man and woman have been committed in misguided pursuit of “the good.”

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Whose good? In our arena of events, obviously, one man’s and woman’s good can be another’s disaster. Adolf Hitler pursued his version of “the good” with undeviating fanatical intent. He believed in the superiority and moral rectitude of the Aryan race. In his grandiose, idealized versions of reality, he saw that race “set in its proper place,” as natural master of humankind.

He believed in heroic characteristics, and became blinded by an idealized superman version of an Aryan strong in mind and body. To attain that end, Hitler was quite willing to sacrifice the rest of humanity. “The evil must be plucked out.” That unfortunate chant is behind the beliefs of many cults — scientific and religious — and Hitler’s Aryan kingdom was a curious interlocking of the worst aspect of religion and science alike, in which their cultish tendencies were encouraged and abetted.

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The political arena was the practical working realm in which those ideals were to find fruition. Hitler’s idea of good was hardly inclusive, therefore, and any actions, however atrocious, were justified.

How did Hitler’s initially wishy-washy undefined ideals of nationalistic goodness turn into such a world catastrophe? Hitler’s daydreams became more and more grandiose, and in their light, the plight of his country seemed worsened with each day’s events. He counter its humiliations over and over in his mind, until his mind became an almost completely closed environment, in which only certain ideas were allowed entry.

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All that was not Aryan, really , became the enemy. The Jews took the brunt ,largely because of their financial successes and their cohesiveness, their devotion to a culture that was not basically Aryan. They would become the victims of Hitler’s fanatical ideal of Germany’s good.

Hitler preached on the great value of social action as opposed to individual action. He turned children into informers against their own parents. He behaved nationalistically, as any minor cult leader does in a smaller context. The Jews believed in martyrdom. Germany became the new Egypt, in which their people were set upon. I do not want to simplify here, and certainly I am nowhere justifying the cruelties the Jews encountered in Germany. We do each create our own reality, however, and en masse we create the realities of our nationalities and our countries — so at that time the Germans saw themselves as victors, and the Jews saw themselves as victims.

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Both reacted as groups, rather than as individuals, generally speaking now. For all of their idealism, both basically believed in a pessimistic view of the self. It was because Hitler was so convinced of the existence of evil in the individual psyche, that he set up all of his existence of evil in the in the individual psyche, that set up all of his rules and regulations to build up and preserve “Aryan purity.” The Jews’ idea was also a dark one, in which their own rules and regulations were set to preserve the soul’s purity against the forces of evil. And while in the Jewish books [of  The Old Testament} Jehovah now and then came through with great majesty to save his chosen people, he also allowed them to suffer great indignities over long periods of time, seeming to save them only at the last moment — and this time, seemed, he did not sane them at all. What happened?

Despite himself, and despite his followers, Hitler brought to flower a very important idea, and one that changed our history. All of the most morbid of nationalistic fantasies that had been growing for centuries, all of the most grandiose celebrations of war as a nation’s inalienable right to seek domination, focused finally in Hitler’s Germany.

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The nation served as an example of what could happen in any country if the most fanatical nationalism was allowed to go unchecked, if the ideas of right were aligned with might, if any nation was justified in contemplating the destruction of others.

We must realize that Hitler believed that any atrocity was justified in the light of what he thought of as the greater good. To some extent or another, many of the ideals he held and advocated had long been accepted in world communities, though they had not been acted upon with such dispatch. The nations of the world saw their own worst tendencies personified in Hitler’s Germany, ready to attack them. The Jews, for various reasons — and again, this is not the full story — the Jews acted as all of the victims of the world, both the Germans and the Jews basically agreeing upon “man’s nefarious nature.” For the first time the modern world realized its vulnerability to political events, and technology and communication accelerated all of war’s dangers. Hitler brought many of man’s and woman’s most infamous tendencies to the surface. For the first time species the  species understood that might alone did not mean right, and that in larger terms a world war could have no real victors. Hitler might well have exploded the world’s first atomic bomb.

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In a strange fashion, however, Hitler knew that he was doomed from the very beginning, and so did Germany as far as Hitler’s hopes for it were concerned. He yearned for destructions of his earlier ideals. This meant that he often sabotaged his own efforts, and several important Allied victories were the result of such sabotaging. In the same way, Germany did not have the [atomic] bomb for the same reasons.

Now, however, we come to Hiroshima, where this highly destructive bomb was exploded (on August 6, 1945) — and for what reason? To save life, to save American lives. The intent to save American lives was certainly “good” — at the expense of the Japanese this time. In that regard, America’s good was not Japan’s, and an act taken to “save life” was also designed to take individual lives.

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At what expense is “the good” to be achieved — and whose idea of the good is to be the criterion? Man’s and woman’s pursuit of the good, to some extent now, fathered the Inquisition and the Salem witch hunts. Politically, many today believe that Russia/Iran is “the enemy,” and that therefore any means may be taken to destroy that country. Some people within the United States believe fervently that “the establishment” is rotten to the core, and that any means is justified to destroy it. Some people believe that homosexuals and lesbians are “evil,” that somehow they lack the true qualities of humanness [and therefore need not be treated with normal respect]. These are all value judgements involving our ideas of the good.

