We have no other recourse than to realize a new world. The criminal cabal has corrupted and contaminated the old world to the point that if we locate our primary being in that world we'll become as insane and corrupt as they. They have, in the meaning of the parable, poisoned the water.
To realize 1 a new world, we must understand the essence of the philosophical, economic, political, and social realities facing us. For example, unlike the American colonists, we no longer have a free press to use in our struggle against oppression; right-wing Republicans own most American media outlets.
The American 2004 election revealed unmistakably that the international criminal cabal no longer feels it needs the fig leaf of democracy to mask its fascistic, police-state visage. It also shows that there are no political, military, or economic countervailing powers--in the old world--to oppose the criminal cabal and its Bush II puppet regime.
The Bush junta has seized the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of American government--and the Democratic party is complicit in the devastation of Constitutional safeguards.
It's now apparent that the American constitution--which early on proved vulnerable to tyranny--can be completely subverted, allowing criminal groups to seize total power and destroy the ideals of a society to assure the welfare of all the people.
"In a very real sense, the Constitution was a coup d'état by the bankers and other 'moneyed interests' who were trying to protect their investments in the collapsing post-Revolution economy."
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The criminal hijacking of the American 2000-2004 elections--and the rapidly expanding list of other Bush regime atrocities, force thinking people worldwide to begin their struggle to realize a new political-economic-social world.
I use the phrase "realizing a new world," in the sense of making real or concrete; giving reality to; being fully aware or cognizant of a world that already exists. As we'll examine below, this new world is composed of essences that Plato and other Perennialist teachers reveal. Perennialist savants have inhabited this world since the beginning of humankind, initiating select aspirants into this domain.
It may seem counterproductive to talk about realizing a new world, because most of us feel that we must live in this current defective and corrupted world, whether we like it or not. "Realizing a new world" seems like philosophical nonsense to people who like to think of themselves as hard-headed realists.
But humankind has existed within several different "worlds" during our time on this earth, and similar to what was said in the Declaration of Independence, when a world and its causative world-view become destructive of human welfare, it is the right--and the necessity--of humans to disaffirm the old world and bring forth a NEW WORLD.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776
The current criminal cabal's deliberately constructed political-economic world of militaristic imperialism, fascism, and vulture capitalism must be opposed in every possible way, while we recognize the dangers of contact with that insane world. But the old world structures of government and economy have been so thoroughly corrupted by the dominating cabal that we must focus most of our efforts on realizing an entirely NEW WORLD.
Let's be definite as to what we mean by "realizing a new world," clarifying our terms of discourse:
World: the material and spiritual state of human existence created by a specific world viewWhen we speak of "realizing a new world," we're referring to humans producing their REALITY, with the totality of its spiritual, metaphysical, socio-cultural, and psychological structures. This is somewhat the same sense in which Peter L. Berger & Thomas Luckman speak of "society as a human product" and "the social construction of reality."World-view:
a comprehensive perspective that allows humans to DISCERN essential meanings, principles, and values
- beliefs about the limits and workings of reality shared by the members of a culture and represented in their myths, lore, ceremonies, social conduct, and general values
"An institutional world, then, is experienced as an objective reality. It has a history that antedates the individual's birth and is not accessible to his biographical recollection. It was there before he was born, and it will be there after his death. This history itself, as the tradition of the existing institutions, has the character of objectivity."Knowledge about society is thus a realization in the double sense of the word, in the sense of apprehending the objectivated social reality, and in the sense of ongoingly producing this reality."
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We're realizing a NEW WORLD in a metaphysical as well as a material sense: a complete new reality, not just a different conception of our present reality or a new paradigm with which to conceptualize what we recognize at present to be reality. We're realizing a NEW REALITY.
Realizing a new world--a new reality--involves understanding and actualizing concepts and practices which reflect higher, eternal essences--what Plato called "ideas" or "forms." These concepts and practices define human nature, relations between humans, and the goals and meaning of human existence.
To realize a NEW WORLD we must develop NEW PEOPLE: humans who understand and act in entirely new ways. To discern essences will require a new kind of person who has achieved metaphysical understanding through experience with higher realities and identification with higher consciousness.
that hath such people in it." Shakespeare, The Tempest |
To understand what it requires to realize a new world, let's review how humans have realized and inhabited various "worlds" in their history.
