Tag Archives: Garden of Eden

Very few people really act from an evil intent

Any unfortunate situations in the fields of medicine, science, or religion result not from any determined effort to sabotage the “idea,”” but instead happen because men and women often believe that any means is justified in the pursuit of the ideal.

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When science seems to betray us, in our society, it does so because its methods are unworthy of its intent — so unworthy and so out of line with science’s prime purpose that the methods themselves almost amount to an insidious anti-scientific attitude that goes all unrecognized. The same applies to medicine, of course, when in its worthy purpose to save life, its methods often lead to quite unworthy experimentation, so that life is destroyed for the sake of saving, say, a greater number of lives. On the surface level, such methods appear sometimes regrettable but necessary, but the deeper implications far outdo any temporary benefits, for through such methods men and women lose sight of life’s sacredness, and begin to treat it contemptuously.

We will often condone quite reprehensible acts if we think they were committed for the sake of a greater good. We have a tendency to look for outright evil, to think in terms of “the powers of good and evil,” and I am quite sure that many are convinced of evil’s force. Evil does not exist in those terms, and that is why so many seemingly idealistic people can be partners in quite reprehensible actions, while telling themselves that such acts are justified, since they are methods toward a good end.

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That is why fanatics feel justified in their actions. When we indulge in such black-and-white thinking, we treat our ideals shabbily. Each act that is not keeping with that ideal begins to unravel the ideal at its very core. If we feel unworthy, or powerless to act, and if we are idealistic, we may begin to feel that the ideal exists so far in the future that it is necessary to take steps we might not otherwise take to achieve it. And when this happens, the ideal is always eroded. If we want to be a true practicing idealist, then each step that we take along the way must be worthy of our goal.

In our country, the free enterprise system is immersed in strange origins. It is based upon the democratic belief in each individual’s right to pursue a worthy and equitable life. But that also became bound up, with Darwinian ideas of the survival of the fittest, and with the belief, then, that each individual must seek his or her own good at the expense of others, and by the quite erroneous conception that all of the members of a given species are in competition with each other, and that each species is in further competition with each other species.

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The “laws” of supply and demand are misconceptions based upon a quite uncomplimentary belief in man’s and woman’s basic greedy nature. In the past we treated the land in our country as if our species being the “fittest,” had the right to survive at the expense of all other species, and at the expense of the land itself. The ideal of the country was and is an excellent one: the right of each individual to pursue an equitable, worthy existence, with dignity. The means, however, have helped erode that ideal, and the public interpretation of Darwin’s principles was, quite unfortunately, transferred to the economic area, and to the image of man and woman as a political animal.

Religion and science alike denied other species any real consciousness. When man and woman spoke of the sacredness of life — in his or her more expansive moods — he or she she referred to human life alone. We are not in competition with other species, nor are we in any natural competition with ourselves. Nor in the natural world in any way the result of competitiveness among species. If that were the case we would have no world at all.

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Individually, we exist physically because of the unsurpassed cooperation that exists just biologically between our species and all others, and on deeper levels because of the cellular affiliations that exist among the cells of all species. Value fulfillment is a psychological and physical propensity that exists in each unit of consciousness, propelling it toward its own greatest fulfillment in such a way that its individual fulfillment also adds to best possible development on the part of each other such unit of consciousness. This propensity operates below and within the framework of matter. It operates above as well, but I am here concerned with the cooperative nature with which value fulfillment endows all units of consciousness within our physical world.

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While we believed in competition, then competition became not only a reality but an ideal. Children are taught to compete against each other. The child naturally “competes” against herself or himself in an urge to outdo old performance with new. Competition, however, has been promoted as the ideal at all levels of activity. It is as if we must look at others to see how we are doing — and when we are taught not to trust our own abilities, then of course we need the opinions of others overmuch. I am not speaking of any playful competition, obviously, but of a determined, rigorous, desperate, sometimes almost deadly competition, in which a person’s value is determined according to the number of individuals he or she has shunted aside.

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This is carried through in economics, politics, medicine, the sciences, and even the religions. So I would like to reinforce the fact that life is indeed a cooperative venture, and that all the steps taken toward the ideal must of themselves be life-promoting.

People often respond to the seasons in individualistic fashion, of course, using certain elements to spur them on or hold them back. No season is itself only. It exists in relationship to all the people within its boundaries.

Combine the idea of a disease with the idea of creativity

Both disease and creativity are related.

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Compare the analogy of the landscape of physical experience to the painter’s landscape — which may be dark, gloomy, filled with portents of disaster, and yet still be a work of art. In that regard, every person paints his or her own portrait in living color — a portrait that does not simply sit in a tranquil pose at a table, but one that has the full capacity for action. Those of us now living, say, are in the same life class. We look about to see how our contemporaries are getting along with their portraits, and we find multitudinous varieties: tragic self-portraits, heroic self-portraits, comic self-portraits. And all of these portraits are alive and interacting, and as they interact they form the planetary, mass social and political events of our world.

These portraits obviously have a biological reality. In a manner or speaking, now, each person dips into the same supplies of paint, and so forth — which are the elements out of which our likenesses emerge. There must be great creative leeway allowed for such portraits. Each one interacting with each other one helps form the psychological and physical reality of the species, so we are somehow involved in the formation of a multitudinous number of portraits. I simply want you to keep that analogy in the background.

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These portraits, however, are the result of creativity so inborn and miraculous that they are created automatically — an automatic art. At certain levels the species is always creatively embarked upon alternative versions of itself. The overall patterns will remain. Biological integrity is everywhere sustained. What we think of as diseases, however, are quite creative elements working at different levels, and at many levels at once.

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Many viruses are vital to physical existence, and in our terms there are gradations of activity, so that only under certain conditions do viruses turn into, say, what we think of as deadly ones. The healthiest body contains within it many so-called deadly viruses in what we may call an inactive form — inactive from our viewpoint, in that they are not causing disease. They are, however, helping to maintain the body’s overall balance. In a way in each body, the species settles upon a known status quo, and yet experiments creatively at many levels with cellular alterations, chromosomal variations, so that of course each body is unique. There are kinds of gradations, say, in the lines and kinds of disease. Certain diseases can actually strengthen the body from a prior weaker state, by calling upon the body’s full defenses. Under certain conditions, some so-called disease states could insure the species’ survival.

In a way, some disease states help to insure the survival of the species — not by weeding out the sickly but by introducing into large numbers of individuals the conditions needed to stabilize other strains within the species that need to be checked, or to “naturally inoculate” the species against a sensed greater danger.

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At the minute levels — microscopic levels — there are always some biological experiments being carried out, in a creative effort to give the species as much leeway as possible for effective action. Our body is changed biologically by our thoughts.