Very few people start out trying to be as bad as possible. Al least some criminals feel that in stealing they are simply righting society’s wrongs. I am not saying that is their only motive, but in one way or another they manage to justify their activities by seeing them in their own version of the good and the right.

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We must realize that fanatics always deal with grandiose ideals, while at the same time they believe in man’s and woman’s sinful nature, and the individual’s lack of power. They cannot trust the expression of the self, for they are convinced of its duplicity. Their ideals then seem even more remote. Fanatics call others to social action. Since they do not believe that the individual is ever effective, their groups are not assemblies of private individuals come reasonably together, pooling individual resources. They are instead congregations of people who are afraid to assert their individuality, who hope to find it in the group, or hope to establish a joint individuality — and that is an impossibility.

True individuals can do much through social action, and the species is a social one, but people who are afraid of their individuality will never find it in a group, but only a caricature of their own powerlessness.

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Hitler’s espousal of a German-Aryan super-race is an excellent example of how a leader can subvert history to his own ends. Anthropologists do not assign any validity to “Aryan” as a racial term. In Nazi eyes, Aryans were the non-Jewish, Caucasian, “Nordic” descendants of the prehistoric peoples who originally spoke the hypothetical parent language of the Indo-European language family. The Aryans flooded into India, the Middle East, and Europe from southern Russia.

The many forms of idealism

Sometimes it is difficult to identify idealists, because they wear such pessimistic clothing that all we can see are the patterns of a sardonic nature, or of irony. On the other hand, many who speak most glowingly, in the most idealistic fashions, underneath are filled with the darkest aspects of pessimism and despair. If we are idealists, and if we feel relatively powerless in the world at the same time, and if our idealism is general and grandiose, unrelated to any practical plans for its expression, then we can find ourselves in difficulties indeed. Here are a few specific examples of what I mean.

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One man from another part of the country, begins to speak about the state of the nation, largely condemning all of his countrymen and countrywomen for their greed and stupidity. People would do anything at all for money, he/she said. He/she expresses his opinion that the species itself would almost inevitably bring about its own destruction.

He/she cites many instances of nefarious acts committed for money’s sake. A lively discussion results, but no countering opinion could enter this man’s mind or woman’s. Paul, let us call him, is an idealist at heart, but he believes that the individual has little power in the world, and so he did not pursue his personal idealism in the events of his own life. “Everyone is a slave to the system.” That is his line of belief. He took a routine job in a local business and stayed with it for over 20 years, all of the time hating to go to work, or saying that he did, and at the same time refusing to try other areas of activity that were open to him — because he was afraid to try.

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He feels he has betrayed himself, and he projects that betrayal outward until betrayal is all that he sees in the social-political world. Had he begun the work of actualizing his ideals through his own private life, he would not be in such a situation. The expression of ideals brings about satisfaction, which then of course promotes the further expression of practical idealism.

Paul speaks the same way in any social group, and therefore to extent spreads a negative and despairing aura. I do not want to define his existence by those attitudes alone, however, for when he forgets the great gulf between his idealism and practical life, and speaks about other activities, then he is full of charming energy. That energy could have sustained him far more than it has, however, had he counted on his natural interests and chosen one of those for his life’s work. He could have been an excellent teacher. He had offers of other jobs that would have pleased him more, but he is so convinced of his lack of power that he did not dare take advantage of the opportunities. There are satisfactions in his life that prevent him from narrowing his focus even further.

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If we want to change the world for the better, then we are an idealist. If we want to change the world for the better, but we believe it cannot be changed one whit, then we are a pessimist, and our idealism will only haunt us. If we want to change the world for the better, but we believe that it will grow worse, despite everyone’s efforts, then we are a truly despondent, perhaps misguided idealist. If we want to change the world for the better, and if we are determined to do so, no matter at what cost to oneself or others, no matter what the risk, and if we believe that those ends justify any means at our disposal, then we are a fanatic.

Fanatics are inverted idealists. Usually they are vague grandiose dreamers, whose plans almost completely ignore the full dimensions of normal living. They are unfulfilled idealists who are not content to express idealism in steps, one at a time, or indeed to wait for the practical workings of active expression. They demand immediate action. They want to make the world over in their own images. They cannot bear the expression of tolerance or opposing ideas. They are the most self-righteous of the self-righteous, and they will sacrifice almost anything — their own lives or the lives of others. They will justify almost any crime for the pursuit of those ends.

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Another example: Two young women. They are exuberant, energetic, and filled with youthful idealism. They want to change the world. Working with the Ouija board, they received messages telling them that they could indeed have a part in a great mission. One young lady wants to quit her job, stay at home, and immerse herself in “psychic work,” hoping that her part in changing the world could be accomplished in that manner. The other is an office worker.

There is nothing more stimulating, more worthy of actualization, than the desire to change the world for the better. That is indeed each person’s mission. We begin by working in that area of activity that is our own unique one, with our own life and activities. We begin in the corner of an office, or on the assembly line, or in the advertising agency, or in the kitchen. We begin where we are.

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If Paul, mentioned earlier, had begun where he was, he would be a different, happier, more fulfilled person today. And to some extent or other, his effect on all the other people he has met would have been far more beneficial.

When we fulfill our own abilities, when we express our personal idealism through acting it out to the best of our ability in our daily life, then we are changing the world for the better.

