Albigen-Papers-1-Social-Illusions

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FIRST PAPER

Social Illusions

All of us are able to note discrepancies more quickly in our neighbor than in ourselves. And yet we listen to our leaders, whether they are politicians, social lions, psychologists, sociologists or ministers as they point out the discrepancies in their opponents ... and we accept them. without bothering to look for discrepancies in the language of those same leaders. We are impelled by egotism to have great confidence in our ability to have picked the side of truth, without noticing that millions of other people of opposite belief have equal conviction.

Sometimes, we are carried away to the point of murder. Or we are killed with our own cliches. We become so bloated with egotism that we puff up and float away into never-never-land, and not even our loved ones can rescue us. We denounce drug-addiction, and yet we are all addicted, and equally as dangerous as the drug-addict.

Let us, in this work, look at ourselves. Is it possible to understand the self? We wish to Know. Not factual data. We wish, at this point, to experience the true state of being of the universe, and man's actual relationship to it. We wish to know man. We start with ourselves, and learn that we must find that part of man which is real, and that which is not. We are trying to find reality. And these things are difficult for robots, and even more difficult is it for robots to accept from any other robot, the alarming message that they are robots, and that such an informer might, by some chance, take over, and run, the robot's computer.

We must employ a bit of tightrope walking, hairsplitting and shadow watching. We begin this adventure by focusing the attention, -- by thinking. We notice the bigotry of science, yet we must attempt to be scientific or logical in our approach to the matter. However, we are absolved, if further along the path we discover that in order to appreciate or realize reality we must transcend logic. We are absolved, if for no other reason, than for facilitating this, the first step away from ignorance. We may never be guaranteed to experience the Absolute, but at least may be gratified by being able to abandon fragments of illusions in thinking, and gain hope of greater release from a state of conceit profitting for us a mountain of nothingness. Or still better, we may gain confidence enough to climb another mountain, and profit from the expanding reality we find at thin air, and pure airlevels.

We must ride the wild horns of the paradox, all the way. Since this experiential world is one of polarity, no frontal assault on Truth is possible for us.

This book may seem largely controversial. The main theme to be remembered here, is that we shall approach Truth by retreating from untruth. By truth, I mean, that which is most likely among different attitudes or evidences. By untruth I mean the least likely. By Truth, which I capitalize for emphasis on the difference, I mean, -- the absolute state of being. For instance, let us say that when we describe coal as being black, we speak the truth. It is, however, only relative truth, as are all things appraised by the bicameral. sensory brain. Another fellow may come along and indicate that we suffer from retinal illusion, and convice us that coal is not black but colorless. We then ask ourselves, if our eyes, our most important contact with the world, deceive us, -is it not then possible that more of the objective world than we wish to admit, is adjusted to our comprehensive faculty by nature. rather than exactly understood by the mind.

We become adjusted and we think that we walk in wisdom. Adjustment may be extolled for temporal contentment, but the contented cows in the dairy are allowed their contentment only as long as their vegetative machinery holds up. Their real purpose may be the dairyman's comfort or food. Therefore we must take a second look at many of the philosophical and psychologlcal works which we instinctively accept as being loqical and Truthful.

It is important to have harmonious relations with our fellow-man. Conventionality has its place. However, when looking into the nature of things, we should not allow a system of social conduct to become the yard stick for all our thinking. For instance, the psychiatrist is supposed to be a doctor of the psyche who employs all the scientific data to date about the mind, to cure the mind of its ills, or to aid the mind. He is, in reality, something of a veterinarian, interested mostly in the habits of vegetating humans, and in the adjustment of those humans to the rules of the local dairy-herd. Religion finds itself adjusting to the mood of the times, instead of adjusting man to the Truth. The psychiatrist's therapy is not aimed at making man a better man, but a better running robot. They try to check the circuits in the computer so that the robot will do its work better, but not be a. thinker of more clarity.

Are we only insignificant cows in a dairyman's hard? Are we still citizens of Babel, foolishly building a pyramid of words and sciences in the vain belief that we can transcend the earth with our own computers? Or is it possible that man's hunger for definition and individuality may some day be recognized? When we see our most determined efforts toward Truth being turned against us, we may even suspect that we are being watched by the dairyman, so that we may not rebel against our stanchions. Psychology and transcendentalism came into being, because man felt that religion had already been pretzled hopelessly contrary to the enlightenment of man. The transcendentalist followed the devotee, but he too became quickly infected vith venallty and divergence. Psychology was the first movement that undertook to understand man by observing the seemingly unobservable mind of man. It started in the right direction, -- the essence of man, -- but it too has succumbed to a sort of venality, and to a vanity of a priestcraft tolerated by the herd-government.

The Soviet psychiatrist will not advise you similarly to the American psychiatrist. Therefore, truth has a geographical condition. Man has been a pathetic creature, down through the ages. Each mass-effort, and each individual effort, to break the barriers of ignorance, has been thwarted ... so that it seems as if heaven is plotting against him. Paradoxically, it may not be so. Perhaps we are overlooking something. Our desire for Truth need not deny us the possibility of individuality and immortality. We should try everything and anything, study every cult and cultist, -- look under every rock, if necessary. God may be under the next one, truly.

How many of us are there, who profess that we would desire to know the Truth, whether or not knowing be tangible or absolute, yet who would shrink timidly (before the journey into Truth is half begun) before a nakedness of some previously unnoticed disclosures about the relative world. Too many of us are like the spinster who refused to disrobe because she considered a naked body to be sinful.