We can say with clear meaning that people in the middle ages lived in an entirely different world than we do today. In describing the Medieval mind-set, Roger Bacon wrote in his Opus Maius (1268):
"There are two modes of knowledge, through argument and experience. Argument brings conclusions and compels us to concede them, but it does not cause certainty nor remove doubts in order that the mind may remain at rest in truth, unless this is provided by experience."Throughout the Middle Ages, European thought stagnated largely because of its conception of knowledge as derived from argument from authority--whether the authority of the Church or the State. Europe languished in intellectual and cultural retrogression during the Dark Ages, while the light of wisdom was preserved and advanced by those they labeled "the infidel Saracen." The reintroduction of the Classical (Greek) Tradition and the Perennial Tradition through the confluence of European and Muslim thought, beginning around 1000 A.D., revitalized earlier conceptions of knowledge as derived from experience. 3
Medieval people suffered under religious and political tyranny because they allowed themselves to be controlled by a world-view that included such retrograde ideas as the divine right of kings--and popes.
A more recent example of a "world" was the cargo cult created after the second world war in certain South Sea island communities. During the war they had seen airplanes landing on their islands, bringing a wide variety of people and materials.
After the war ended and the planes no longer appeared, the natives on these islands wanted the same thing to happen again. So they arranged to make ersatz runways, put fires along the sides of the runways, make wooden huts for a man to sit in to direct the airplanes' landing, with two wooden pieces on his head to resemble headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas.
The islanders had done everything that fit into their world-view. Now they waited for the airplanes to land. They did everything right, completing all aspects of their world; everything looked exactly the way it had looked before. This cargo cult constituted a world that followed all the apparent practices and forms of the earlier situation, but the planes didn't land. Their world-view had created a false reality.
In exactly the same manner, the old world pretended to do everything according to a pattern of "government of the people, by the people, and for the people." But the planes don't land. The pretence has been exposed; the emperor has no clothes. The old world's concepts and practices--as corrupted by the cabal--have inexorably led to the current reign of terror under the Bush junta.
In the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, Europeans called North America "the new world." But this so-called "new world" was founded on concocted myths such as "the invisible hand of the market;" government as above classes and serving only the national interest; slave-labor as essential to the American economy; history as the record of property rights, state-power, and the necessity of war.
If you think that the idea of "realizing a new world" is nothing but fantasy, then I invite you to examine one of the truly fantastic, un-real inventions of the OLD WORLD: the corporation.
"A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law. Being the mere creature of law, it possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it, either expressly or as incidental to its very existence . . . Among the most important are immortality, and, if the expression may be allowed, individuality; properties by which a perpetual succession of many persons are considered as the same and may act as a single individual."
Supreme Court Chief Justice Marshall, 1819 4
"President Bush isn't a conservative. He's a radical - the leader of a coalition that deeply dislikes America as it is. Part of that coalition wants to tear down the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt, eviscerating Social Security and, eventually, Medicare. Another part wants to break down the barriers between church and state."
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People are being conditioned to abnegate their rational mind
"In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.
"The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'" 5 You may think that only White House aides engage in this kind of delusional thinking. Think again. This kind of fantasizing begins with Dubya and runs throughout the entire Bush regime. Ron Suskind tells of another revealing experience he had in this regard.
"Forty democratic senators were gathered for a lunch in March just off the Senate floor. I was there as a guest speaker. Joe Biden was telling a story, a story about the president. 'I was in the Oval Office a few months after we swept into Baghdad,' he began, 'and I was telling the president of my many concerns' -- concerns about growing problems winning the peace, the explosive mix of Shiite and Sunni, the disbanding of the Iraqi Army andproblems securing the oil fields. Bush, Biden recalled, just looked at him, unflappably sure that the United States was on the right course and that all was well. 'Mr. President,' I finally said, 'How can you be so sure when you know you don't know the facts?'
"Biden said that Bush stood up and put his hand on the senator's shoulder. 'My instincts,' he said. 'My instincts.'
"Biden paused and shook his head, recalling it all as the room grew quiet. 'I said, 'Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough!'''
In this essay, the term "old world" refers to the current social disorder created by the criminal cabal and its Bush II puppet regime.
In creating a NEW WORLD, we must build a foundation that will realize our goal of a commonwealth:
"Of all the violations of the commons - all of the crimes against We The People and against democracy in our great and historic republic - this is the greatest. Our vote is too important to outsource to private corporations.
"As Thomas Paine wrote at this nation's founding, 'The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which all other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery.'
"Only when We The People reclaim the commons of our vote can we again be confident in the integrity of our electoral process in the world's oldest and most powerful democratic republic."
"Why have we let corporations into our polling places, locations so sacred to democracy that in many states even international election monitors and reporters are banned? Why are we allowing corporations to exclusively handle our vote, in a secret and totally invisible way? Particularly a private corporation founded, in one case, by a family that believes the Bible should replace the Constitution; in another case run by one of Ohio's top Republicans; and in another case partly owned by Saudi investors?