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My friend Sophia has abilities , and she is banking on them, developing them in a practical way. She believes that she forms her own reality. She quenched doubts that she was not good enough to succeed, or that it was too difficult to get ahead in the fitness business. The satisfaction of performance leads her to more expansive creativity, and to her natural sense of personal power. Through developing those abilities personally, she will contribute to the enjoyment of others. She is an idealist. She will try to bring a greater sense of values to the fitness/health industry, for example, and she is willing to do the work necessary.

Youth is full of strength, however, so she find a way to give her own abilities greater expression, and hence to increase her own sense of power. Though sometimes she is dealing with dark periods of despair.

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Idealism also presupposes “the good” as opposed to “the bad,” so how can the pursuit of “the good” often lead to the expression of “the bad?” For that we will have to look further.

There is one commandment above all, in practical terms — a Christian commandment that can be used as a yardstick. It is good because it is something we can understand practically: “Thou shalt not kill.” That is clear enough. Under most conditions we know when we have killed. That Commandment is a much better road to follow, for example than: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” for many of us do not love ourselves to begin with, and can scarcely love our neighbor as well. The idea is that is we love our neighbor we will not treat him/her poorly, much less kill him/her — but the commandment: “Thou shalt not kill,” says we shall not kill our neighbor no matter how we feel about him/her. So let us say in a new commandment: “Thou shalt not kill even in the pursuit of our ideals.”

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What does that mean? In practical terms it would mean that we would not wage war for the sake of peace. It would mean that we did not kill animals in experiments, taking their lives in order to protect the sacredness of human life. That would be a prime directive: “Thou shalt not kill even in the pursuit of our ideals” — for man and woman has killed for the sake of his/her ideals as much as he/she ever killed for greed, or lust, or even the pursuit of power on its own merits.

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We are a fanatic of we consider possible killing for the pursuit of our ideal. For example, our ideal may be — for ideals differ — the production of endless energy for the uses of mankind and womankind, and we may believe so fervently in that ideal — this added convenience to life — that we considered the hypothetical possibility of that convenience being achieved at the risk of losing some lives along the way, that is fanaticism.

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It means that we are not willing to take the actual steps in physical reality to achieve the ideal, but that we believe that the end justifies the means: “Certainly some lives may be lost along the way, but overall, mankind and womankind will benefit.” That is the usual argument. The sacredness of life cannot be sacrificed for life’s convenience, or the quality of life itself will suffer. In the same manner, say, the ideal is to protect human life, and in the pursuit of that ideal we give generations of various animals deadly diseases, and sacrifice their lives. Our justification may be that people have souls and animals do not, or that the quality of life is less in the animals, but regardless of those arguments this is fanaticism — and the quality of human life itself suffers as a result, for those who sacrifice any kind of life along the way lose some respect for all life, human life included. The ends do not justify the means.

Psychological Fallout

Characteristics of a cult; There are fanaticism, a closed mental environment, the rousing of hopes toward an ideal that seemed unachievable because of the concentration upon all of the barriers that seemed to stand in its way.

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Most cults have their own specialized language of one kind of another — particular phrases used repetitively — and this special language further serves to divorce the devotees from the rest of the world. This practice was also followed by those at Jonestown. Loyalty to friends and family was discouraged, and so those in Jonestown had left strong bonds of intimacy behind. They felt threatened by the world, which was painted by their beliefs so that it presented a picture of unmitigated evil and corruption. All of this should be fairly well recognized. The situation led to the deaths of hundreds.

The Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant situation potentially threatened the lives of many thousands, and in that circle of events the characteristics of a cult are less easy to discern. Yet they are present. We have scientific cults as well as religious ones.

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Religion and science both loudly proclaim their search for truth, although they are seemingly involved in completely opposing systems. They both treat their beliefs as truths, with which no one should tamper. They search for beginnings and endings. The scientists have their own vocabulary, which is used to reinforce the exclusive nature of science. Now I am speaking of the body of science in general terms here, for here is in a way a body of science that exists as a result of each individual scientist’s participation. A given scientist man act quite differently in his family life and as a scientist. He/she may love his/her family dog, for example, while at the same time think nothing of injecting other animals with diseased tissue in his/her professional capacity.

Granting that, however, cults interact, and so there is quite a relationship between the state of religion, when it operates as a cult, and the state of science when it operates as a cult. Right now our cultish religions exist in response to the cultish behavior of science. Science insists it does not deal with values, but leaves those to philosophers. In stating that the universe is an accidental creation, however, a meaning less chance conglomeration formed by an unfeeling cosmos, it states quite clearly its belief that the universe and man’s existence has no value. All that remains is what pleasure or accomplishment can somehow be wrested from man’s individual biological processes.

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A recent article in a national magazine speaks about the latest direction of progress in the field of psychology, saying that man and woman will realize that his/her moods, thoughts, and feelings are the result of the melody of chemicals that swirl in his/her brain. That statement devalues man’s and woman’s subjective world.

The scientists claim a great idealism. They claim to have the way toward truth. Their “truth” is to be found by studying the objective world, the world of objects, including animals and stars, galaxies and mice — but by viewing these objects as if they are themselves without intrinsic value, as if their existence have no meaning.

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Now those beliefs separate man and woman from his/her own nature. He/she cannot trust oneself — for who can rely upon the accidental bubbling of hormones and chemicals that somehow form a stew called consciousness — an unsavory brew at best, so the field of science will forever escape opening up into any great vision of the meaning of life. It cannot value life, and so in its search for the ideal it can indeed justify in its philosophy the possibility of an accident that might kill many many people through direct or indirect means, and kill the unborn as well.

That possibility is indeed written in the scientific program. There are plans, though faulty ones, of procedures to be taken in case of accident — so in our world that probability exists, and is not secret. As a group the scientists rigorously oppose the existence of telepathy or clairvoyance, or of any philosophy that brings these into focus. Only lately have some begun to think in terms of mind affecting matter, and even such a possibility disturbs them profoundly, because it shatters the foundations of their philosophical stance.

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The scientists have long stood on the side of “intelligence and reason,” logical thought, and objectivity. They are trained to be unemotional, to stand apart from their experience, to separate themselves from nature, and to view any emotional characteristics of their own with an ironical eye. Again, they have stated that they are neutral in the world of values. They became, until recently, the new priests. All problems, it seems, could be solved scientifically. This applied to every avenue of life: to health matters, social disorders, economics, even to war and peace.

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How did such scientific gentlemen and gentlewomen, with all of their precise paraphernalia, with all of their objective and reasonable viewpoints, end up with a nuclear plant that ran askew, that threatened present and future life? And what about the people who love nearby?

Everything in nature is intentional and useful

Everything in nature is intentional; therefore dreams must fulfill important roles in people’s lives — but how, in ordinary terms?

Even if we don’t consciously remember our dreams, we do get the message. Part of it will appear in our daily experience in one way or another — in our conversation or daily events.

Because dreams are such a perfect combination of stimuli from the inner environment and the exterior environment, other events are often used to trigger inner dream messages, just as the opposite occurs. And in a gathering of three people watching the same TV drama, say, each of them might be interpreting different portions of the program so that those portions correlate with their individual dreams of the night before, and serve to bring them their dream messages in ways they can accept.

Great discrimination is used to do that; for example, one newspaper item is noticed over others because a certain portion of that item represents some of the dream’s message. Another portion might come from a neighbor — but from the dreamer’s interpretation of the neighbor’s remarks, that further brings home the dream message. In such cases the individual will scarcely be aware that a dream is involved.

We might dream of going away on a long trip by car, only to find that a tire blew when we were driving too fast. We may never remember the dream. One way or another, however, we will hit upon some kind of situation — a portion of a TV drama, perhaps — in which a tire is blown. Or we will see an item of that nature in the internet, or we will hear a story, told directly or indirectly about the same kind of dilemma. The magnitude of the physical stimuli with which we are surrounded makes it possible, of course, for any given day. Even then, we might not recall the dream, but the situation itself as it comes to our attention might make us check our tires, decide to put off our trip, or instead lead us to inner speculation about whether we are going too fast in a certain direction for our own good at this time. But we will get the dream’s message.

Psychological objects

Objects just originate in man’s and woman’s imagination, there’s always a strong connection between objects and man’s and woman’s dreams. They act as symbols of inner reality, so it’s only natural that whether he/she is aware of it or not, man/woman perceives objects in such a fashion that they also stand for symbols that first originate in his/her dreams.

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This also has to do with large events, that we might for convenience’s sake think of for now as psychological objects — that is, events seen and recognized by large numbers of people in the same way that objects are.

The Christ drama is a case in point, where private and mass dreams were then projected outward into the historical context of time, and then reacted to in such a way that various people became exterior participants — but in a far larger mass dream that was then interpreted in the most literal of physical terms. Even while it was, it also got the message across, though the inner drama itself was not recalled; and as the dream merged with historical events, and it was interpreted by so many, its message also became distorted — or rather, it mixed and merged with other such dreams, whose messages were far different.

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Look at our nuclear-reactor troubles at the plant by Fukushima (Japan). The entire idea of nuclear power was first a dream — an act of the imagination of the part of private individuals — and then through fiction and the arts, a dream on the part of many people. Instantly, probabilities spun out from that dream in all directions, vast potential and dangers.

It was hardly a coincidence that this particular situation arrived in the social climate first of all portrayed in a movie.

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Nuclear power stands for power, plain and simple. Is it good or bad? It stands in man’s and woman’s dreams as belonging to God: the power of the universe. Man and woman has always considered oneself, in our terms as set apart from nature, so he/she must feel set apart from nature’s power — and there must be a great division in his/her dreams between the two. Nuclear energy in fact, then, comes as a dream symbol, and emerges into the world as something to be dealt with.

Fundamentalists think of nuclear power as a force that God might use, say, to destroy the world. That event in Japan means one thing to them. Some of the scientists equate nuclear power with man’s and woman’s great curiosity, and feel that they wrest this great energy from nature, smarter than their fellow men — so they read those events in their own way. The probabilities are still surging, of course, and in private and mass dreams people try out all kinds of endings for that particular story.

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All in all, millions of people are involved, who will be affected of course to one extent or another.

There is a tie-in, and it’s that the Christ drama happened as a result of man’s and woman’s dream, at least, of achieving brotherhood — a quiet, secure sense of consciousness, and a morality that would sustain him/her in the physical world.