Let us pause and ask ourselves what we are. Are. we truly the semi-divine creatures that we might imaqine ourselves to be? Or are we beasts, and morallyh, more beastly than any animal in the jungle? And beasts, according to our own definitions and standards? An article was published recently by an expert on jungle-life which indicated that we were in some ways worse than beasts. He pointed out, that, of all the animals, we were the most internecine. The jungle animal may snarl and strike out in competition, but after a little sparring about, the weaker of the two retreats and leaves the prize to the stronger. The weaker is not foolhardy, nor is the stronger one, revengeful. There are very few flights to the death among animals of the same kind.

Most of mankind's conviction about human-divinity comes from man's looking downword, not upward. He endows himself with superlatives because he witnessed other inferior beings. However, man's ideas of divinity are somehow tied to morality, and most animals, (excepting those who have lived too close to man, and those who resemble man) have better morals than humans. In a sort of hypocritical dignity man enacts legislation, affirming the immorality of non-pregnating sex practices. Yet statisticians such as Kinsey and Stoeckel tell us that the majority of all humans ignore this legislation, some secretly, some openly.

Who is it that casts this image that man is innately and irrevocably divine? Where lie the roots of this farcical pretence into which man thrusts his children generation after generation, century after century, and which is accepted so blindly that it has become highly offensive not to embrace the farce in its entirety? The implement that nature uses to bring about this perrenial dream of divinity is the human ego. The pretence of divinity is fruitfull for the young females who affect innocence, virtue, beauty, or what-have-you. All are prompted to pose. Then somewhere along the line, with mutual back-scratching agreed upon, the play-acting becomes law. Language expedited the making of a complex drama from what was perhaps previously only a dull biological existence.

Little did the aborigine, who first adorned himself or herself with a feather or bone, realize the revolution that he caused. Nor is man in general, yet aware that our billion dollar cosmetic industry is the result of acts committed by primitive ancestors who found a thrill in pretenee. We look further and wonder how much excessive toil and bloodshed resulted from the encouragement of this same love of pretence in other fields.

Feathers from the rear of a bird gave dignity to the brow of a chief, who in turn made a back-scratching deal with a witch-doctor ... and thus perhaps our complex society was started.

At heart, each man is a killer, a thief, and a rapist. Yet he shows his teeth in a smile. He has learned to steal artfully, and his frustrations at being unable to express himself with true masculine aggressiveness has resulted in a creature (according to Kinsey) that Is inverted, perverted and bestial. And no longer masculine, because civilization has made a coward of him. And as a result, his women have become, -- in their hunger for genuine male relationship -- nymphomaniacs, lesbians and fetish-lovers.

And where did all of this start? It started with the game of make-believe. Three daubs of blue and a bone in the nose makes one a member of the local medical association. And society was taxed to support him. Then came titles for the chief, for his son, for his queen, and for his favorite flunkies. Each found a feather-arrangement peculiar to his station. Then came the rituals that swelled the chests and egos, and impressed the slaves. Prostration before the chief, and a salute for his generals. Next came deification. The chief could do no wrong. The witch-doctor also became infallible, and we trust that the natives enjoyed the game as much as we do today.

Perhaps there came a day when the natives became restless, and tired of the game. Like children playing "house", too many were given insignificant roles, and their little egos hungered for some of the inflation. The chiefs saw that this would be a job for the generals if the witch-doctors could not handle it. But the witch-doctors responded to the occasion. They made everybody important by discovering the gods. The gods took some of the significance from the chiefs, which gave them a bloodless revenge. The gods, in turn, through the mouth of the witch-doctors told them to obey the chief. Thus the generals no longer bore the name of executioner, but of a noble hunter. The innate urge to let blood was vented only on strangers. This further insured the sleep of the chief and of his generals, when they vere at home.

The first gods were pulled fresh from the hat, with little imagination. The sun remained as a god for many centuries, because the theologians were accepted as specialists, -and they were dealing with simple people. When contributions slackened, they discovered new gods. And when language found an alphabet, the need for pattern thinking arose. Now new gods arose with more meaningful names. One of the early abstract gods was Jod. This was a personification of the male regenerative principle. Theology evolved and was improved. However, the improvement was dictated by pressuring kings and high priests. In time the village chief had grown a gold crown, and the witchdoctor had traded his nose-bone for a tiara or mitre. The natives, now no longer amused or intimidated by god-stories, were now given individual godhood. The witch-doctor decided that each had a little piece from God, and it was called a soul.

The natives, once again were thoroughly frightened. But many of the chiefs or kings were convinced that their souls were more important than their gold, and the shamans in the long robes wound up with much pillage. Incidentally, a study of witch-doctors in Africa, medicine-men among the American Indians, and the shamans of Mongolia, uncovered evidence that all of them had a common denominator, -- they were mostly homosexual. There is no intention here to evaluate this, as to whether homosexuality abets psychic prowess, or whether witch-doctoring became the only haven for misfits. It is noteworthy, for the researcher to observe the tendency among high priests to wear long robes, and while pretending this to be a mark of modesty, to decorate these robes with sequins, gold braid, embroidery, and even jewels.

Again, I wish to insist that this Is not an attack upon churches, but upon the ignorance and vanity of man. This by no means implies that man does not have a soul, but indicates rather the gradual evolvement of the soul idea. A very good reference on the matter is Frazier's Golden Bough.

We now return to the sequence of evolutionary steps In religion. That which we now call civilization, was emerging. The function of the witchdoctor became split. The next to appear on the scene were the high priest and the physician. The world of make-believe was growing. The men of specialty, naturally studied their parts, and a few of the actors became Interested enough in their parts to quit acting and devote their time to study. Still, to this day, most men of specialty are mostly actors.