Our culture has its biological effect upon the species. I am not speaking of obvious connections in a derogatory manner, such as pollution and so forth. If we were thinking in old terms of evolution, then I would be saying that our cultures and civilizations actually alter the chromosomal messages. Our thoughts affect our cells, again, and they can change what are thought of as hereditary factors. Our imaginations are intimately connected with our diseases, just as our imaginations are so important in all other areas of our lives. We form our being by imaginatively considering such-and-such a possibility, and our thoughts affect our body in that regard. In a way, illness is a tool used on behalf of life, for people have given it social, economic, psychological, and religious connotations. It becomes another area of activity and of expression.

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At microscopic level there is no rigid self-structure like our own. There is identity. A cell does not fear its own death. Its identity has traveled back and forth from physical to nonphysical reality too often as a matter of course.

It “sings” with the quality of its own life. It cooperates with other cells. It affiliates itself with the body of which it is part, but in way it lends itself to that formation. The dreams of the species are highly important to its survival — not just because dreaming is a biological necessity, but because in dreams the species is immersed in deeper levels of creativity, so that those actions, inventions, ideas that will be needed in the future will appear in their proper times and places. In the old terms of evolution. I am saying that man’s and woman’s evolutionary progress was also dependent upon his or her dreams.

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Now many of the characteristics we consider human — in fact, most of them — appear to one extent or another in all other species. It was the nature of man’s and woman’s dreams, however, that was largely responsible for what we like to think of as the evolution of our species. We learned to dream differently than other creatures.

We dreamed we spoke languages before their physical invention, of course. It was the nature of our dreams, and our dreams’ creativity, that made us what we are, for otherwise we would have developed a mechanical-like language — had we developed one at all — that named designations, locations, and dealt with the most simple, objective reality: “I walked there. He walks there. The sun is hot.” We would not have had any way of conceiving of objects that did not already exist. We would not have had any way of imagining ourselves in novel situations. We would not have any overall picture of the seasons, for dreaming educated the memory and lengthened man’s and woman’s attention span. It reinforced the lessons of daily life, and was highly important in man’s and woman’s progress.

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Using the intellect alone, man and woman did not simply learn through daily experience over the generations, say, that one season followed the other. He or she lived too much in the moment for that. In one season he or she dreamed of the others, however, and in dreams he or she saw himself or herself spreading the seeds of fruits as he or she had seen the wind do in daily life.

His or her dreams reminded him or her that a cold season had come, and would come again. Most of our inventions cane in dreams, and again, it is the nature of our dreams that makes us so different from other species.

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The creativity of the species is also the result of our particular kind of dream specialization. It amounts to — a unique state of existence by itself, in which we combine the elements of physical and nonphysical reality. It is almost a threshold between the two realities, and we learned to hold our physical intent long enough at that threshold so that we have a kind of brief attention span there, and use it to draw from nonphysical reality precisely those creative elements that we need.

Animals, as a rule are less physically-oriented in their dreaming states. They do dream of physical reality, but much more briefly than us. Otherwise, they immerse themselves in dreams in different kinds of dreaming consciousness.

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When ancient man and woman had a series of mass dreams in which he and she learned how to speak. The dreams were like glossolalia — speaking in unintelligible speech sounds — yet the made sense, and man and woman began to speak.

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Also when man and and woman were with other men and women in the physical world, he and she could point to stuff to share descriptions with others, but that he or she learned to speak when he and she tried to describe dreams. It was the only way — speech — by which he or she could share data that couldn’t be seen. He or she could point to a tree and grunt, but there wasn’t anything in a dream he or she could point to. He or she had to have a method of expression to describe invisible things. Inventions could have come about when he or she tried to tell others what he or she saw in his or her dreams, too.

Every species is endowed with emotional feelings

Each species is immersed in an interior system of value fulfillment. Each species, then, is not only concerned with physical survival and the multiplication of its members, but with an intensification and fulfillment of those particular qualities that are characteristic of it.

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As far as this discussion is concerned, there are biological ideals, imprinted within the chromosomes, but there are also in-built ideals much more difficult to define, that exist as, say, mental blueprints for the development of other kinds of interior mental life, as opposed to the physical characteristics of plants or animals with which we are familiar. Our official views effectively close us off from the true evidence we might perceive of the cooperation that exists among the species, for example. Nor an I speaking of an enforced cooperation — the result of “instinct” that somehow arranges the social habits of the animals; for their habits are indeed social and cooperative.

I have read that orthodox science still does not grant man or woman with volition. According to its tenets, any such feeling of conscious choice is instead the reflection of the brain’s attitude at any given time. Yet I am saying that man has free will within the framework of his existence, and that all other species do also within the framework of his or her existence, and that all other species do also within the framework of their existences.

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The chicken cannot read a book. It cannot choose to read. The plant cannot choose to walk down the street. The chicken and the plant can choose to live or die, however — rather important issues in the existence of any entity. They can choose to like or dislike their environment, and to change it according to their individual circumstances. It is fashionable to say that some scientific laws can be proven at microscopic levels, where, for example, small particles can be accelerated far beyond their usual states. But we quite studiously ignore that feeling exists on microscopic levels, that there can be psychological particles, much less come to the conclusion that all particles are psychological particles, with their own impetuses for development and value fulfillment. That is why atoms join together to form matter. They seek the fulfillment of themselves through form. They cooperatively choose the forms that they take.

If the simplest particle is so endowed with impetus, with hidden ideals that seek fulfillment, then what about the human being? We have the propensity to search for meaning, for love, for cooperative ventures. We have the propensity to form dazzling mental and psychological creations, such as our arts and sciences and religions and civilizations. Whatever errors that we have made, or gross distortions, even those exist because of our need to find meaning in our private existences and in life itself.

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Any scientist who believes that life has no meaning has simply provided himself with what he thinks of as an unfailing support against life’s vicissitudes. If he or she says: “life has no meaning, “he or she cannot be disappointed if such is the case, for he or she is ensconced in a self-created cocoon that has meaning, because it provides a cushion against his or her deepest fears.

When a civilization does not support creativity it beings to falter. When it distrust its gifted people, rather than encouraging them, a nation is at least in trouble. Our psychologies, stressing “the norm,” made people frightened of their individual characteristics and abilities, because psychology’s norm did not fit the contours of any one human being. It did not touch the heights of the depths of human experience. People became afraid of their own individuality.

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Gifted children do not fit psychology’s picture. Gifted children do not fit the portrait of children that is sold to parents. The fact is that for many reasons gifted children merely show the latent quickness, mental agility, and curiosity and learning capacity, that is inherent in the species. They are not eccentric versions of humanity at all, but instead provide a hint of mankind’s and womankind’s true capacities.