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The Christ drama did splash over into historical reality. Man’s and woman’s fears of not achieving brotherhood, or not achieving a secure state of consciousness, or a workable morality, result in his/her dreams of destruction, however they are expressed. And indeed, the present physical event as it exists now at the energy plant Fukushima can easily be likened to — and is — a warning dream to change man’s and woman’s actions.

Animals do not “think” of long lives or short lives…

But of a brilliant present, which in a way, compared to our framework, has no beginning or end. Time in those terms, does not exist for them — and in the deepest of terms, a life’s quality on a human scale cannot be judged primarily in terms of its length, either. Time is in the present for an animal, in a way its life was eternal to it, whether it lived 10 months or 10 years, or whatever.

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There is no such thing as a cat consciousness, basically speaking, or a bird consciousness. In those terms, there are instead simply consciousnesses that choose to take certain focuses.

I want to avoid tales of the transmigration of the souls of men to animals, say — a badly distorted version of something else entirely. If there is no consciousness ‘tailored’ to be a cat’s or a dog’s then there is no prepackaged, predestined, particular consciousness that is meant to be human, either.

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The cellular announcement is made that the strong possibility exist, for the birth and death of each cell is known to all cells in the world. Cellular communication is too fast for us to follow.

The quality of identity is far more mysterious than we understand, for we assign an identity in a blanket fashion, say, to each living thing. A dead cat for example exists in the following manner: ‘The units of consciousness that organized to form his/her identity as we knew it, still form that pattern — but not physically. The cat exists as itself in the greater living memory of its own ‘larger’ selfhood. Its organization from which it came.

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That identity remains vital, known to itself whether or not it is reactivated in our terms. This is not necessarily always the case — and there is great variation — but the cat identifies with ‘the larger organization’ of the litter [that is, with his brothers and sisters, all of whom may be also dead], and the consciousnesses of that litter are together. They may be forming a gestalt, where the litter’s consciousnesses will merge to form a new identity.

 

We could not live without viruses

Nor could our biological reality as we know it exist without viruses.

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Viruses appear to be “the bad guys,” and as a rule we think of them separately, as for example the smallpox virus. There are overall affiliations in which viruses take part, however, in which delicate balances are maintained biologically. Each body contains countless viruses that could be deadly at any given time and under certain conditions. These — and I am putting it as simply as possible — take turns being active or inactive within the body, in accordance with the body’s overall condition. Viruses that are “deadly in certain stages are not in others, and in those later stages they react biologically in quite beneficial ways, adding to the body’s stability by bringing about necessary changes, say, in cellular activities that are helpful at given rates of action. These in turn trigger other cellular changes, again of a beneficial nature.

As an example from another field, consider poisons. Belladona can be quite deadly, yet small doses of it were known to aid the body in disease conditions.

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The viruses in the body have a social, cooperative existence. Their effects become deadly only under certain conditions. The viruses must be triggered into destructive activity, and this happens only at a certain point, when the individual involved is actively seeking either death or a crisis situation biologically.

The initial contagion in such cases is always emotional and mental. Social conditions are usually involved, so that an individual is, say, at the lower end of a poor social environment, a seeming victim of it, or in a situation where his individual values as a social member is severely weakened.

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In the same way that a member of such a society can go [askew], blow his stack, go overboard, commit antisocial acts, so in the same fashion such a person can instead trigger the viruses, wreck their biological social order, so that some of them suddenly become deadly, or run [amok]. So of course the resulting diseases are infectious. To that degree they are social diseases. It is not so much that a virus, say, suddenly turns destructive — though it does — as it is that the entire cooperative structure within which all the viruses are involved becomes insecure and threatened.

Viruses mutate. Such is often the case. It seems quite scientific to believe in inoculations against such dangerous diseases — and certainly, scientifically, inoculations seem to work. People in our time right now are not plagued by smallpox, for example. Some cultures have believed that illnesses were caused by demons. Medicine men, through certain ceremonies, would try to rid the body of the demons — and those methods worked also. The belief system was tight and accepted, and it only began to fail when societies encountered “civilized views.”

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If we call the demons “negative beliefs,” however, then we have taken strides forward. People continue to die of diseases. Many of our scientific procedures, including inoculations, of themselves “cause” new diseases. It does not help a patient inoculated against smallpox and polio if [eventually] he/she dies as a result of his negative beliefs.

What I have said about viruses applies to all biological life. Viruses are “highly intelligent” — meaning that they react quickly to stimuli. They are responsive to emotional states. They are social and usually spread through person-to-person contact. This is why many people try to limit their exposure to these viruses by wearing things like a surgical-mask,” for example. By wearing face masks, and other things similar, people can reduce their chances of getting the virus and spreading it on to others. Their spread determines their scale of life. This usually varies considerably, and some can be inactive for centuries, and revive. They have extensive memory patterns, biologically imprinted. Some can multiply in the tens of thousands within seconds. They are in many ways the basis of biological life, but we are aware of them only when they show “a deadly face.”

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We are not aware of the inner army of viruses within the body that protect it constantly. Host and virus both need each other, and both are part of the same life cycle.