During that period of European history when the high priests over-awed the kings, when the divinity of man was most loudly proclaimed, and when man was exhorted to reflect the kindly and loving nature of God in man's relations to his fellow-man -- then did the worst savagery of man break forth. And the high priests led the blood-bath, like their ancestral witch-doctors. The urge to kill is strongest in the animal that has the least to fear. The high priests were now the strongest. Their heads were so bloated with convictions of their own celestiality that they never dreamed that they would automatically revert to jungle-instincts. They found excuses to kill their own people who did not pay tribute to their churches. Then they allowed their celibate imaginations to devise instruments of torture. They burned women and children at the stake. A frustrated and impotent priesthood found satisfaction in impaling the helpless. Next, another theolorical trend began, away from the abstract realms of Aquinas and other manufacturers of invisible cloth. The trend was headed for materialistic thinking -- toward science, metaphysics and occultism. Perhaps the high priests in the old dogmatic eras thought that they were preaching the truth, or creating truth through faith, but theirs was really a period of forgetting ... forgetting their animal nature and the ever-present egos that invariably colored their dogma. Their efforts to impose a dream may have sprung from noble intentions. However, the natives can be roused from an imposed dream, if the dream becomes a nightmare.

Now our civilization is becoming increasingly complex, our make-believe has myriad ramifications. Our theologies have become more subtle, but they still compromise with the powers that control the populace, and religion has retreated, becoming now little more than a social emollient. We no longer put bones in our noes, although the female still wears rings In her ears and feathers in her hat. And we still have a massive form of mutual back-scratchIng in this system of make-believe. And it grows more absurd, daily. We now have church groups which are organizing and lobbying, not for control, but for a piece of the action, -- for recognition as being functionally important to the state. Churches, (and police-fraternities) campaign, not to disseminate the truth, but to ban certain movies that detract from their image and dignity.

Each profession paints a nice picture of itself, but it would be illuminating to see figures on percentages of crimes committed by policemen, to find the percentage of mentally unstable people among the ranks of psychologists and psychiatrists, and to find the percentage of thieves and alchoholics among the members of the legal profession.

It may shock us to be reminded that a uniformed, cold-blooded killer is recognized as a brave man. Yet how much braver is the lone, fratricidal killer, who has neither the protection of his government or his friends, and is comforted only by his solitary conviction as he goes about his killing. It will shock us to know that women, once they have decided to kill, are more vicious than men. And children, trying to be honest, will even kill their parents. Society utilizes children, as soon as they are able to bear arms, knowing about their immunity to fear and adult inhibitions.

When we walk down a busy street, let us look about us. We see charming people, seemingly. Actually, we are inspired by people posing. The beautiful starlet, on the stage or street may seen to be the epitome of tenderness, gentility and innocence. But give her a few hundred thousand dollars and her masculinity will transcend her feminine nature. She will buy and sell husbands, she will abort unwanted children, and often die in the process. And her lust will eventually find the headlines of every paper in the world.. The quickest catalyst for changing the intended nature of woman, whether it be a housewife or a queen, is power. She is innately hostile, having this mechanism built in to protect her young. It Is not uncommon to sink teeth into the male mate. Of course this is a trait of all mammals, whose instinct is to protect the litter, even from the male. The human female Is more prone to neglect or destroy the litter, than the animal, because she is more prone to vanity. She finds her maternal instincts confused by vanity.

Let us take another look at the street. We see fancy food-stores that sell ersatz foodstuffs. We see libraries that pose as truth-factories, but wherein controversial books are banned to the researcher. We see automobile display-rooms where vehicles are sold for the curve of their fenders, but not for the worth of their motors or gears. We find acres of floor space for haberdashery and women's apparel, but we may search for a week to find a sonsible clothing item. Sturdy building facades have been replaced by enameled tin, glass and plastic. Frustrated maternal and paternal instincts are evidenced by the many solicitous adults seen curbing their dogs. The corner peddler of nostrums is gone, replaced by loudspeakers and neon lights on the drug store. The brokerage houses go about their business with a fearful dignity, posing paper empires as monolithic structures, -- which in reality are eroded by simple rumor, buffeted easily by winds of chance, and can be sent tumbling by psychological factors not fairly understood by even the most masterful wizards of brokerage alchemy. We see furniture and appliance stores whose business-life is inversely proportional to the life of their products.

We go now to the professional people. A professional man is noted for his reluctance to speak. He proudly indicates this to be a mark of wisdom, but we know well that he does not dare to open his mouth before too many people, until he has become skilled in saying nothing with many words. Even the specialists are inadequate, and they also substitute the act (the farce) for actuality.

But we say, still, that people are basically good, and that there is progress from all of this ego-prompted civilization. And In between our most savage and internecine wars we advance in culture and improve our living conditions. And man also continues to lose sight of himself. People like to be told that they are good. It flatters their egos to be seen in church. It makes them feel very tall to stoop with a nickel toward the beggars hat, or to write a check for a charity if the amount is deductible. Talleyrand once stated that words were invented to disguise or conceal meaning. So our acts are often carefully planned to build a certain public picture for the actor.

The lover charms the mate before beating her. The salesman is charming to an almost hypnotic degree while promoting a nearly worthless product. How often must Pollyanna be ravished before she settles for common sense, and abandons her make-belief? When are we strong enough or tired enough to see the nonsense of it all? And when will we be determined enough to try to sort some truth from the jumble of evidence available?

Do not think that only a small percentage of men are motivated by primitive drives. And do not think while admitting most men to be primitive, that you are not -- just because you dropped a nickel in the collection basket, or because you were the actor carrying the basket. Our kindness is a mask, and our smile is not too much more meaningful than a similar gesture by an opossum or hyena. It means, stand still, and do not struggle while I bite you, or put the bite on you.