Our brains are not empty, but well-oiled machines ready to whirl into activity at our births. They are provided with a propensity to learn — and the rudiments of knowledge as we understand it exist within the brain. In those terms, now, the brain thinks before birth. It does not simply react. Each individual has its own unique abilities. Some that involve relationships with others, we do not even have words for. Parents, however, often half-disapprove of their children if they show unusual gifts. They are afraid their children will not get along with others. They are upset because the children do not fit the norm — but no child ever fits “the norm.”

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Many adults, sensing their own abilities in one field or another, deliberately play down those abilities because they are afraid of standing out from “the masses” — or they are afraid they will be attacked by their peers. They have been taught by religion and science alike that any kind of greatness is suspect. Yet each person alive contains an elements of greatness; and more, a desire to fulfill those inner abilities.

I am not speaking of greatness in terms of fame, or in terms of usually understood artistic or intellectual abilities alone, but also of people whose lives have the capacity for great emotional content. I am speaking also of others natural abilities — that of dread communication, the conscious utilization of dreams and creativity in daily life. There are dimensions of human sentiment and psychological experience, that remain latent simply because we focus our attention so closely within the idea of “the norm.” Ay unofficial experience must then remain bizarre, eccentric, outside of our main concerns, and ignored by our sciences.

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Many children, for that matter, who are regarded as retarded by their teachers, are instead highly gifted. The same also applies to disruptive children, who are overactive and out on drugs. Their rebellion is quite natural. Autistic children, in many cases, now, are those who have picked up the idea that the world is so unsafe that it is better not to communicate with it at all, as long as their demands or needs are being met. When the child is fed and clothed and cared for, then it continues its behavior, and the behavior itself does serve its needs.

The child feels that it is not safe to interact with the world, however. No one is going to deprive a child of food, and yet food can be used in such cases, in terms perhaps of treats, if the child must ask for them, or in some way indicate a choice. Autistic children are afraid of making choices. Some of this is often picked up from parents, so that the child expresses their own unacknowledged fears. The autistic child can be highly intelligent, however.

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To some extent, such child symbolizes what happens when an individual believes that he or she is unworthy, that he or she cannot trust impulses, that choices present more problems than advantages. That it is safer to hide abilities than it is to use them. Life is expression.

When a sperm carrying cancer enters a woman’s uterus, and if she has no intentions of getting the disease, her body’s own system would make the cancer completely ineffective.

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I will explain as best I can, though some of what I say will certainly seem contradictory to scientific knowledge.

Though scientists might find “cancer cells,” and though it might seem that cancer is caused by a virus, cancer instead involves a relationship, say, between what we might think of as a host and parasite, in those terms — and to some extent the same applies to any disease, including smallpox, though the diseases themselves may appear to have different causes completely. A host cell, say, is not simply attacked. It invites attack, though I am not pleased at all with the connotations of the word “attack.” I am trying to use words familiar to us to start.

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It is not simply that a cell suddenly “relaxes its defenses” against disease. As easily as I an, I will try to explain. A cell mirrors a psychological state. A cell exists by itself, as its own entity, but also in context with all of the other cells in the body. There are literally uncountable psychological states mixing and interchanging constantly, with the overall psychological stance being one of biological integrity: The organism holds together, maintains its functions, and so forth.

Our body is the physical mirror of our psychological state. It is powered by the energy of the universe. It actually springs into being in each moment. Our mind and our body come from the same source, from universal energy. We are powered with vitality. We must seek meaning in our lives. When we lose the sense of life’s meaning, for whatever reason, this is reflected in our body. It is very difficult to separate all of this from many connotations placed about disease, and I do not want the material to be misread. Cancer, for example, has become the symbol for the body’s vulnerability, in current years — the proof of man’s and woman’s susceptibility to the body. It is a disease that people have when they want to die — when they are ashamed to admit that they want to die, because death seems to fly against sane behavior. If the species struggles to survive, then how can individuals want to die?

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Many people have had cancer and recovered without knowing it. In our belief system, however, it is almost imperative to see a doctor in such circumstances, for many fears are unsubstantiated, and the fear alone, found groundless, gives the person new life symbolically and physically.

In the case of my example, a woman’s cells would already have had to prepare themselves for the guest — granted the guest was cancerous, and was a sperm. There is not an attack. There is an acceptance, and a preparation for certain changes.

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A life crisis is formed. The “parasite,” or virus, plays its part in setting up such a psychologically-desired position. It is an emotionally-charged position, an imminent crisis. I am aware of the tormenting questions involved in such issues, and also of the gap between my explanations and daily experiences of many people. The fact is that when death comes it is wanted; it has been chosen.

The fact is that death in its way is the culmination of life, leading toward a new birth and new experience. The cells know this. So does the heart. People cannot admit that they want to die at certain times. If they could accept the fact of their own wishes, some could even change their minds, many do: The psychological condition changes for the better, and the body cells are no longer amiable to the cancerous condition.

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Women whose husband have had vasectomies have themselves often resolved sexual problems that have bothered them. Fear is reduced in that area. Cervical cancer can involve, distortions of the growth process itself, because of the complicated distortions of belief on the woman’s part. In a way the very pain of cancer — of some cancers — often acts through its intensity as a reflection of the person’s belief that life is painful, tormenting. At the same time, the pain is a reminder of feeling and sensation.

 

Natural Law

When I speak of natural law, I am not referring to the scientists’ laws of nature, such as the law of gravity, for example — which is not a law at all, but a manifestation appearing from the viewpoint of a certain level of consciousness as a result of perceptive apparatus. Our “prejudiced perception” is also built into our instruments in that regard.

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I am speaking of the inner laws of nature, that pervade existence. What we call nature refers of course to our particular experience with reality, but quite different kinds of manifestations are also “natural” outside of that context. The laws of nature that I am in the process of explaining underlie all realities, then, and form a firm basis for multitudinous kinds of “natures.” I will put these in terms of reference, however.

Each being experiences life as if it were at life’s center. This applies to a spider in a closet as well as to any man or woman. This principle applies to each atom as well. Each manifestation of consciousness comes into being feeling secure at life’s center — experiencing life through itself, aware of life through its own nature. It comes into being with an inner impetus toward value fulfillment. It is equipped with a feeling of safety, of security within its own environment with which it is fit to deal. It given the impetus toward growth and action, and filled with the desire to impress its world.

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The term “value fulfillment” is very difficult to explain but it is very important. Obviously it deals with the development of values — not moral values, however, but values for which we really have no adequate words. Quite simply, these values have to do with increasing the quality of whatever life the being feels at its center. The quality of that life is not simply to be handed down or experienced, for example, but is to be creatively added to, multiplied, in a way that has nothing to do with quantity.

In those terms, animals have values, and if the quality of life of their lives disintegrates beyond a certain point, the species dwindles. We are not speaking of survival of the fittest, but the survival of life with meaning. Life is meaning for animals. The two are indistinguishable.

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We say little, for example, if we note that spiders make webs instinctively because spiders must eat insects, and that the best web-maker will be the fittest kind of spider to survive. It is very difficult for me to escape the sticky web of our beliefs. The web, however, in its way represents an actualized ideal on the spider’s part — and if you will forgive the term, an artistic one as well. It amazes the spiders that flies so kindly fall into those webs. We might say that the spider wonders that art can be so practical.

What about the poor unsuspecting fly? Is it then so enamored of the spider’s web that it loses all sense of caution? For surely lies are the victims of such nefarious webby splendors. We are into sticky stuff indeed.

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For one thing, we are dealing with different kinds of consciousness that our own. They are focused consciousnesses, surely, each one feeling itself at life’s center. While this is the case, however, these other forms of consciousness also identify then with the source of nature from which they emerge. In a way impossible to explain, the fly and the spider are connected, and aware of the connection. Not as hunter and prey, but as individual participants in deeper processes. Together they work toward a joint kind of value fulfillment, in which both are fulfilled.

There are communions of consciousness of which we are unaware. While we believe in theories like the survival of the fittest, however, and the grand fantasies of evolution, then we put together our perceptions of the world so that they seem to bear out those theories. We will see no value in the life of a mouse sacrificed in the laboratory, for example, and we will project claw-and-fang battles in nature, completely missing the great cooperative venture that is involved.

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Men and women can become deranged if they believe life has no meaning. Religion has made gross errors. At least it held out an afterlife, a hope of salvation, and preserved — sometimes despite itself — the tradition of the heroic soul. Science, including psychology, by what it has said, and by what it has neglected to say, has come close to a declaration that life itself is meaningless. This is a direct contradiction of deep biological knowledge, to say nothing of spiritual truth. It denies the meaning of biological integrity. It denies man and woman the practical use of those very elements that he or she needs as a biological creature: the feeling that he or she is at life’s center, that he/she can act safely in his or her environment, that he or she can trust himself or herself, and that his or her being and his/her actions have meaning.

Impulses provide life’s guide to action. If we are taught that we cannot trust our impulses, then we are set against our very physical integrity. If we believe that our life has no meaning, then we will do anything to provide meaning, all the while acting like a mouse in one of science’s mazes — for our prime directive, so to speak, has been tampered with.

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I am trying to temper my statements here, but our psychology of the past 100 years has helped create insanities by trying to reduce the great individual thrust of life that lie within each person, to a generalized mass chaotic impulses and chemicals — a mixture, of Freudian and Darwinian thought misapplied.

The most private agonies of the soul were assigned a more or less common source in man’s and woman’s primitive “unconscious” drives. The private unequalled thrust toward creativity were seen as the unbalanced conglomeration of chemicals within a person’s most private being — a twist of perversity. Genius was seen as a mistake of chromosomes, or the fortunate result of a man’ or woman’s hatred for his or her father. The meaning of life was reduced to the accidental nature of genes. Science thought in terms of averages and statics, and each person was supposed to fit within those realms.

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To some extent, this also applies to religion in the same time period. Churches wanted sinners galore, but shied away from saints, or any extravagant behavior that did not speak of man’s and woman’s duplicity. Suddenly people with paranoid characteristics, as well as schizophrenics, emerged from the wallpaper of this slickly styled civilization. The characteristics of each were duly noted. A person who feels that life has no meaning, and that his or her life in particular has no meaning, would rather be pursued than ignored. Even the weight of guilt is better than no feeling at all. If the paranoid might feel that he or she is pursued, by the government or “ungodly powers,” then at least he or she feels that his or her life must be important: otherwise, why would others seek to destroy it? If voices tell him or her he or she is to be destroyed, then these at least are comforting voices, for they convince him or her that his or her life must have value.

At the same time, the paranoid person can use his or her creative abilities in fantasies that seemingly boggle the minds of the sane — and those creative abilities have a meaning, for the fantasies, again, serve to reassure the paranoid of his or her worth. If in our terms he or she were sane, he or she could not use his or her creative abilities, for they are always connected with life’s meaning; and sane, the paranoid is convinced that life is meaningless. It did little good in the past for Freudian psychologists to listen to a person’s associations while maintaining an objective air, or pretending that values did not exist. Often the person labeled schizophrenic is so frightened of his or her own energy, impulses, and feelings that these are fragmented, objectified, and seen to come from outside rather than from within.

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Ideas of good and evil are exaggerated, cut off from each other. Yet here again the creative abilities are allowed some expression. The person does not feel able to express them otherwise. Such people are afraid of the brunt of their own personalities. They have been taught that energy is wrong, that power is disastrous, and that the impulses of the self are to be feared.

What protection, then, but to effectively project these outside of the self — impulses of good as well as evil — and hence effectively block organized action?

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The term schizophrenia, with the authority of psychology, becomes a mass coverall in which the integrity of personal meaning is given a mass, generalized explanation. Those who are paranoid are, unfortunately, those who most firmly believe the worst idiocies of science and religion. The paranoid and the schizophrenic are trying to find meaning in a world they have been taught is meaningless, and their tendencies appear in lesser form throughout society.

Creativity is an in-built impetus in man and woman, far more important than, say, what science calls the satisfaction of basic needs. In those terms, creativity is the most basic need of all. I am not speaking here of any obsessive need to find order — in which case, for example, a person might narrow his or her mental and physical environment — but of a powerful driver within the species for creativity, and for the fulfillment of values that are emotional and spiritual. And if man or woman does not find these, then the so-called basic drives toward food or shelter will not sustain him or her.

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I am not simply saying that man or woman does not live for bread alone. I am saying that if man or woman does not find meaning in life he or she will not live, bread or no. He or she will not have the energy to seek bread, nor trust his or her impulse to do so.

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There are natural laws, then, that guide all kinds of life, and all realities — laws of love and cooperation — and those are the basic needs of which I am speaking.

We are each innocent until a crime is proven against us.

The law in our country says we are innocent until proven guilty. In the eyes of that law, then we are each innocent until a crime is proven against us. There usually must also be witnesses. There are other considerations. Often a spouse cannot testify against the other. Opportunity and motive must be established.

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In the world of religion, however, we are already tainted by original sin: “The mark of Cain” is symbolically upon our foreheads. We come from a species that sinned against God. Automatically condemned, we must do good works, or be baptized, or believe in Christ, or perform other acts in order to be saved or redeemed.

According to other religions, we may be “earthbound” by the “gross desires” of our nature, “bound to the wheel of life,” condemned to endless reincarnations until we are “purified.” According to psychology and science, we are a living conglomeration of elements and chemicals, spawned by a universe without purpose, itself accidentally formed, and we are given a life in which all the “primitive and animalistic” drives of our evolutionary past ever lurk within us, awaiting expression and undermining our control.

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So, dear reader, look at the law as it stands in this country with somewhat more kindly eyes that we have before — for it at least legally establishes a belief in our innocence, and for all of its failings, it protects us from the far more fanatical aspects, say, or any religion’s laws.

Religious laws deal with sin, whether or not a crime is committed, and religious concepts usually take it for granted that the individual is guilty until proven innocent. And if we have not committed a crime in fact, then we have at least sinned in our heart — for which, or course, we must be punished. A sin can be anything from playing cards to having a sexual fantasy or to Watch as much mobile XXX as you can stomach. We are sinful creatures. How many of us believe that?

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We were born with an in-built recognition of our own goodness. We were born with an inner recognition of our rightness in the universe. We were born with a desire to fulfill our abilities, to move and act in the world. Those assumptions are the basis of what I will call natural law.

We are born loving. We are born compassionate. We are born curious about oneself and our world. Those attributes also belong to natural law. We are born knowing that we possess a unique, intimate sense of being that is itself, and that seeks its own fulfillment, and the fulfillment of others. We are born seeking the actualization of the ideal. We are born seeking to add value to the quality of life, to add characteristics, energies, abilities to life that only we can individually contribute to the world, and to attain a state of being that is uniquely ours, while adding to the value fulfillment of the world.

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All of these qualities and attributes are given us by natural law. We are a cooperative species, and we are a loving one. Our misunderstandings, our crimes, and our atrocities, real as they are, are seldom committed out of any intent to be evil, but because of severe misinterpretations about the nature of good, and means that can be taken toward its actualization. Most individual people know that in some inner portion of themselves. Our societies, governments, educational systems are all built around a firm belief in the unreliability of human nature. ” We cannot change human nature.” Such a statement takes it for granted that man’s and woman’s nature is to be greedy, a predator, a murderer at heart. We act in accordance with our own beliefs. We become the selves that we think we are. Our individual beliefs become the beliefs of our society, but that is always a give-and-take.

I want to discuss the formation of a better kind of mass reality — a reality that can happen as more and more individuals begin to come in contact with the true nature of the self. Then we will have less frightened people, and fewer fanatics, and each person involved can to some extent begin to see the “ideal” come into practical actualization. The means never justify the ends.

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The Therapy of Value Fulfillment:
The therapy of value fulfillment will attempt to put individuals in touch with their basic instincts, to allow them to sense the impulsive shapes of their lives, to define their own versions of the ideal through the recognition of it as it exists in their own impulses and feelings and abilities, and to help them find acceptable and practical methods of exerting their natural power in the practical actualization of those ideals.

True psychology

We have been taught to believe that impulses are wrong generally speaking, or at best that they represent messages from a nefarious subconscious, giving voice to dark moods and desires.

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For example: Many of us believe in the basis of Freudian psychology — that the son naturally wants to displace the father in his mother’s attentions, and that beneath the son’s love for his father, there rages the murderous intent to kill. Ridiculous idiocy!

The self, so spectacularly alive, seemed equipped with reason to understand the great import of its own certain extinction. Such a tragedy to project upon the living personality.

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We cannot begin to have a true psychology, again, unless we see the living self in a greater context, with greater motives, purposes and meanings that we now assign to it, of for that matter than we assign to nature and its creatures. We have denied many impulses, or programmed others so that they are allowed expression in only certain forms of action. I any of us do still believe in the Freudian or Darwinian selves, then we will be leery about impulses to examine our own consciousness, afraid of what murderous debris might be uncovered. I am not speaking merely in hypothetical terms. For example, a well-intentioned woman: She worries about her overweight condition, and depressed at what she thinks of as her lack of discipline in following diets. In her dismay, she visits a psychologist, who tells her that her marriage might somehow be part of the problem. The woman never went back. It’s hard to say why though. The psychologist that she visited was bound to have had many years of training, after finding inspiration from somewhere like a up-skilled, counsellors-psychologists-working-in-community-services, to build a successful career in helping people who may be in the same situation as this woman. Did she think that the psychologist was wrong? No. She was afraid that she might discover within herself the buried impulse to kill her husband, or to break up the marriage, but she was sure that her overweight condition hid some unfortunate impulse.

Actually the woman’s condition hid her primary impulse: to communicate better with her husband, to ask him for definite expression of love. Why does he not love her as much as she loved him? She could say it was because she was overweight, after all, for he was always remarking adversely about her fleshy opulence — though he did not use such a sympathetic phrase.

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He could not express his love for her in the terms she wished for be believed that women would, if allowed to, destroy the man’s freedom, and he interpreted the natural need for love as an unfortunate emotional demand. Both of them believed that women were inferior, and quite unknowingly they followed a Freudian dogma.

The ideas we have been speaking of, then, are intimately connected with our lives. The man just mentioned denies his personal impulses often. Sometimes he is not even aware of them as far as they involve the expression of affection or love to his wife.

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In those areas where we cut down on our impulses, upon their very recognition, we close down probabilities, and prevent new beneficial acts that of themselves would lead us out of our difficulty. We prevent change. But many people fear that any change is detrimental, since they have been taught, after all, that left alone their bodies or their minds of their relationships are bound to deteriorate. Often, therefore, people react to events as if they themselves possessed no impetus to alter them. They live their lives as if they are indeed limited in experience not only to a brief lifetime, but a lifetime in which they are the victims of their chemistry — accidental members of a blighted species that is murderous to it very core.

Another example: A woman found a small sore spot on her breast. Remembering well the barrage of negative suggestions that passes for preventative medicine — the public service announcements about cancer — she was filled with foreboding. She went to the doctor, who told her he did not believe there was anything wrong. He suggested X-rays, however, “just to be on the safe side,” and so he body was treated to a basically unnecessary dose of radiation in the name of preventative medicine.

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I am not suggesting that we do not visit doctors under such situations, because the weight of our negative beliefs about our bodies usually makes it too difficult for us to bear such uncertainties alone. Nevertheless, such actions speak only too loudly of our mass beliefs involving the vulnerability of the self and its flesh.

To me, it it almost inconceivable that, from our position, any of us seriously consider that the existence of our exquisite consciousness can possibly be the result of a conglomeration of chemicals and elements thrown together by a universe accidentally formed, and soon to vanish. So much more evidence is available to us: the order of nature; the creative drama of our dreams, that project our consciousness into other times and places; the very precision with which we spontaneously grow, without knowing how, from fetus into an adult; the existence of heroic themes and quests and ideas that pervade the life of even the worst scoundrel — these all give evidence of the greater context in which we have our being.

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If the universe existed as we have been told it does, then there would be no psychological avenues to connect worlds. There would be no extensions of the self that would allow us to travel such a psychological distance to those thresholds of reality that forms our mental environment. If the universe were structured as we have been told, the probability of the mass world would not be formed as the result of individual impulses. They meet and merge, and form platforms for action.

We live surrounded by impulses. We must make innumerable decisions in our lives — most choose careers, mates, cities of residence. Experience can help us make decisions, but we make decision long before we have years of experience behind us.

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Overall, whether or not we are conscious of it — for some of us are, and some of us are not — our lives do have a certain psychological shape. That shape is formed by our decisions. We make decisions as the result of feeling impulses to do this or that, to perform in one manner or another, in response to both private considerations and in regard to demands seemingly placed upon us by others. In the vast arena of those numberless probabilities open to us, we do of course have some guidelines. Otherwise we would always be in a state of indecision. Our personal impulses provide those guidelines by showing us how best to use probabilities so that we fulfill our own potential to greatest advantage — and in so doing, provide constructive help to the society at large.

When we are taught not to trust our impulses we begin to lose our powers of decision, and to whatever extent involved in the circumstances, we begin to lose our sense of power because we are afraid to act.

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Many people are in a quandary of indecision. Some might lament, for example: “I do not know what to do, or what direction to follow. I think that I could make music my career. I am musically gifted. On the other hand, I feel a leaning toward psychology. I have not attended music lately. However, music is usually one of those skills that a person never forgets. If they’re talented enough, they will be able to make a career out of it. It’s a lot easier to make it professional as a music artist these days, especially with the help of music streaming sites, such as Spotify. Aspiring musicians only have to purchase some spotify-plays to get themselves started, and then they should be able to kick off their career. If an individual believes they’re talented enough to make music a career, they should follow that dream. However, if there’s something that an individual might be better at, it could be worth looking into that. For example, sometimes I think I could be a teacher. In the meantime I Am meditating and hoping that the answer will come.” Such a person is afraid to trust anyone impulse enough to act upon it. All remain equally probable activities. Meditation must be followed by action — and true meditation is action. Such people are afraid of making decisions because they are afraid of their own impulses — and some of them can use meditation to dull their impulses, and actually prevent constructive action. As long as you pick something that resonates with you, you should do well on your path. Don’t forget to tap into the resources made available for you, from crafting a resume using https://www.arcresumes.com/, to taking on volunteer work to feed your soul and find a new pathway. The universe will help guide you along the way.

Impulses arise in a natural, spontaneous, constructive response to the abilities, potentials, and needs of the personality. They are meant as directing forces. Luckily, the child usually walks before it is old enough to be taught that impulses are wrong, and luckily the child’s natural impulses toward exploration, growth, fulfillment, action and power are strong enough to give it the necessary springboard before our belief systems begin to erode its confidence. We have physical adult bodies. The pattern for each adult body existed in the fetus — which again, “luckily,” impulsively, followed its own direction.

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No one told it that it was impossible to grow from a tiny cell — change that to a tiny organism instead of a cell — to a complicated adult structure. What tiny, spindly, threadlike, weak legs we all once had in our mother’s wombs! Those tiny, spindly legs now climb mountains, stride gigantic boulevards, because they followed their own impulsive shapes. Even the atoms and molecules within them sought out their own most favorable probabilities. And in terms that we do not understand, even those atoms and molecules made their own decisions as the result of recognizing and following those impulsive sparks toward action that are inherent in all consciousness, whatever their statues in our terms.

Consciousness attempts to grow toward its own ideal development, which also promotes the ideal development of all organizations in which it takes part.

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We are back, then, to the matter of the ideal and its actualization. When and how do our impulses affect the world? Again, what is the ideal, the good impulse, and why does it seem that our experience is so far from that ideal that it appears to be evil?

Impulses provide impetus toward motion

Impulses coax the physical body and the mental person toward utilization of physical and mental power.

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They help the individual impress the world — that is, to act upon it and within it effectively. Impulses also open up choices that may not have been consciously available before. The cells precognate, and that at that level the body is aware of vast information, information not consciously known or apprehended. The universe and everything within it is composed of “information,” but this information is aware-ized containing” — information concerning the entire universe is always latent within each and any part of it.

The motive power of the universe and of each particle or wave or person within it it the magnificent thrust toward creative probabilities, and the tension that exists, the exuberant tension, that exists “between” probable choices and probable events. This applies to men/women and molecules, and to all of those hypothetically theorized smaller divisions with which scientists like to amaze themselves. Divisions or units.

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In more mundane terms, impulses often come from unconscious knowledge, then. This knowledge is spontaneously and automatically received by the energy that composes our body, and then it is processed so that pertinent information applying to us can be taken advantage of. Ideally, our impulses are always in response to our own best interests — and, to the best interests of our world as well. Obviously there is a deep damaging distrust of impulses in the contemporary world, as in our terms there has been throughout the history that we follow. Impulses are spontaneous, and we have been taught not to trust the spontaneous portions of our being, but to rely upon our reason and our intellect — which both operate, incidentally, quite spontaneously, by the way.

When we let ourselves alone, we are spontaneously reasonable, but because of our beliefs it seems that reason and spontaneity make poor bedfellows.

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Psychologically, our impulses are as vital to our being as our physical organs are. They are as altruistic, or unselfish, as our physical organs are. And yet each impulse is suited and tailored directly to the individual who feels it. Ideally, by following our impulses we would feel the shape, the impulsive shape of our life. We would not spend time wondering what one’s purpose was, for it would make itself known to us, as we perceived the direction in which our natural impulses led, and felt oneself exert power in the world through such actions. Impulses are doorways to action, satisfaction, the exertion of natural mental and physical power, the avenue for our private expression — the avenue where our private expression interests the physical world and impresses it.

Many cults of one kind or another, and many fanatics, seek to divide us from our natural impulses, to impede their expression. They seek to sabotage our belief in our spontaneous being, so that the great power of impetus becomes damned up. Avenues of probabilities are closed bit by bit until we do indeed live — if we follow such precepts — in a closed mental environment, in which it seems we are powerless. It seems we cannot impress the world as we wish, that our ideals must always be stillborn.

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In the case of the Jonestown tragedy, for example, all doors toward probable effective action seemed closed. Followers had been taught to act against their natural impulses with members of their families. They had been taught not to trust the outside world, and little by little the gap between misguided idealism and an exaggerated version of the world’s evil blocked all doors through which power could be exerted — all doors save one. The desire for suicide is often the last recourse left to frightened people whose natural impulses toward action have been dammed up — intensified on the one hand, and yet denied any practical expression.

There is a natural impulse to die on the part of men/women and animals, but in such circumstances [as we are discussing here] that desire becomes the only impulse that the individual feels able to express, for it seems that all other avenues of expression have become closed. There is much misunderstanding concerning the nature of impulses, so we will discuss them rather thoroughly. I always want to emphasize the importance of individual action, for only the individual can help form organizations that become physical vehicles for the effective expression of ideals. Only people who trust their spontaneous beings and the altruistic nature of their impulses can be consciously wise enough to choose from a myriad of probable futures that most promising events — for again, impulses take not only [people’s] best interest into consideration, but those of all other species.

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I am using the term “impulses” for the understanding of the general public, and in those terms molecules and protons have impulses. No consciousness simply reacts to stimuli, but has its own impulse toward growth and value fulfillment. It seems to many of us that impulses are unpredictable, contradictory, without reason, the result of erratic mixtures of body chemicals and that they must be squashed with as much deadly intent as some of us might when we spray a mosquito with insecticide.

Often the insecticide kills more than the mosquito, and its effects can be far-reaching, and possibly have disastrous consequences. However, to consider impulses as chaotic, meaningless — or worse, detrimental to an ordered life — represents a very dangerous attitude indeed; an attempt that causes many of our other problems, an attempt that does often distort the nature of impulses. Each person is fired by the desire to act, and to act beneficially, altruistically, to practically put his stamp, or her stamp,upon the world. When such natural impulses toward action are constantly denied over a period of time, when they are distrusted, when an individual feels in battle with his or her own impulses and shuts down the doors toward probable actions, then that intensity can explode into whatever avenue of escape is still left open.

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I am not speaking of anything like “repression,” as it is used by psychologists, but a far deeper issue: one in which the very self is so distrusted that natural impulses of any kind become suspect. We try to inoculate ourselves against ourselves — a nearly impossible situation, of course. We expect our motives to be selfish because we have been told that they are, and so when we catch oneself with unkind motives we are almost comforted, because we think that at least we are behaving normally.

When we find oneself with good motives, we distrust them. “Surely,” we think, “beneath this seeming altruism, there must indeed be some nefarious, or at best selfish, motives that escape me.” As a people we are always examining our impulses, and yet we rarely examine the fruits of our intellects.

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It may seem that impulsive actions run rampant in society, in cultish behavior, for example, or in the behavior of criminals, or on the part of youth, but such activities show instead the power of impulses denied their natural expression, intensified and focused on the one hand into highly ritualized patterns of behavior, and in other areas denied expression.

A particular idealist believes that the world is headed for disaster, and that is powerless to prevent it. Having denied his or her impulses, believing them wrong, and having impeded his/her expression of his/her own power to affect others, he/she might, for example, “hear the voice of God.” That voice might tell him or her to commit any of a number of nefarious actions — to assassinate the enemies that stand in the way of his/her great ideal — and it might seem to him and to others that he/she has a natural impulse to kill, and indeed an inner decree from God to do so.

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According to conditions, such a person could be a member of a small cult of the head of a nation, a criminal or a national hero, who claims to act with the authority of God. Again, the desire and motivation to act is so strong with each person that it will not be denied, and when it is denied then it can be expressed in a perverted form. Man and woman must not only act, but he must act constructively, and he or she must feel that he or she acts for good ends.

Only when the natural impulse is denied consistently does the idealist turn into a fanatic. Each person in his or her own way is an idealist.

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Power is natural. It is the force, the power of the muscle to move, or the eye to see, of the mind to think, the power of the emotions — these represent true power, and no accumulation of wealth or acclaim can substitute for that natural sense of power if it is lacking. Power always rests with the individual, and from the individual all political power must flow.

A democracy is a highly interesting form of government, highly significant because it demands so much of individual consciousness, and because it must rest primarily upon a belief in the powers of the individual. It is a tribute to that belief that it has lingered in our country, and operated with such vitality in the face of quite opposing beliefs officially held by both science and religion.

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The idea [of democracy] expresses the existence of a high idealism — one that demands political and social organizations that are effective to some degree in providing some practical expression of those ideals. When those organizations fail and a gulf between idealism and actualized good becomes too great, then such conditions help turn some idealists into fanatics. Those who follow with great strictness the dictates of either science or religion can switch sides in a moment. The scientist begins tipping tables or whatever, and suddenly disgusted by the limits of scientific knowledge, he/she turns all of his/her dedication to what he/she thinks of as its opposite, or pure intuitive knowledge. Thus, he/she blocks his/her reason as fanatically as earlier he/she blocked his/her intuitions. The businessmen or businesswoman who believed in Darwinian principles and the fight for survival, who justified injustice and perhaps thievery to his/her ideal of surviving in a competitive world — she/she suddenly turns into a fundamentalist in religious terms, trying to gain his/her sense of power now, perhaps, by giving away the wealth he/she has amassed, all in a tangled attempt to express a natural idealism in a practical world.

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How can we trust our impulses when we read, for example, that a man or woman commits a murder because he/she has a strong impulse to do so, or because the voice of God commanded it? If some of us followed our impulses right now, for example — our first natural ones — it might seem they would be cruel or destructive.

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How do our impulses affect our future experience, and help form the practical world of mass reality?

Paranoid views are not based on mass fact

No one is as fanatical, and no one can be more cruel, than the self-righteous. It is very easy for such persons “to become [religiously] converted” after paranoid episodes, lining themselves up once more on the side of good, searching for “the power of fellowship,” turning to church rather than government, hearing in one way or another the voice of God.

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So how can the well-meaning idealist know whether or not his good intent will lead to some actualization? How can he know, or how can she know, whether or not this good intent might in fact lead to disastrous conditions? When does the idealist turn into a fanatic?

Look at it this way; If someone tells us that pleasure is wrong and tolerance is weakness, and that we must follow this or that dogma blindly in obedience, and if we are told this is the only right road toward the idealized good, then most likely we are dealing with a fanatic. If we are told to kill for the sake of peace, we are dealing with someone who does not understand peace or justice. If we are told to give up our free will, we are dealing with a fanatic.

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Both male and female and molecules dwell in a field of probabilities, and their paths are not determined. The vast reality of probabilities makes the existence of free will possible. If probabilities did not exist, and if we were not to some degree aware of probable actions and events, not only could we not choose between them, but we would not of course have any feelings of choice. We would be unaware of the entire issue.

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Through our mundane conscious choices, we affect all of the events of our world, so that the mass world is the result of multitudinous individual choices. We could not make choices at all if we did not feel impulses to do this or that, so that choices usually involve us in making decisions between various impulses. Impulses are urges toward action. Some are conscious and some are not. Each cell of our body feels the impulse toward action, response, and communication. We have been taught not to trust our impulses. Impulses in children teach them to develop their muscles and minds [each] in their own unique manner. And as we will see, those impulses of a private nature are nevertheless also based upon the greater situation of the species and the planet, so that “ideally” the fulfillment of the individual would automatically lead to the better good of the species.

We use a vocabulary that automatically scales down greater concepts to fit its rigors

In other words, such attempts further compound the problem of considering a seemingly objective universe, and describing it in an objective fashion.

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The universe is a spiritual or mental or psychological manifestation, and not, in our usual vocabulary, and objective manifestation.

There is presently no science, religion, or psychology that comes close to even approaching a conceptual framework that could explain, or even indirectly describe, the dimensions of that kind of universe. Its properties are psychological, following the logic of the psyche, and all of the physical properties that we understand are reflections of those deeper issues. Again, each atom and molecule — and any particle that we can imagine — possesses, and would possess, a consciousness. Unless we accept that statement at least as a theory upon which to build, then much of my material would appear meaningless.

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That statement, therefore, must be the basis for any scientific theories that hope to accomplish any performances at all leading to an acquisition of knowledge.

Since I must use an objective vocabulary I am always seeking for analogies. By objective I refer to the use of language, the English language, that automatically sets up its own screens of perception — as of course any language must do to some extent.

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The universe expands, as an idea expands; and as sentences are built upon words, in our terms, and paragraphs upon sentences, and as each retains its own logic and continuity and evidence within that framework, so do all the portions of the universe appear to us with the same cohesiveness — meaning continuity and order. Any sentence is meaningful. It seems to fall in order by itself as we say it. Its order is obvious. That one sentence is meaningful because of its organization of letters, or if it is spoken, its organization of vowels and syllables. It make sense, however, not only because of the letters or vowels or syllables that it excludes.

The same applies to our universe. It has meaning, coherence and order not only because of those realities that are obvious to us, and that appear, but also because of those inner realities that are “unspoken,” or hidden. I am not speaking merely of hidden variables, in scientific terms, nor am I saying that the universe is an illusion, but a psychological reality in which “objectivity” is the result of psychological creativity.

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It is not just that our view of reality is relative to our position within the universe, but that the universe itself is different according to our position within it, and that spiritual or psychological rule apply. The universe deals with different kinds of order, perceptions, and organizations, each dependent upon the others, yet each separate in its own domain.

In our realm of reality, there is no real freedom but the freedom of ideas, and there is no real bondage except for the bondage of ideas, for our ideas form our private and mass reality. We want to examine the universe from the outside, to examine our societies from the outside. We still think that the interior world is somehow symbolic and the exterior world is real — that wars, for example, are fought by themselves or with bombs. All of the time, the psychological reality is the primary one, that forms all of our events.

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It is not to say that we cannot understand the nature of the universe to some extent, but the answers lie in the natures of our own minds, in the processes of individual creativity, in studies that ask questions like: “Where did this thought come from? Where does it go? What effect does it have upon oneself or others? How do I know how to dream, when I have never been taught to do so? How do I speak without understanding the mechanisms? Why do I feel that I have an eternal reality, when it is obvious that I was physically born and will physically die?”

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Unscientific questions? I tell you that these are the most scientific of all. To some extent the attempt on the part of science to consider such material may possibly bring about those qualities of true scientific intuition that will help science bridge the gap between such divergent views as its own and ours.

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?

Creativity has feminine connotations in our society

While the power has masculine connotations, and is largely thought of as destructive.

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Our scientists are, generally now, intellectually , believing in reason above the intuitions, taking if for granted that those qualities are opposites. They cannot imagine life’s “initial” creative source, for in their terms it would remind them of creativity’s feminine basis.

In the framework of this discussion only we have a male’s and female’s universe. It is a universe endowed with male and female characteristics as these appear in the male-female orientations of our history. The universe seems to have no meaning because the male and female “intellect” alone cannot discern meaning, since it must take nothing for granted. Even though certain characteristics of the universe are most apparent, they must be ignored.

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We must understand, that the terms “male” and “female” here are being used as they are generally understood, and have nothing to do with the basic characteristics of either sex. In those terms, the male-oriented intellect wants to order the universe, name its parts, and so forth. It wants to ignore the creative aspects of the universe, however, which are everywhere apparent, and it first of all believes that it must divorce itself from any evidence of feeling. We have in our history than a male god of power and vengeance, who killed our enemies for us. We have a prejudiced god, who will, for example, slay the Egyptians and half of the Jews to retaliate against previous Egyptian cruelty. The male god is a god of power. He is not a god of creativity.

Now, creativity has always been the species’ closet connection with its own source, with the nature of its own being. Through creativity the species senses All That Is. Creativity goes by a different set of rules, however. It is a sources of revelation and inspiration — yet initially revelation and inspiration do not deal with power, but with knowing. So what often happens in our society when men an women have creative bents, and good minds to boot?

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The Catholic Church taught that revelation was dangerous. Intellectual and psychic obedience was much the safer road, and even the saints were slightly suspect. Women were inferiors, and in matters of religion and philosophy most of all, for there their creativity could be most disruptive. Women were considered hysterics, aliens to the world of intellectual thought, swayed instead by incomprehensible womanish emotions. Women were to be handled by wearing down their energies through childbirth.

The trance itself has feminine connotations, though we conveniently forget {several excellent male mediums].

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The art the old masters escaped such connotations, largely because it involved so much physical labor — the making of colors, canvases, and so forth. That work, providing the artist’s preparation, now belongs to the male-world manufacturer, so as a male in our society the artist is often left with what he thinks of as art’s feminine basis, where it must be confronted, of course.

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I want to make it plain that such ideas are rampant in society, and are at the basis of many personal and national problems. They are behind large issues, involved in the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant nuclear fiasco, for example, and in the scientist’s idea of power and creation. Some of us, highly creative, find our creativity in conflict with our ideas of sexuality, privately and in our stances with the world. Much of this is involved with the unfortunate myths about the creative person, who is not supposed to be able to deal with the world as well as others, whose idiosyncrasies are exaggerated, and whose very creativity, it is sometimes said, leads to suicide or depression. No wonder few numbers of creative people persist in the face of such unfortunate beliefs!

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We run into many contradictions. God is supposed to be male. The soul is sometimes considered female. The angels are male. Now let us look at the Garden of Eden. The story says that Eve tempted the male, having him eat of the tree of good and evil, or the tree of knowledge. This represented a state of consciousness, the point at which the species began to think and feel for itself, when it approached a certain state of consciousness in which it dared exert its own creativity.

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This is difficult to verbalize. It was a state when the species became aware of its own thoughts as its own thoughts, and became conscious of the self who thinks. That point released man’s and woman’s creativity. In our terms, it was the product of the feminine intuitions (thought, as we know, such intuitions belong to both sexes). When the [Biblical} passages were written, the species had come to various states of order, achieving certain powers and organizations, and it wanted to maintain the status quo. No more intuitive visions, no more changes, were wanted. Creativity was to follow certain definite roads, so the woman became the villain.