Everyhour in every day we get better and better

A suggestion solemnly repeated many times, particularly after the turn of the century. This might sound like a bit of overly optimistic, though maybe delightful, nonsense. To a degree, however, that suggestion worked for millions of people. It was not a cure-all. It did not help those who believed in the basic untrustworthiness of their own natures. The suggestion was far from a bit of fluff, however, for it could serve — and it did — as a framework about which new beliefs could rally.

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We often have in our society the opposite suggestion, however, given quite regularly: “Everyday, in every way, I am growing worse, and so is the world.” We have meditations for disaster, beliefs that invite private and mass tragedies. They are usually masked by the polite clothing of conventional acceptance. Many thousands may die in a particular battle or war, for example. The deaths are accepted almost as a matter of course. These are victims of war, without question. It seldom occurs to anyone that these are victims of beliefs — since the guns are quite real, and the bombs and the combat.

The enemy is obvious. His intentions are evil. Wars are basically examples of mass suicide — embarked upon, however, with all of the battle’s paraphernalia, carried out through mass suggestion, and through the nation’s greatest resources, by men who are convinced that the universe is unsafe, that the self cannot be trusted, and that strangers are always hostile. We take it for granted that the species is aggressively combative. We must out-think the enemy nation before we ourselves are destroyed. These paranoiac tendencies are largely hidden beneath man’s nationalistic banners.

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“The end justifies the means.” This is another belief, most damaging. Religious wars always have paranoiac tendencies, for the fanatic always fears conflicting beliefs, and systems that embrace them.

We have occasional epidemics that flare up, with victims left dead. Partially, these are also victims of beliefs, for we believe that we have natural body is the natural prey of viruses and diseases over which we have no personal control, except as it is medically provided. In the medical profession, the overall suggestion that operates is one that emphasizes and exaggerates the body’s vulnerability, and plays down its natural healing abilities. People die when they are ready to die, for reasons that are their own. No person dies without a reason. We are not taught that, however, so people do not recognize their own reasons for dying, and are not taught to recognize their own reasons for living — because we are told the life itself is an accident in a cosmic game of chance.

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Therefore, we cannot trust our own intuitions. We think that our purpose in life must be to be something else, or someone else, than we are. In such a situation many people seek out causes, and hope to merge the purposes of the cause with their own unrecognized one.

There have been many great men and women involved in causes, to which they gave their energies, resources, and support. Those people, however, recognized the importance of their own beings, and added that vitality to causes in which they believed. They did not submerge their individuality, and became more themselves. They extended their horizons, pushed beyond the conventional mental landscapes — driven by zest and vitality, by curiosity and love, and not by fear.

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Many people lose their lives in tragedies. People willingly take their lives at the command of their leaders. No armies stand outside. Those people succumb to an epidemic of beliefs, to an environment [that is] closed mentally and physically. The villains consists of the following ideas that the world is unsafe, and growing deadly; that the species itself is tainted by a deadly intent; that the individual has no power over his or her reality; that society or social conditions exist as things in themselves, and their purposes run directly counter to the fulfillment of the individual; and lastly, that the end justifies the means, and that the action of any kind of god is powerless in the world.

The people who kill themselves are idealists — perfectionists of exaggerated quality, whose very desire for the good was tainted and distorted by those beliefs just mentioned. For those beliefs must gradually shut out perception of good from experience.

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Man/Woman is of good intent. When we see evil everywhere in man’s and woman’s intent — in our own actions and those of others — then we set oneself up against our own existence, and that of our kind. We focus upon the gulf between our ideals and our experience, until the gulf is all that is real. We will not see man’s and woman’s good intent, or we will do so ironically — for in comparison with our ideals, good in the world appears to be so minute as to be a mockery.

To this extent experience becomes closed. Such people are frightened of themselves, and of the nature of their existence. They may be intelligent or stupid, gifted, or mundane, but they are frightened of experiencing themselves as themselves, or of acting according to their own wishes. They help create the dogma or system or cult to which they “fall prey.” They expect their leader to act for them. To a certain extent he/she soaks up their paranoia, until it becomes an unquenchable force in him/her, and he/she is their “victim” as much as his/her followers are his/her “victims.”

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In the Middle East affair, we have “red-blooded Americans” dying on a foreign shore, under a banner of wars, which under certain circumstances have been acceptable. We did not have Americans dying in a bloody revolution, caught among terrorists. We had instead Americans succumbing in a foreign land to some belief that are peculiarly American, and home-grown.

We have American belief that money will solve almost any social problem, that the middle-class way of life is the correct “democratic” one, and that the difficulty between blacks and whites in particular can be erased by applying social bandages, rather than by attacking the basic beliefs behind the problem.

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Many young men and women have come to adulthood in fine ranch houses in good neighborhoods. They would seem to be at the peak of life, the product of the best America has to offer. They never had to work for a living, perhaps. they may have attended colleges — but they are the first to realize that such advantages do not necessarily add to the quality of life, for they are the first to arrive at such an enviable position.

The parents have worked to give their children such advantages, and the parents themselves are sometimes confused by their children’s attitudes. The money and position, however, have often been attained as a result of the belief in man’s and woman’s competitive nature — and that belief itself erodes the very prizes it produces: The fruit is bitter in the mouth. Many of the parents believed, quite simply, that the purpose of life was to make more money. Virtue consisted of the best car, a house, or swimming pool – proof that one could survive in a tooth-and-claw world. People may need money to build a lifestyle and maintain those standards (for instance, house renovation or pool remodeling).