"It's time that the USA - like most of the rest of the world - returns to paper ballots, counted by hand by civil servants (our employees) under the watchful eye of the party faithful. Even if it takes two weeks to count the vote, and we have to just go, until then, with the exit polls of the news agencies. It worked just fine for nearly 200 years in the USA, and it can work again. . . .
3. But we must recognize that most of "the people" of the United States--and the old world in general--have lost the capabilities required for self-government. In realizing a new world, we must create new people. And the first step in that process is to recognize to what a deplorable state "the people" have allowed themselves to fall.
Progressive awareness, 6 critical thinking, and self-possession are essential capabilities which humankind must now struggle to regain, since a great many have allowed their conscious minds to be literally taken over by destructive personalities and ideologies. For most humans, the regaining of critical thinking, self-awareness, and critical consciousness must be the first priority, because there is the very real danger of the masses of humankind becoming totally possessed by the structures and ideologies of those few who now rule the world politically and economically.
Possession is the extreme lower point on a continuum (see right) in which the highest achievement is identification with a Higher Positive Power (ecstasy).
Possession refers to:
State of Consciousness
Characteristics
Capabilities
Self-Possession | Reasoning | Beginning of possession by outside personalities and ideologies
Egomania | |||||||||
Total possession by outside personalities and ideologies
Hysterical blindness |
"Experiments conducted by researcher Herbert Krugman reveal that, when a person watches television, brain activity switches from the left to the right hemisphere. The left hemisphere is the seat of logical thought. Here, information is broken down into its component parts and critically analyzed. The right brain, however, treats incoming data uncritically, processing information in wholes, leading to emotional, rather than logical, responses. The shift from left to right brain activity also causes the release of endorphins, the body's own natural opiates--thus, it is possible to become physically addicted to watching television, a hypothesis borne out by numerous studies which have shown that very few people are able to kick the television habit. |
The horror of possession and hysteria is that the victims--in this case, average citizens--are not aware of their debilitated state. Part of their brainwashing makes them believe--in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary--that they are still in control of their minds and that their situation is acceptable.America is "the new model for the new concentration camp where the camp has been built by the inmates themselves and the inmates are the guards and they have this pride in this thing they've built. They've built their own prison and so they exist in a state of schizophrenia where they are both guards and prisoners. And as a result, having been lobotomized, they no longer have the capacity to leave the prison they've made or to even see it as a prison."
by Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory |
"Our consensus trance is not voluntary; it begins at birth without our conscious agreement.
"All authority is surrendered to the parents, family members and other caretakers, who initially are regarded as omniscient and omnipotent.
"Clinical therapists would consider it highly unethical to use force, but our cultural hypnotists often do -- a slap on the wrist, or severe reprimand for misbehaving. Or perhaps more subtle, but equally powerful, emotional pressures -- 'I will only love you if you think and behave as I tell you.'
"Finally, and most significantly, the conditioning is intended to be permanent. It may come from the very best of intentions, but it is, nevertheless, meant to have a lasting effect on our personalities and the way we evaluate the world.
"This is why awakening from our cultural trance entails far more than a simple snapping of the fingers. There is a lifetime’s worth of extremely powerful induction to be overcome.Charles Tart 7 maintains that "we are indeed, as a matter of verifiable fact, like zombies most of the time but we have a possibility of becoming conscious." He believes that "normal" consciousness is indeed a zombie-like state of greatly constricted and distorted, if not absent, awareness. Tart gives such ordinary consciousness the technical name of "consensus consciousness" in a purely descriptive sense and "consensus trance" when a persons is focusing on it as a restricted state."We would seem to be firmly stuck with our conditioning. Indeed, for most of the time we are. Yet there are occasions when we do wake up, and see things in a different light. In those moments we are given a glimpse of what is possible."
"Imagine if you can a world in which truth is one general and something we will call blindness is the opposing general. These two simple factors one must choose between. There are no neutrals. We are frankly for or against and hold our positions by the force of the effort we put forth. The great struggle is not only to conquer our opposing forces, but to reclaim and form them into fighters for the truth. It is more of a game than the mere overcoming, for we are after the plunder of human souls to salvage."
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"The struggle of the people in opposition to the privileged class that controls the state, is the dynamic factor in our national development , the theme and meaning of our history.""We cannot understand the role of the people in history unless we also understand the historical illusions which misrepresent history in order to serve the interests of privileged classes. Thus culture must be studied as a weapon in the struggle of classes.