We are cowards, and that which we witness about us is a dynasty of fear in a playhouse of desire. Yesterday, and in ancient times, the man who manifested indifference to desire was extolled as a sage. Today, our society legislates that a man must have certain desires or find himself penalized. You may not be allowed to live in a simple unpainted house, nor in a shack across the track. The law will put leavening in your bread regardless of you r choice. You must come up to the vanity of your neiqhbor or be condemned. Your vehicle must look a certain way, and function a certain way, or it wi11 not be alloved on the streets unless you have a stipulated minimum of cash in your pockets. You will be jailed, and the crime will be varrancy.

Our general cowardice manages to keep us from biting one another. In other words, we muzzle ourselves, and pick those with the sharpest teeth to go unmuzzled, naming them as our protectors, prelates and representatives. And, as in the jungle, those with the sharp teeth pick off the veak and the slow of wit. We have deified our wonderland, and legislated that all must believe in it to the letter. Only those in charge of dream-planning may alter the dream, and they may alter it only a tiny fraction. Philosophy is allowed, and you are permitted to toy with ideas a bit, but make sure that it enhances the "party-line" of your area -- be the dissertation one of religion or sociology.

Few will say, "I doubt that". It might be fatal to do so. You must be shrewd, inverted, indirect, and rely on language mechanisms of satire, wit, and the use of parable and fable. This you can learn from any peddler. And never imply that you do not have freedom of speech. This will label you, and some of the labels will frighten you into silence.

And now, knowing the risk, let us evaluate the questions thit disturb both the wise and the stupid. What is man? Is he merely a compound of chemicals and corruption? Is he cast here for a reason, or is he a complicated accident? Does he have an inner mechanism more important than the body, which in turn is a teleological by-product of the growth of the inner mechanism? Is there a God? Is He available, or is he evasive?

What is the nature of God? And about heaven... is it important to know first about heaven, or first, about God? Or is it not better to know first about man? These things are important for us to know. Is there really a divine essence, available to those who seek and are sincere? Or are we but miserable children, carrying too far, a tale about a fairy god-motber told by ancient parents as a soporific? Or is there balm in Gilead, and a magic wand that makes the corn grow, that parts the sea, enables us to kill. our enemies, wards off sickness, and forgives us for the errors of the creator? Does God approve the sin-game?

Why do we presume that God is good, according to our standards? What do we do, to show a profit for Him? Is God a personal being, or will he forever remain impersonal and non-dimensional? Belabored as we are by our competitive vegetable existence, will it ever be possible to formulate a real theological research? What varieties of approach are there to the problem of identifying ourself in relation to the universe, and with the ultimate or absolute? Some say that if you seek, you will find. Others say, "Be still. God will choose you ... you can do nothing".

It is easy to see that sorting the chaff from the grain becomes a monumental task. And yet, what is there left to do for those of us who have tired of the apparent nonsense which perhaps we once appreciated as the qame of life? Of course, a very important point arises here. If we cannot see the many instances in everyday life whereby we are fooled, -how can we pierce the infinite with this exceedingly finite mind? Still reeardless of the odds, the human mind has a basic curiosity about itself, and a hunger for a continuance of life, that is, if present in animals, is not as well verbalized by them as it is by humans. The landscape is studded with steeples. The preachers therein may be mostly freeloaders, and ninety percent of the parishes may be lazy religious hopefuls who lean entirely on their preacher to insure immortality for themselves, (even as they confidently rely on the plumber to keep their spigots running), yet, man maintains by the steeples an ever-present self-reminder that vegetable-man is not satisfied with himself.

If there is a Supreme Conscious Personality which observes the diggings of man down through the ages, He must be well amused by the pathetic efforts and methods of man. We ourselves smile, at the aborigines shuddering at a bolt of lightning, and perhaps at the sacrificing of humans to appease the forces of nature. On the other hand, we may be quick to take up the hatchet against anyone who smiles at our peculiar form of worship -- of fear and hope.

Scientifically we have evolved, but we have not figured out the puzzle. We no longer augur the intestines of animals, to find the propitious moment... but we still burn incense to appease the Gods, and our augury has only evolved into such forms as astrology and the yi-ching. There is still an attempt to understand ourselves through philosophy and religion. However, philosophy is like a tongue that spits in our own eye. And where once we had a few reliplons with many prophets, we have many cults and no prophets.

Is it possible to outline a system of search for mankind, that has magnified and multiplied its superstitions, and shortened the hours that might be spent in research, by building a frankenstein civilization so full of waste and nonsense that the exigencies of physical existence take up all of his time? It seems that with each new decade, the chances for man to have an energetic spiritual aim, are less and less.

Where, in our mammoth libraries, will we start? How many lifetimes will it take to digest all the theories, beliefs, dogmas and sacred writinqs, if we are going to proceed in a scientific manner? What an army of tabulators will we employ if we are going to categorize phenomena that relate to our quest. If we are going to take the word of certain mystics, and approach the problem through faith -- how shall we choose the sect to which we will surrender? What questions should precede such surrender?

Are there steps of preparation for wisdom? Shall we train ourselves to be as meek an oxen... who are worked hard and then eaten? Shall we curry favor with those who pretend to know? Or shall we be sly, ivnoring all ethics and rules, and with studied trickery, outwit the gods who would keep us enthralled? This may sound like sheer nonsense unless we have heard of Crowley, Gurdjieff and some of the thaumaturgists.

We must not fail to mention the hucksters of celestial real estate. Sometimes those who most loudly extol the truth, commercialize ignorance. Those who preach humility for others, have the arrogance to glibly describe in meticulous detail any supernatural dimension, and at the same time to deny (when cornered) that finite men will ever really know anything about supernatural matters.

We may feel kindly toward the humble, and humility should be commendable for us if we are predisposed toward fatalism. If not, we shall be meek enough when the mortician has finished with us. If we are not submissive toward our condition of ignorance, or do not feel complete, then we must proceed as though we expected to achieve as a result of labor and effort. We must have the. courage to strike out on unconventional paths, or have the patience to follow a well-beaten path to check out its reliability. In this business of life and death, we should manifest a life-or-death tenacity. We must be flexable in knowing when to listen, when to be sly, when to communicate to our fellows, and when to remain silent.

And in conformity with our dual existence, and our bifocusing. senses, let. us maintain a double approach at all times. We can expect confusion and dismay, but we can lessen our confusion by eliminating the most absurd and the least, likely. The frontal attack on ignorance has failed, because we struck out for Truth, not knowing its direction, nor its appearance. Thus we vould not know it if we saw it. Flexibility will here call for a reversal of tactics. Let us retreat from untruth. And while doing this, let us maintain objective observation, experimentation, and analysis for common denominators. Those common denominators should be sought in the comparison of relipions as well as in the examination of psychic phenomena.

There are several other questions which will demand answers, sooner or later. Is man hoodwinked by man, or by the gods? When does a robot become a self-conscious unit of life? Did God decide to keep us in ignorance, and manage it by simply instilling in us a complexity of fears and desires, and a grandiose ego.

In the realization that human frustration and fatigue makes for make-believe, we come to still another possibility. It is possible that make-believe is either an intuition of things to come, or is a factor in the creation of events. We find that the Flash Gordon of two decades ago becomes the John Glenn of today, and this metamorphosis occurs in the destiny of other dreams and desires. Is it possible, that if humanity believed in God steadfastly, -- there would come a time when God would gratefully appear?

UNIVERSAL PRACTICE OF DECEPTION

We begin life with an eagerness to be deceived. There is a delight in magic and fairy tales. The baby has an utter conviction that its mother is infallible. It can conceive of no greater security than to have its nose buried in its mother's breasts, encircled by her arms. This is the conviction of instinct ... not of logic yet, nor even of intuition.

As we grow older, we do not of a necessity lose our fetters, and suddenly become mature. We transfer one slavery for another. We build mighty rationalizations that are aimed to prove that we are doing or thinking. And yet, in most cases, all we do is translate the instinctive drive for foetal security into other symbols. When we get a little older, Santa Claus will usurp the maternal chair a little. He will be good to us if we are good, and he will punish us if we are bad. He and his little elves can see all, know all, etc.

Then as we grow older, there are other substitutes. For some it will be God, and for others, -law. And for some men it will be simply another person who reminds them of the mother ... a wife. And through all these transfers, the idea of authority permeates, and the idea of infallibility. There is magic in being awed, thunderstruck, loved and punished by that which is all-mighty and irresistible.

And so I come to this question. Is it ever possible to conceive of a grand architect or first cuse without coloring it with emotions that emanate from prenatal or post-natal instincts and desires? Must desire, in other words, answer all our questions? And is any reasoning that bears any taint of desire or rationalization really valid? And if not, is any reasoning about God valid at all, until we have more valid information about our own real essence?

We concoct a heaven for the delights of our desires, and invent a hell for the wicked -- who are those who would prevent us from having our dream. Of course we do not realize that we are also the wicked, and must endure the hell that we have created for ourselves.

We like to pretend maturity. We scoff at the immaturity of those who believe in another Santa Claus. We feel a certain stature in denouncing all that is not conventional. And we do not hesitate to denounce, even though we know that individual interpretations of conventionality are so varied that they cause chasms of misunderstanding between us and our next door neighbors.

Those of us who wish to stop and think about ultimate directions, are jostled by the herd, and repeatedly goaded by the exigencies of living. So that we wonder if it will ever be possible for other than a very few individuals to pause in this herd-stampede long enough to meditate. And among those who have been able to pause for a few hours, there is always present an insurmountable wall of illusion, greeting the searcher at every turn. And we must function in the herd, and from it take our sustenance, security and family survival. I think that nearly everyone who has tried to manipulate the Gordian knot of self-definition, has been aware of the near-impossibility of keeping the feet on two paths at once, while keeping the two paths separate at the same time.

The two paths consist of the world of pseudo-reality, and the world of ultimate reality. They cannot be mixed, and yet the illusions of the world of pseudo-reality, or the layman's world of materialism, definitely has a disastrous effect upon the efforts of a person trying to find the ultimate reality., A person who has an eye open for honest answers, cannot help being irritated by the tangles and cobwebs caused by deliberate social make-believe.

On top of this, the path that he chooses to find the ultimate reality will have equally confusing cobwebs, although of a different type. These latter cobwebs will be the result of a relative mind-system's attempts to work with word-symbols in the abstract fields leading up to an awareness of the Absolute, and in describing to others his findings, once he has reached it.

If we take time out to change society, so that it will make a place for the mystic, we will never accomplish anything, -- unless we have hundreds of years to spend. However, unless we point out the illusions of mass-thinking, and identify them as herd-rationalizations, we may be changed by society into functional parts of it, rather than be allowed to straddle the two paths at once.

Somebody said that it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. A candle will not do the job, nor would a battery of klieg lights, if by candles we mean social work, social reform, and a passive samaritan attitude. We may as well curse the darkness if the only medium in which we can work is one of social pretence.

We make much of our "rights" in society. And yet we know, that each individual man finds himself to be increasingly restricted, and compressed into a limited circle of activity. Yet his rights do not guarantee against the invasion of other people into his orbit. The process by vhich a right is usurped, is often classified as a duty.

We are addicted with the "freedom syndrome". We have freedom to worship ... only in a church chartered by the state. We have freedom of speech, on certain occasions. But not through the mail, nor in court, nor in the army. We have the freedom to beget children, but once begotten, they are the property of the state. We are free to pursue pleasure, but it must be along herd-lines. We have the right to build a house, but we may quicklydiscover that it does not belong to us. That which we really possess is a list of obligations to that property. And when the state, or a clever group of politicians wants it, they will take it, not by legal suit, but by the stroke of a judge's pen.

We are also addicted to the "equality mania". Man cannot be legislated equal, he must be found to be equal. And he will be found to be highly diversified and unequal. Herd-language instead of becoming more meaningful with advancing technology, has become merely more confusing double-talk. So much so, that nearly all of his so-called liberties and rights have been reinterpreted, his children have been abused or slaughtered, and yet he has come up dazed and convinced that it all came about as a result of the perfect balance and justice that emanates from the very soul of the herd.

Throughout history, gregariousness has produced group-confrontations, and when there no longer remained another herd to confront, it produced repression within the herd. And this led to a lessening of quality of the members of the herd. On the other hand, history shows that the few people whose thinking actually produced some meaning or definition for mankind. were man of solitary habits ... men who spent years away from the herd, often in the desert, in an attic, or in prison.

In this group of contributing individuals, we find Buddha, who sat alone for years. Christ meditated in the wilderness. Ghandi meditated in jail. Not only the saints and yogis found the need for isolation, but the life-stories of many scientists. geniuses and artists show them to have been recluses at least during the incubation of their brain-children.

I am not so sure that man really wishes to be liberated from the frustrations of trying to guess the will of the zeitgeist in each of his daily actions. Herd-living has become so complicated that each man despairs of ever finding relative sanity, let alone, the ultimate reality. And he also knows that he may lose his life and all that he loves, in the social crosscurrents.

He is able to continue living or to tolerate life, by putting the serious thoughts so far back in the mind as is possible. He consciously encourages himself and his children to be sleepwalkers of sorts, sleepwalkers who will act out meaningless lives, just to be allowed to be mobile vegetables. In other words, if you act like the rest of the herd, you will be allowed your bread, your roof, and the "right" to procreate.

Man compensates for his frustration by posing.In this he does not re vert to the womb, but only to childhood, and to childish mechanisms for pretending. By pretending a bit, or a lot, he is able to make his robot-existence more bearable. But, by this make-believe, he thrusts himself so far from the urgency of figuring out the lab that he simultaneously closes very avenue of spiritual awakening.

We are unaware of this life of make-believe, simply because we live it as reality. Yet hardly any labor or habit is without affectation. We feel exalted by soap and water. We don a clean or new outfit and find ourselves walking a bit straighter, using more careful grammar, possessing more elan, more courage, and more dignity. We view ourselves in the mirror and are utterly amazed at any previous conviction of our own insufficiency. A pair of spectacles may induce a contemplative, scholarly attitude, even though the wearer be illiterate. Mascara may paint tiger-stripes on a kitten. A head, filled with hideous thoughts, and distorted in shape, may appear angelic if properly coiffured.

Perfume and suggestive clothing contribute to cranial confusion, both in the wearer and in the observer. The one who plays the act, and poses, is intoxicated by flattery, and he or she who receives the flattery interprets the flattery as a fiat of validity for the act of pretence. Sometimes the observer is likewise intoxicated, so intoxicated in fact that he has been known to change religion, philosophy, or his way of life, in the twinkling of the eye, and even risk his life in the process of encouraging the make-believe and in enforcing it upon his fellows.

The nudists have a point. There are enough mysteries to be solved without the creation of more by men. A white tunic does not make a doctor, nor a uniform, a general. Strip the populace naked and you will have trouble determining the professionals or the fools. Drunkards would be mistaken for priests, and truck drivers would look like business executives. When stripped, the proud would become humble. The judges would appear as furtive as perverts and thieves. The exhibitionistic sex-offenders would probably be the most at ease. The clergy would lose their mask of austerity, and the pedant would begin to stutter. Only the man who has a deep inner conviction, and a true set of values, would remain the same.

Vanity, and the desire to force respect, determine the type of vehicle that we drive, and the type of house we own. And these possessions should remind us that vanity is compatible with obsolescence ... for which we pay an endless price. The world will not change its vanity, even though a hundred books are written about it. It may evolve toward a more stable self-appraisal, but not swiftly. Since it takes poverty to realize the importance of wealth, it is equally possible that the pinnacle of wisdom extends from a pyramid of ignorance and despair. Our bicameral brain, and its sensory duality, may also be symbolic of the polarity of all comprehension. So that no thing is fully understood, until all things relative to it are understood, including its opposite. So that in a way, all things have their place and purpose, but it is not prohibited for a mind to understand this polarity, and to rise above it automatically.

The social illusions are by no means the only illusions. The worst illusions (those most difficult to overcome) are the religious, philosophic and scientific illusions. More astute and complex minds draw the blueprints for religious and scientific illusions, and consequently they create more complicated labarynths. And as we penetrate these, we find that the different sets or kinds of illusions interpenetrate one another, and thus increase complexity and frustration.

There comes a time within the lifetime of nearly every man, when he is aware of the nonsense of life, but unfortunately, this time comes at about the time of death. The knowledge only comes with a degree of relinquishment. The whole cobweb of illusion finds roots in the impressionable mind of man, and is bound to his being by strong motivating forces, sometimes called instincts or emotional drives, which I would prefer to label as implants.

Love is one of these, and it probably holds man in slavery more surely than any of the other bonds. We begin by thinking that love is something which we possess, and soon find that it possesses us. Next we recognize it as a sort of capacity for identification with our fellows. We identify in this manner with out mates, our parents, children and friends. And we think it quite an exalted quality or ability. That which we find out later, is that we seek out these relationships, and create them where there is no reciprocity in kind. We can assume that man wishes to be loved, and that most of his protests of love toward other beings, if analyzed, would prove to be frantic pleas for attention. This hunger for attention provokes all sorts of concessions and promises from the protestor of love. And of course, the most absurd protestation, emanates from the mouths of egotistical pretenders who announce their love for God, and His love of them.

Such a pronouncement has double jeopardy, in that it uses the two most misused words in the human language, -- love, and God. Both have too many interpretations. Love can be taken to mean, gentle hypnosis, sex, lust, the habit of reciprocal sex, or self-indulgence which uses another person as a mirror.

It is difficult for a person to free himself from the seeming need for love. Man does not enjoy love more than he suffers from it, and is used by it, or by the forces that implanted love within him. And as he becomes aware of his love-slavery, he merely transfers the love-hunger to another object. He is very slow to give it up entirely.

When sex-love is dissipated, the attachment will turn to children or grandchildren. Sex-pleasure is often replaced by the enjoyment of a feeling of nobility in being both more feeble and more extroverted. Sometimes an old person refuses to let go of his or her ideas of loveableness, even with the aid of senility.

INHUMAN LEGALITY

It has been said that Karl Marx and Cotton Mather both agreed on one think, namely, that the common man, (the masses) is incapable of governing himself. The common man, whether he drinks from the paps of parental monarchy, stern communism, or undisciplined democracy, -- is still like a puppy in an unweaned state. He has implicit faith in the breasts of that parent. He can be abused and beaten, but he will protect that parent with his life. And it is doubtful if his masochism can ever be erased.

Individual parents prepare their children for the future role of masochist, because state-entities are inclined toward the purging of individualists who might attempt to reform the brutality of the state. It is easier to make masochists out of our children than to see them electrocuted or hung. So we begin by paddling, and with a sort of clandestine and sinister gradualism, finally work up to whipping and beating. I have repeatedly heard local school teachers describe the procedure used to induce a child to take his "cracks" without panic or rebellion. They hit him with less severity at first, so that the surprise is gradual. Conditioning of the body to assault. The pupil may even give his consent to being cracked, presuming that there will not be any increase in the severity of the blows.

By the time the pupil is a man, he is no longer a man. He has conditioned himself to being on the receiving end of blows. Now he is no longer spanked, but is now kicked, clubbed by rifle-butts (in service training) and clubbed by the local police. For failing to act in a cringing manner before some uniformed sadist, he can be clubbed into insensibility or suffer excruciating penalties. I know of two cases where men, who had been clubbed by city police, -- never regained their sanity, and they spent the rest of their lives in the asylum.

But these are only the evident cases of brutality. And some sensitive souls bemoan this disease of civilization which divides all men into two classes, -sadists and masochistic sadists. So that manhood is suppressed and suspended with always the hope that somewhere in the future, the little masochistic boy will grow up to be a sadist. The fraternity or sorority pledge pays with pain now, for the purpose and license of causing pain, later. Sensible parents know that there is no top sadist. -there is only an endless circle of people beating one another. Here and there an egotistical sadist overplays; his part, thinking he is above the club. But the circle goes on. The man who invented the guillotine, died on it. The general is spanked by the Secretary of the Army, and the Secretary is spanked by Congress. And members of Congress take turns spanking one another. . .consigning an occasional member to jail, banishment or ruin for hiding unregistered graft.

And a few parents, seeing all of this, have decided to bring their children up without beating them, hoping that perhaps their example will inspire others until masochism will be absent from the motivational needs of mankind. They may produce unusual children, but not enough to put the rest of mankind to shame ... which would be necessary to stop the brutality. And so the madness goes on, and subconsciously all of humanity is so ashamed of brutality that no one will even admit that it goes on.

And the result is, that even as a nation, we react as a masochist. We beat our own soldiers, and shoot them for killing the enemy. We run about all over the world, apologizing for engaging in competitive business, or for offending some petulant group.

Religion helps us -with any difficulties which we might have in being good masochists. We are reminded of the glories of being struck on both cheeks. I cannot see too much difference between the school teacher who terrifies with the board or rattan, and the judge who threatens with the gavel.

Perhaps you think that we do not live under abuse. If you have this attitude, it may mean that your turn has not yet come. You have not yet been sentenced by a jury of peers. And of course no one is sentenced by peers ... peers do not condemn, they commiserate.

While the actor, who plays the part of beater, beats us, he consoles us by telling us that we have rights. This makes us feel that the beating has some meaning. Haphazard jurisprudence now has a meaning. But any of us can, within a half-hour after leaving our homes, find that our vast catalogue of rights has dwindled down to one last rite ... and it is handed to us as a beneficence. It is the right to make a phone call after being arrested.

We have the right to go to bed, but not to sleep in peace, nor to defend our families. If a fire-bomb comes through your window, you must while putting out the fire, overcome and identify the arsonist without hurting him, and then procede via legal channels. And when you discover the efficacy of these legal channels, you will laugh all the way to the courthouse and back.

You have the right to "legal council" if you are willing to put all of your worldly possessions in his hands. Even our children know of the farce that is imposed under the subterfuge of justice. They do not know the details, but they know that the deck is stacked. They look into the faces of judges and see senility, and often insanity, depravity, or an incurable vascular condition caused by alcohol.

Alcohol has been discovered to be a whipping-palliative. It makes the whip more bearable. And of course the judge (and many aspiring barristers) cannot forget the slogans issued to them in their masochistic youth, because at one time they were under the whip, and had to be convinced of its right.

The result is that the judge has a strong sub-conscious conviction that he should be whipped. By all the rules... he has sinned. He has taken graft, or at least, let his friends off easier than the friendless victims who stood before him. Perhaps he has broken traffic laws, and the troopers recognized him and turned their heads. This robot expects a whipping, but no one comes forth to whip him. And the fact that he has wielded the whip leaves him with the apprehension that his turn may come at any time. He waits and it does not come. And so unconsciously he punishes himself. He drinks, and then punishes himself for drinking, -by drinking more, and more.

Is the great Programmer, up there in the sky, a subtle sadist? Does He feel that this endless punishment of flesh and mind is necessary to prevent the flesh from precipitating into apathy and inertia? Momentarily, we are aware of our superior status to the animal ... the animal is beaten by stronger specie, while man is programmed to beat himself. And so the ritual of flagellation is not confined to the flagellantes, or cloistered monks who in dreary circles, tramp, pray, and whip the monk ahead. All humanity walks a similar treadmill, in confusingly inter-locking circles, all fustigating, all in turn fustigated.

And therein lies our only equality, perhaps. Our common denominator is found in mutual misery and helplessness. Each of us is but the space in the circle between two whips. And perhaps this sick orbiting will not be stopped until all of society grows tired of it at about the same time. And when men largely and quietly realize that toadstools have more chance of possessing equality (with other toadstools) than do humans. Simply because the more complex and evolved an organism is -- the greater the possibility of variety and consequent inequality.

Of course there is always an escape from whipping. It is suicide. And suicide may be slow. It may be a heart attack, when the body can stand no more. It may be insanity, when the mind simply cannot tolerate any more nonsense, but is not able to plan a suicide. The alternative is mental retreat. The more masochistic humans die quietly. Those who thought that they were the masculine aggressors, are those who are more likely to end it all with an extremely violent form of self-punishment. The general, whose monumental ego had to be matched with monumental power, commits suicide when his whiparm is paralyzed. The psychiatrist goes crazy, cooked in his own pot. The financier is also inclined to suicide. Suicide is the supreme punishment for superior people. No one is good enough to whip the king, but the king himself. It is possible that the only men who might be considered beyond sadism and masochism, are those who die on the scaffold. This would apply only to those who are convicted for killing the whipper, thus knowingly removing themselves from the circle of sickness.

SEMANTICS

We may smile or tremble at the king of liars who sits on his bench and orders us to tell, not only the truth, but the whole truth -- expecially when we know the implication of that order. The whole truth would give us all the secrets of the universe!

And regardless of all the misery that is caused to the private citizen by the abuse of words at the hands of his bandit-chiefs, -- this misery cannot compare to the trouble that we run into in sincere spiritual searching, simply because we have to deal with inadequate language, or the deliberate misuse of terms which otherwise might be adequate.

Many books on transcendentalism leave us confused because of difficulties with their terms. Wie are aware of the glibness with which some words, such as God, truth, heaven, and love, are used. And we are aware of the bloody battles that have been fought for the difference of definition. Before understanding any treatise of length we must first sense and intuit the authors meanings for his terms. It will do us little good to look in the dictionary. Each book has its own little cosmos, the meaning of which we must sniff out, guess or interpret from the general text, and at the end, we must be satisfied with the author's sincerity, if we can detect it.

Some words have several connotations, all of which is added to meaning-possibilities of arising from inference and interlinear hints. And on the other side of the fence, we have words that seem to have no meaning at all, except to a very limited number of people. For instance satori has no meaning that can be described. It has meaning only for those who have experienced a certain state, and for those who have experienced it, it apparently has different meanings. The curse of Babel is truly upon us, and especially upon those who look to heaven. Let us take the words: soul, mind, spirit, astral body, super-ego, oversoul, universal mind, Brahman, purusha, chakra, and self. Now if we admit these items to be real characteristics of human beings, we must also admit that man must be a very complicated character, because no two of them is defined as synonymous.

We might take the last word -- self, to use a word for comparison. Writers use the word profusely, but rarely identify it. The self mean the body and personality, the individual soul as distinguished from other souls or soul environments, or it might be synonymous with the word atman. It might even be used to explain the super-ego or the mind. The materialist might be describing the body when he used the word self. The modern sociologist defines the self as such visile evidences as emotions, thought and sensations.

No one has bothered to define thinking before making it part of the self. Infallible science when applied to unprovable psychological concepts, simply tightens up the circle... and the mind is-defined as that part which thinks.

We have two more words which are the Iuxury of idiots and authoritative men. They are right and wrong. Right is luck, and wrong is unluckiness. Right is today, but wrong is tomorrow. Right is strength, and wrong is weakness. Right is a voted mandate, wrong is wisdom possessed by a few. Or right is the wisdom of the few, and wrong is the weakness and delinquency only of those who know the truth.

There are two other words, life and death, which have obscure meanings. Life is seeming motion, and death is cessation of action. Life is awareness, and death is oblivion. Yet it can be demonstrated that life may well be semi-awareness, or fractional awareness, and that death may bring us to reality, and real activity.

[End]