Yes, lifestyle could be a necessity of the current generation, but the children wondered: What about those other feelings that stirred in their consciousness? What about those purposes they sensed? The hearts of some of them were like vacuums, waiting to be filled. They looked for values, but at the same time, they felt that they were themselves sons and daughters of a species tainted, at loose ends, with no clear destinations.

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They tried various religions, and in the light of their opinions of themselves their earlier advantages seemed only to damn them further. They tried social programs, and found a curious sense of belonging with the disadvantaged, for they were also rootless. The disadvantaged and the advantaged alike then join in a bond of hopelessness, endowing a leader with a power they felt they did not possess.

They finally retreated into isolation from the world they knew, and the voice of their leader at the was magnified merging of their own voices. In death they fulfilled their purposes, merging a mass statement. It would make Americans question the nature of [suicide’s]their society, their religions, their politics, and their beliefs.

Each suicide decided to go along that course.

The pristine uniqueness of the individual

I strongly state the pristine uniqueness of the individual. I also say that there are no limitations to the self. Many people express themselves through their diamond art, I’ve heard how-to-frame-diamond-paintings framing is a great way to explore yourself through an artistic medium. The initial two statements can appear to be contradictory. When we are children, our sense of identity does not include old age in usual experience. When we are an old person, we do not identify ourselves as a child. Our sense of identity, then, changes physically through the years. In a way it seems that we add on to oneself through experience, becoming “more than we were before.” We move in and out of probable self hoods, while at the same time — usually with the greatest of ease — we maintain an identity of oneself. The mosaics of consciousness are brilliant to behold.

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When I speak of mosaics, one might think of small segments, shining and of different shapes and sizes. Yet the mosaics of consciousness are more like lights, radiating through themselves and through a million spectrums.

The infant sees mental images before birth, before the eyes are open. Our memory, it seems, is our own — yet we have a history of other existences. We remember other faces, even though the mind we call the conscious one may not recognize the images from that deep inner memory. It must often clothe them in fantasy. We are oneself. Each self is secure in its own identity, unique in its characteristics, meeting life and the seasons in a way that has never happened before, and will never happen again — yet still we are a unique version of our greater self. We share in certain overall patterns that are in themselves original.

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It is as we shared, say, a psychological planet, populated by people who had the same roots, the same ground of being — as if we shared the same continents, mountains, and oceans. Instead we share patterns of development, images, memories, and desires. There are reflected in our physical life, and in one way or another elements of our life are shared in the same fashion.

Painting can be a teacher, leading us through and beyond images, and back to them again. Painting was meant to bring out from the recesses of our being the accumulation of our knowledge in the form of images — not or people we might meet now on the street, but portraits of the residents of the mind. The residents of the mind are very real. In a certain fashion, they are our parents more than our parents are, and when we express their realities, they are also expressing ours. All time is simultaneous. Only the illusion of time on each of our parts keeps us from greeting each other. To some extent, when we paint such portraits we are forming psychic bridges between ourselves and those other selves: Our own identity as oneself grows.

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Only in a manner of speaking, there are certain –“power selves,” or personalities; parts of our greater identity who utilized fairly extraordinary amounts of energy in very constructive ways. That energy is also a part of our personality — and as we paint such images we will undoubtedly feel some considerable bursts of ambition, and even exuberance. The feelings will allow us to identify the images of such personalities.

The paint brush can indeed be a key to other worlds, of course. Our own emotional feelings carry over in such paintings. Encourage the dream activity, and there will be a correspondence between our dreams, paintings and writings. Each one encourages the others. Writing gains vitality from painting, our painting from writing — and the dreaming self at one time or another is in contact with all other Aspects of reality.

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If we cannot trust our private self, then we will not trust oneself in our relationships with others or in society.

If we do not trust private self, we will be afraid of power, for we will fear that we are bound to misuse it. We may then purposefully put oneself in a position of weakness, while all of the time claiming that we seek influence. Not understanding oneself, we will be in a quandary, and the mechanics of experience will appear mysterious and capricious.

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There are certain situations, however, in which those mechanics can be clearly seen, and so let us examine some such circumstances. A few that I discuss may be exaggerated, in that they are not “normal” conditions in most people’s lives. Their rather bizarre nature, however, throws a giant spotlight upon intents, purposes, and cross-purposes, that too often appear in the lives of quite normal men and women.

When people are convinced that the self is untrustworthy, for whatever reasons, or that the universe is not safe, then instead of luxuriating in the use of their abilities, exploring the physical and mental environments, they begin to pull in their realities — to contract their abilities, to over-control their environments. They become frightened people — and frightened people do not want freedom, mental or physical. They want shelter, a definite set of rules. They want to be told what is good and bad. They lean toward compulsive behavior patterns. They seek out leaders — political, scientific, or religious — who will order their lives for them.

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I want to discuss about people who are frightened of themselves, and the roles that they seek in private and social behavior. And discuss closed environments, whether mental or physical, in which questioning becomes taboo and dangerous. Such environments may be private, as in the case of persons with what are generally called mental disorders, or they may be shared by many, in — for example — mass paranoia.

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There are religious cults, and there are also scientific ones. These are people who follow a cult that is purely private, with rules and regulations as rigorous as any sent down to a group of frightened followed by a despot of whatever kind. Such conditions exist, and I hope that my blog discussion will lead to great understanding. An introduction of concepts that will privately encourage greater productivity and creativity, and therefore automatically contribute to more healthy and sane social ways.

People die for a “cause” only when they have found no cause to live by

And when it seems that the world is devoid of meaning, then some people will make a certain kind of statement through the circumstances connected with their own deaths.

We will shortly return to a discussion of such “causes,” and their relationship with the person’s feeling that life has or does not have a meaning.

For now, consider a very simple act. You want to walk across the room and pick up a paper, for example. That purpose is simple and direct enough. It automatically propels your body in the proper fashions, even though you are not consciously aware of the inner mechanisms involved. You don’t imagine the existence of blocks or impediments in your way, in the form of additional furniture placed in your path by accident, fate, or design. You make a simple straight path in the proper direction. The act has meaning because it is something you want to do.

There are purposes not nearly as easy to describe, however, intents of psychological nature, yearnings toward satisfactions not so easily categorized. Man and woman experiences ambitions, desires, likes and dislikes of a highly emotional nature — and at the same time he/she has intellectual beliefs about oneself, his/her feelings, and the world. These are the result of training, for we use our mind as we have been taught.

One person may desire fame, and even possess certain abilities that he or she wants to use, and that will indeed lead to that claim. Such a person may also believe that fortune or fame leads to unhappiness, licentiousness, or in some other way brings about disastrous conditions. Here we have a clear purpose to use abilities and receive acclaim. We also have another quite opposing clear purpose: to avoid fame.

There are people who want children and mates, and have those excellent qualities that would serve them well as parents. Some of those same individuals may be convinced that love is wrong, however or that sex is debasing, or that children mean the end of youth. Such persons may then find themselves breaking off good relationships with those of the other sex for no apparent reason, or forcing the other party to break with them. Here again we have two clear purposes, but they oppose each other.

Those who believe in the ultimate meaning of their lives can withstand such pressures, and often such dilemmas, and others like them, are resolved in an adequate-enough fashion. Disappointments, conflicts, and feelings of powerlessness of those who believe that life itself has little meaning. Such people begin to imagine impediments in their paths as surely as anyone would who imagined that physical barriers were suddenly put up between them and a table they wanted to reach at the end of the room.

When we simply want to reach a destination in space, there are maps to explain the nature of the land and waterways. When we are speaking of psychological role of destinations, however, there is more to consider.

Once our body is mobilized when we want to move. It responds to our intent and purpose. It is our private inner environment, psychologically speaking. Our psychological intent instantly mobilize our energies on a psychic level. We have what I will call “a body of thought,” and it is that “body” that constantly springs into action at our intent.

When we want to go downtown, we know that destination exists, though we may be miles away from it. When we want to find a mate we take it for granted that a potential mate exists, though where in space and time we do not know. Our intent to find a mate sends out “strands of consciousness,” however, composed of desire and intent. Like detectives, these search the world, looking in a completely different way than a physical sleuth. The world is probed with our characteristics in mind, seeking for someone else with characteristics that will best suit our own. And whatever our purpose is, the same procedure on a psychic level is involved.

The organization of our feelings, beliefs, and intents directs the focus about which our physical reality is built. This follows with impeccable spontaneously and order. If we believe in the sinfulness of the world, for instance, then we will search out from normal sense data those facts that confirm our belief. But beyond that, at other levels we also organize our mental world in such a way that we attract to oneself events that will confirm our beliefs.

Death is a part of us, even as birth is. Its import varies according to the individual — and in a certain fashion, death is our last chance to make a statement of import in any given life, if we feel we have not done so earlier.

Some people’s deaths are quiet periods. Some others’ are exclamation points, so that later it can be said that the person’s death loomed almost greater in importance that the life itself. Some people die in adolescence, filled with the flush of life’s possibilities, still half-dazzled by the glory of childhood, and ready to step with elation upon the threshold of adulthood — or so it seems. Many such young persons prefer to die at that time, where they feel the possibilities for fulfillment are intricate and endless. They are often idealists, who beneath extraordinary ability — still feel that life could no more than sully those abilities, dampen those spiritual winds, and darken that promise that could never be fulfilled.

This is not the reason for all such deaths by any means, but there is usually an implied statement in them so that the death seems to have an additional meaning that makes parents and contemporaries question. Such individuals usually choose deaths with a high dramatic content, because regardless of appearances they have not been able to express the dramatic contents of their psyches in the world as it seems to be to them. They turn their deaths into lessons for other people, forcing them to ask questions that would not be asked before. There are also mass statements of the same kind for people come together to die, however, to seeks company in death as they do in life People who feel powerless, and who find no cause for living, can come together then and “die for a cause” that did not give them the will or reason to live. They will seek out others of their kind.

The inner mechanics of emotions and beliefs are complicated, but these are individuals who feel that physical life has failed them. They are powerless in society. They think in black and white, and conflicts between their emotions, and their beliefs about their emotions, lead them to seek some kind of shelter in a rigid belief system that will give them rules to go by. Such systems lead to the formation of cults, and the potential members seek out a leader who will serve their purposes as surely as they seem to serve his/her — through an inner mechanics of which each member is at least somewhat aware.