"Cultural history emerges in its truth and grandeur when it is seen as an unceasing struggle between the oppressor and the oppressed. This is also the link between the present and the past. The long battle against the oppressor is not ended. Man has not yet become the full master of his own life, of the conditions of his social existence.
John Howard Lawson, The Hidden Heritage, 1950
To understand the most fundamental aspects of this NEW WORLD that we're realizing, we must consider the teachings of a Perennialist savant 8 who proclaimed the sovereignty of a higher realm (mistranslated "kingdom of heaven"). The Greek words referring to this new world are:
As we examine Jesus's life and teachings, it is unmistakable that he was a sage within the Perennial Tradition proclaiming the sovereignty of the Higher Realm. Authentic wisdom is adapted by a Perennialist teacher relative to the needs of the people in a particular culture and time. Teachings are organic nutrients to be assimilated not meant to remain in unaltered, undigested form for curiosity seekers, theoreticians, or autocrats to pick over and "elucidate."
Inevitably, every Perennialist teacher's ideas and exercises experience two totally divergent modes of treatment:
Thus in the early church a number of factions had arisen, with Peter and some of the other original apostles preaching a Judaised, sacerdotal Christianity requiring no more than belief, while Paul insisted that Jesus's teaching was about a spiritual rebirth such as he had himself experienced.Both Jesus and Paul taught that religion is not mere belief in doctrines but a practical knowledge of the way to live within the sovereignty of the Higher Realm. The original teaching of Jesus was thus passed on through Paul and those whom he and his immediate companions taught in the many cities they visited.
If you watch a TV history of Christianity or read a Protestant or Roman Catholic account of the early church, Christianity's becoming the official religion of the Roman state during Constantine's reign is considered a great victory. The only measure of success for these moderns is whether or not a tradition triumphed over all its competitors. Never mind what distorting of the original message had taken place. If a particular religion came out on top, it's to be considered the best.
On the contrary, the formal religion that became known as the Holy Roman Church was and is nothing but a vast repository of false teachings and practices. At the present time, what is called Christianity, in all its Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant guises, is a horrible deformity of Jesus's original teachings. It is only in such an anarchy of falsehood and deception that Mel Gibson's snuff film "The Passion of the Christ" could have any appeal.
Jesus's teaching says that man is capable of a second birth into the sovereignty of the higher realm. However, this re-birth or second birth belongs to the inner aspect of man, not to man as he seems to be in himself, a materialistic body living on earth.
To experience rebirth means to evolve to a higher level of understanding, to a higher being. This can only be achieved by new knowledge, gnosis, and by practicing this new understanding. The gnosis or knowledge which gives man this possibility of evolving is sometimes called Truth and at other times called the Word. It is not ordinary truth or knowledge; it is knowledge about this further evolutionary step which man can take as he realizes the new world of the brotherhood of man, the infinite value of the individual soul, and the ethic of love.
The new world we are realizing is in large part within those who are members of it. As the new world was earlier termed "the sovereignty of Higher Being" it is now also referred to as "the spiritual domain."
"As you gain control of your spiritual body, you discover that it has a wondrous creative force. Your spiritual body possesses an engine of power, dynamically creative, capable of impressing and molding your material world in direct ratio to the creative force you produce in your inner being. This force is not a mental capacity, it's a higher spiritual power. It derives, not from that mere agent of the soul, the intellect, but from the spiritual center within us."
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1 Realize: make real or concrete; give reality to; be fully aware or cognizant of
2 Yes, the present atrocities of the criminal cabal (destruction of world education, world wars, 9/11, two Iraq wars, global warming, environmental destruction, unemployment, homelessness, globalization, etc.) are EVILS, not just inappropriate or unfortunate events. The essence of evil is "causing harm."
3 For a complete discussion of the Medieval mind-set and how the Perennial Tradition created a new conception and practice of knowledge, see Chapter Three in The Perennial Tradition: Knowledge Through Prescribed Experience
4 Marshall was a doctrinaire Federalist. The Federalist party, under Alexander Hamilton and John Adams, had seized all branches of the federal government. It was only through the bravery of Thomas Jefferson that the Federalists were defeated in the election of 1800. Adams had appointed Marshall Chief Justice of the Supreme Court as he left office, to pack the court with reactionaries.
5 Suskind's article was on the general subject of the Bush cult's religious fantasies
6 See the author's recently published book
Progressive Awareness
7 Charles Tart, Mind Science: Meditation Training for Practical People, 2000
8 For a comprehensive discussion of Jesus of Nazareth as a Perennialist teacher, see Chapter 13 in the author's recently published book The Perennial Tradition
Updates and References: