Chapter 15: The History of Theocracy
A. Theocracy on Earth has passed through four different stages of
development so far, and is now entering a fifth. We will describe
the first four stages here, leaving the fifth for a later chapter.
The first stage was tribal shamanism of the type that produced the
Alta Mira cave paintings thousands of years ago. First-stage
Theocratic religions have never entirely died out, and still exist
today among certain tribes of North American Indians, Africans, and
Australian Aborigines. Most of them, though, have been evolving into
more advanced types or have been replaced with outside religions
since these peoples came into ever-increasing contact with
foreigners over the past few hundred years.
Q. In the course of my training as a magician, I’ve worked with
people who practice a number of these “primitive” systems and found
that many of them are as skilled at telepathy, psychic mind control,
psychic healing, etc., as highly trained Eastern and Western
occultists. I’ve also read extensively about dozens of other
shamanic spiritual systems, and they all seem to be designed to
teach advanced operational magic techniques as a routine part of
religious practice. What’s primitive about that? When it comes to
magic, it is Christianity and the other modern mainstream religions
that are primitive, not the shamanic systems.
A. First-stage Theocratic religions are not primitive from a human
perspective, but they are from a Theocratic perspective. As you
point out, most of them teach extremely sophisticated and effective
psychic-development systems. This is what makes them primitive – in
the sense of “crude and inefficient” – from the viewpoint of the
Theocrats, who judge a religious system by how well it allows them
to control every phase of human thinking and behavior, especially
the conscious use of the psychic powers.
In any society with a first-stage Theocratic religion, the majority
of people who learned significant psychic skills in a previous
lifetime have an opportunity to develop them consciously during the
present lifetime, because the shamans who serve as clergy are
conscious psychics themselves. Religious services in a first-stage
Theocratic religion are usually conducted with the entire
congregation in a psychic trance. This is in direct contrast to the
more advanced forms of Theocratic religion, which discourage
conscious, independent psychic activity, and employ the religious
trance rather than the psychic trance.
A religious elite composed of
shamans is much harder for the
Theocrats to control than one composed of clerical or secular rulers
who submit to religious mind control. A shaman is much more likely
to put his or her own psychic development above the telepathic
commands of the Theocrats. Also, shamanic mythologies often contain
major elements of the truth about Theocracy, and so teach people an
instinctive aversion for mind control and enslavement by spirits.
Q. I know from my reading on the subject that most such religions
teach that some disembodied spirits eat others.
A. They do, but the information is usually encoded in such a way
that the believers, including the shamans who channel it, do not
realize that the “Eaters of Souls” are their own gods. Instead, the
Eaters of Souls are said to be the gods of enemy tribes, or spirits
that are very different from human beings such as the Windigos of
various Amerindian tribes), or the ghosts of human criminals and
outcasts. The shamanic religions usually teach that a tribe’s gods
protect their own people from the Eaters of Souls.
Also, the powers of the Eaters of Souls are exaggerated. Most of the
legends say they can steal the souls of living people, except those
of the most powerful shamans. And this idea hasn’t died out at all.
It’s present in the writings of Lovecraft, in the modern
Fundamentalist propaganda about demonic possession, and in the
extant first-stage religions themselves. For example, the
present-day
Navajos still have powerful instinctive fears of witches
and shape-changers, and much of their traditional religious practice
is intended as a defense against these evil beings.
Q. When you come right down to it, I myself feel deep instinctive
fears that maybe the Theocrats can in fact forcibly take over the
minds of living people or somehow damage their souls.
A. Of course you have these fears. You learned them from a psychic
and social environment still dominated to some extent by the
Theocrats and their propaganda. However, the very fact that you are
able to write about this is evidence that the Theocrats are liars.
Their control over people is indirect, exercised mostly by
programming the subconscious mind. They can’t overwhelm the
conscious will of any normal person, only the wills of people with
seriously damaged physical or astral minds; and they can’t directly
harm or enslave the soul when it is incarnated.
However, at a certain point in the future, the
Theocrats will
probably become more powerful; but this has nothing to do with the
history of Theocracy so far. We’ll deal with this subject in Part
Three. For the time being, we will just say that it is nothing to be
unduly alarmed about, because we’re prepared to deal with it.
Q. OK, let’s leave it alone for now and go back to the description
of first-stage Theocratic religion.
A. First-stage Theocratic religion is far less efficient than the
more advanced stages of Theocratic religion in providing nourishment
for the Theocrats, because it doesn’t provide much opportunity for
them to enslave and devour the souls of believers after death. The
souls of shamans often don’t allow the Theocrats to control them on
the astral plane: either they reincarnate, or they set themselves up
as independent Theocrats in competition with the existing ones
hanging around that particular tribe.
The whole religious system encourages people to practice conscious
psychic development techniques and to become shamans themselves if
they have the necessary talent. Since the shamans enjoy political
power and social prestige, there is strong motivation for psychic
development, even though the training methods such primitive
societies employ are usually extremely laborious, painful, and
dangerous.
Q. I can see proof of Theocratic mind control and group minds by
observing what happens when Amerindians move from isolated
reservations to “red ghettos” in the big cities. They suffer more
from culture shock than do rural black people when moving to the
city, because they are entering a totally alien environment on the
psychic level as well as on the physical level. The blacks are
already familiar with Christian group minds, but Amerindians who
have been raised as believers in a first-stage religion are not.
That is why many “City Indians” are skid-row alcoholics, or spend
much of their lives in prisons or mental hospitals. It also explains
why a large number of City Indians who do adjust to the urban
environment become Christian Fundamentalists: they don’t have the
experience to resist Theocratic propaganda and religious mind
control. This leads me ask: do the Theocrats who pose as the gods of
a tribe with a first-stage religion find it easy to enslave tribal
members who haven’t have highly developed shamanic powers?
A. Not often, because such people’s fears of the
Eaters of Souls
keep them from approaching their gods after death. They expect to
become fearful wanderers after death, and that’s exactly what
happens. Sometimes the Theocrats manage to catch them and persuade
them to put themselves under direct telepathic hypnosis, but that’s
the exception rather than the rule. The Theocrats of a primitive
shamanic religion are usually quite short-lived. Often, deceased
shamans try being Theocrats for a while; then they have to
reincarnate to keep from literally starving to death.
Q. OK. What, then, the second stage of Theocratic religion, and what
cultures have practiced it?
A. The second stage of Theocratic religion involves
mass human
sacrifice and usually cannibalism on a large scale as well. The
Aztecs practiced it until about five hundred years ago, and some of
the ancient Middle Eastern people did also, starting about five
thousand years ago.
Q. I’m familiar with the practice of large-scale human sacrifice by
the Aztecs, the Assyrians, some of the Babylonian and
Punic tribes,
and others; but don’t human sacrifice and cannibalism go back much
earlier as common religious and social practices?
A. They do. Such practices were part of many
primitive shamanic
religions. The difference is in the scale of the sacrifices and
cannibalism. The second-stage Theocratic religions became possible
only when human societies started to become densely populated and
highly organized. Such societies built cities and had reasonably
sophisticated farming techniques. They also had large, powerful
governments and highly organized armies that fought major wars.
Q. For some reason, less is known about these societies and their
religions than about either primitive shamanism or more advanced
societies that existed simultaneously. I take it that the ancient
Egyptians and Hebrews were not societies with second-stage
Theocratic religions?
A. No, both were in the
third stage when they first appeared in
written historical records, and archaeological evidence shows that
they probably went directly from the first stage to the third, as
did the Greeks and the rest of the Western Aryan peoples. The second
stage of Theocratic religion was a failed experiment from the
Theocratic point of view. And from the human point of view, such
societies were so repugnant that few people want to learn much about
them. This is why historians have written so little about them.
For example, the historians of ancient Rome reported that their
leaders said, “Carthage must be utterly destroyed,” and that the
city was eventually torn down stone by stone, the population
slaughtered, and the surrounding agricultural area sown with salt.
But they didn’t explain in much detail what it was the Carthaginians
did that justified this genocide, except that they practiced human
sacrifice. Now, the Romans also practiced human sacrifice through
most of their history: gladiatorial fights to the death and throwing
people to the lions are definitely in that category, but the Roman
religion was still third-stage, not second-stage. Human sacrifices
were only a small, atavistic detail in Roman paganism, not the main
focal point of the whole religious system that they were to the
Carthaginians.
Q. As I understand a second-stage Theocratic religion, it’s usually
a literal theocracy, with the despotic rulers of the earthly society
claiming to be god-like beings superior to the rest of the
population. Is this significant?
A. No. Third-stage Theocratic religions may also be ruled by
“God-Kings.” The ancient Egyptians are the best-known example. And
the rulers of many societies with fourth-stage religions have also
claimed divine descent: the feudal emperors of both China and
Japan
are examples. Nor do the rulers of a second-stage Theocratic society
always pose as divine beings. They may claim only to be a mortal
priesthood acting out the will of disembodied gods; or such a
society may have separate clergy and secular rulers. This is not a
factor in determining whether or not a society has a second-stage
Theocratic religion.
Among the determining factors are a large, densely populated,
totalitarian society and the practice of human sacrifice on a large
scale. The most important factor is deism as we defined it
previously: belief in gods that are omnipotent or at least
significantly superhuman. This separates the three higher levels of
Theocratic religion from primitive shamanism, which considers the
gods rather similar to earthly shamans, except that they are
disembodied spirits. Often they are simply called “The Spirits of
Our Ancestors” or “The Shamans in the Spirit World.”
Q. OK then, under a second-stage religion, people believe in
superhuman gods who must be placated with mass human sacrifices that
also often involve cannibalism. Is the cannibalism a significant
factor?
A. No. It was practiced only by those
second-stage Theocratic
societies that were short of red meat in their diet: the Aztecs and
the ancient Polynesians, for example, who didn’t have many
domesticated food animals. The reason that second-stage Theocratic
religion practiced mass human sacrifice was to supply the Theocrats
with a constant food supply.
When the victims were killed as part of
a large public religious ceremony, the telepathic chain-reaction
generated by a congregation in the religious trance was sufficient
to put the victims’ astral souls into a hypnotic trance before
death. When they were suddenly and violently killed, the Theocrats
were usually able to get control of the souls before they had a
chance to flee. This is one of the few examples in the history of
Theocracy where the Theocrats were able to seize souls by force, and
they could do it only with the help of large numbers of living
people.
Q. This makes sense. Does it also mean that human sacrifices
performed by some of the more odious cults today don’t have the
support of the Theocrats?
A. Well, the Theocrats, all of them, like to see cultists do
terrible things like this because it gives occultists and everyone
else outside Theocratic religion a bad name, but they don’t usually
get control of the soul of the sacrificial victim. There simply
aren’t enough people at such ceremonies to generate sufficient
psychic power. The main reason that second-stage Theocratic religion has been quite
rare in history is simply that it’s so cruel and violent.
Societies
like that had to fight endless wars against their neighbors, or else
enslave and sacrifice a significant portion of their own population.
Either way, they tended to become unstable because of the mass
violence, or to be conquered by their enemies. However, the real
reason such religions were short-lived is that they couldn’t compete
with third- or fourth-stage Theocratic religions when they came in
contact with them.
Q. OK. It’s time to go on to discussing the third stage.
A. The third stage of Theocratic religion involves
mass animal
sacrifices. Although they prefer human souls, Theocratic spirits can
nourish themselves off the astral souls of lower animals to some
extent. And these souls are easier to paralyze and control with
religious rituals than human souls are. However, the astral tissues
of animal souls aren’t very compatible with the astral souls of the
Theocrats, so they are not a good food source. The main reason the
third stage is considered higher than the second is simply that
societies with such a religion can remain stable for long periods of
time.
Q. If the nutrition from animal souls isn’t really adequate, do
third-stage Theocrats tend to be short-lived?
A. Yes, except that they also receive some nourishment from
the
psychic energy generated by their worshippers, which is better for
them than the animal souls alone. Even more important, most of the
major third-stage religions have had some fourth-stage components as
well. This was especially true of the ancient Egyptians, Hebrews,
Hindus, and Western Aryan Pagans. Judaism and
Vedanta eventually
evolved into fully developed fourth-stage religions. The others
survived for a long time with a mixture between the two.
One of the chief characteristics of all third-stage Theocratic
religions is their lack of concern for life after death. Greek and
Roman mythology, for example, gives an extremely accurate
description of what the afterlife was actually like for believers in
those religions. Most people simply wandered aimlessly in Hades –
the astral plane – for a few years and then sank into
“forgetfulness.” The concept of reincarnation was known, but only a
few elite groups comparable to modern occultists put much stress on
it: the Greek mystery cults, and a number of similar Roman sects,
for example.
Religious practice in third-stage religions was concerned almost
entirely with gaining the favor of the gods during earthly life, not
with life after death. The Theocrats running such religions didn’t
know how to enslave souls on the astral plane, so they ignored them.
Instead, they programmed living people to send them the souls of
sacrificed animals, and to broadcast psychic energy during orgiastic
rituals.
Q. What about the Fourth stage of Theocratic religion?
A. The fourth stage of Theocratic religion is the one
represented by
all the major modern religions. Its most important characteristic is
that the Theocrats use religious mind control to delude souls into
deliberately putting themselves under Theocratic control after
death, thinking they are entering “eternal bliss in Heaven” or
“union with the Godhead.”
The nature of fourth-stage Theocratic religions has already been
adequately discussed in previous chapters, so we will now leave the
history of Theocracy and discuss the other side for a while: the
Invisible College.
Back to Contents
Chapter 16: The Invisible College
Q. You’ve already mentioned the
Invisible College many times in this
book, implying the general meaning of “those spirits on Earth’s
astral plane who are active, conscious enemies of Theocracy.” At
this point, I’d like to discuss this organization in greater detail.
What kinds of spirits belong to it, and exactly what does it do to
fight against the Theocrats?
A. The Invisible College isn’t an organization by the usual
definition of that term, because it doesn’t have a political
structure that all members recognize. The name is just a collective
term in common use on the astral plane to describe all disembodied
spirits who are not members of Theocratic bands and are not merely
lost souls wandering around helpless because they can’t function
effectively in the spirit world. A synonym in wide use is “free
spirits,” which contains a play on words because “free” is used in
two senses at once. It means “free of Theocratic control”
simultaneously with “free to move around the astral plane at will
and communicate telepathically with other spirits.”
There are three main groups of spirits in the
Invisible College:
-
enlightened ones
-
magicians
-
space people
The first major group of spirits in the Invisible College is the
enlightened ones. Most of these spirits were highly advanced in
spiritual knowledge and the use of their psychic powers during life,
but they were also devout believers in some sect of the Eastern
religious system that includes Vedanta and Buddhism.
They were wise
enough to refuse to join the Theocratic bands associated with their
particular sect after death, because they could psychically perceive
the enslavement and exploitation going on in the various Heavens.
(Few of the Western occultists who have called themselves
“Illuminati” or some other synonym of “enlightened ones” join this
group after physical death; most become magicians or Theocrats.)
The enlightened ones could be very useful to our cause, but few of
them are willing to stay on the astral plane and help actively fight
Theocracy. They believe that the Theocratic perversions of Heaven
they observe there are illusions, and that perceiving such illusions
proves that they are not yet advanced enough to liberate themselves
from the cycle of rebirth. So they go back and live another earthly
life, always hoping that the next time they die they will be worthy
to enter the true Heaven. They consider the War in Heaven an
illusion and run away from it, back into earthly existence, which
they also consider illusory.
Q. The idea that much of the universe is “maya” (illusion) is
extremely common in Eastern religion and in Western occultism. Where
did it come from?
A. It’s just theocratic propaganda, and the refusal of the
enlightened ones to help in the war against Theocracy is a perfect
example of how effective it is. Physical life on Earth is no
illusion, nor is existence as a disembodied spirit on the astral
plane. What’s illusory is the claim of the Theocrats to be the gods
of various religions, and the lie that their Heavens offer the human
soul eternal life.
Q. Do any of the saints in the
Judeo-Christian religions become
enlightened ones after death?
A. This is extremely rare.
Most of them become Theocrats if they are
devout members of Theocratic churches during life. However, some
people who claimed to work miracles through faith in religious
doctrine have become magician spirits after death. They were really
occultists whose faith was merely a sham to allow them to work
within the religious establishment.
Q. I’ve always had an instinctive feeling that
Vedanta and Buddhism
are less exploitative of believers than Judeo-Christianity, even
though I knew that the Eastern religions aren’t as different from
the Western ones as many Americans believe because they can’t tell
Eastern occultism from the mainstream of Eastern religion. The
information you’ve just been giving about the enlightened ones
probably explains why I felt this way.
Even believers in the Western
religious systems whose psychic powers are highly developed are
still quite vulnerable to being enslaved by the Theocrats after
death, whereas similar people in the East often remain free of
Theocratic control and go on incarnating. I assume this happens
because the Eastern religions teach belief in reincarnation as part
of their official doctrine.
A. This is correct. However, the
actual political structure of
Judeo-Christian Theocracy on the astral plane is somewhat more
complex than we described previously. In reality, the Theocrats in
charge of bands force many advanced souls within these religions to
reincarnate, because such spirits don’t make very good subordinate
Theocrats but are too valuable to the religion as a whole to kill.
The average Theocratic spirit that we have described so far realizes
that religious doctrine and mythology are lies and is cynically
seeking immortality and political power. The enlightened ones,
although they possess a high degree of spiritual knowledge and
psychic development, still actually believe in the doctrine.
Therefore, if they joined a Theocratic band and observed first-hand
how it operates, they might rebel. Because of this, the leaders of
Theocratic bands usually persuade such spirits to return to Earth to
further the interests of the religion. The Christian Bible contains
references to this, if you know what to look for.
Q. Do you mean the passages in which various people ask
Jesus if he
is Elias or some other Hebrew prophet returned to Earth?
A. Yes. Liberal Christians often use passages of this type as
Scriptural authority to support reincarnation, which, of course,
they are.
Q. But Jesus denied he was the reincarnation of any Hebrew prophet.
A. He did, but it was just a simple “No” to the specific questions.
The questions themselves presented him with a perfect opportunity to
make a definitive statement denying the existence of reincarnation,
and he didn’t take it. This suggests that the author of the passage
was an enemy of Theocracy and knew elements of the Great Secret.
To get back to the point we were discussing, the
Theocrats persuade
many of the saints in Western fourth-stage Theocratic religion to
reincarnate. Often, they become charismatic preachers who win large
numbers of new converts, or religious leaders who increase the power
of churches over the whole of society. In the process, they may
become so corrupted by earthly power that they eventually become
Theocrats.
Q. Do any of these souls ever see the fallacies in their religious
beliefs and become enemies of Theocracy, if they are raised in the
right environment when they reincarnate on Earth?
A. It sometimes happens, but rarely. The
Western fourth-stage
Theocratic religions are actually more sophisticated than the
Eastern religions and much harder to break out of once you get taken
in. This is because the Eastern religions teach reincarnation as
part of their doctrine, and because occultists are allowed to work
within the total structure of the official religion, rather than
being cast out of it and openly persecuted as in the West.
The second major group in the Invisible College is the
magicians.
The term “magician” is used very loosely to refer to people who made
effective conscious use of their psychic powers while alive, and did
not voluntarily join a Theocratic band after death. It is a very
diverse group, and the spirits that compose it belonged to many
different cultures and social classes during life.
Many magician spirits belonged to the Spiritualists, Theosophists,
Rosicrucians, or other well-known Western occult groups during life.
Others belonged to occult groups that are usually labeled as Pagan
religions, such as Witchcraft, Voodoo, Santeria, etc. Still others
had been commercial fortunetellers or psychic healers.
(Many of the
magicians in this last category considered themselves Christians and
performed their psychic activities “in the name of Christ.” However,
the Theocratic churches were afraid of their conscious psychic
activities and banned them from membership, so they kept their
freedom after death.)
In the East, many martial-arts experts, Yogis, Tantrists, Zen
Masters, Sufis, etc., become magician spirits after death, as do
people who make their living doing divination or practicing psychic
healing. The shamans of the surviving first-stage religions also
often join the magician spirits when they die.
What all these spirits have in common is that they had wide
practical experience with the operational use of their psychic
powers when they were alive. (This includes some people who had
possessed highly developed psychic powers during life but were never
consciously aware of them.) The average magician had definite
religious beliefs during life, but these were not strong enough to
compel joining a Theocratic band after death. Magicians, living or
disembodied, tend to be practical people, not mystics or “true
believers."
Most of the spirit guides who assist occultists all over the world
in obtaining spiritual knowledge and in learning conscious control
of their psychic powers are magicians. The Theocrats
are seriously
frightened of the work these spirits do, which explains why
Fundamentalist propaganda contains such stern warnings against
contacting them.
Q. Yes. This accounts for all the propaganda against Ouija boards
and other aids that help people achieve independent, consciously
controlled contact with disembodied spirits. In the light of my
present knowledge, all the warnings about demonic possession through
engaging in mediumistic workings seem especially ironic: it looks to
me as if the spirit-contact that Fundamentalists achieve at services
using religious mind control are much closer to the descriptions of
“possession” than what happens to occultists when they hold
mediumistic conversations with spirits.
A. That is another important point this book has to make.
Q. What else do the magicians in the
Invisible College do besides
passing information to people with conscious mediumistic powers?
A. This is actually one of the less important things they do,
because there aren’t very many conscious spirit mediums. However,
the magician spirits can communicate telepathically with a much
larger segment of the living population on a strictly subconscious
level, and do so very frequently. Such spirits are responsible for
many experiences that people call prophetic dreams, flashes of
insight, hunches, intuition, instinctive knowledge, etc. However,
some of the experiences assigned these names are entirely the
product of the person’s own subconscious imagination or psychic
powers. There’s usually no way to tell the difference.
Q. At this point, it seems necessary to bring up a point that may
worry some readers. It’s quite natural for people to say, “I don’t
like the idea that a spirit or another person can plant in my mind
an idea I will consider the product of my own memory or creative
powers. This is an invasion of my privacy and of my right to make
decisions for myself.” From a purely ethical standpoint, I have to
agree completely with this statement.
A. All we can say is, “Would you rather be drafted into the army to
fight against beings as evil as Hitler, or to fight on their side?”
Most Earth people simply don’t have the psychic strength or
spiritual knowledge to remain neutral in the war between the
Theocrats and the Invisible College. If we don’t manipulate them
subconsciously, then the Theocrats will do so anyway. We justify
this according to our own code of ethics simply by applying the
principle of “greatest good.” An individual influenced by both the
IC and the Theocrats has more freedom in the long run than one
manipulated by the Theocrats alone.
We still have to deal with the issue of “informed consent,” but this
book and hundreds of similar attempts to communicate the same
information are intended to provide the general public with the
information they need to make a choice. And this is what we are
really talking about when we say we want people to “make a personal
breakthrough in spiritual consciousness.” We want them to learn
enough about how mind control operates to avoid situations that
expose them to it.
Even now, when very few people are consciously aware of the nature
of Theocracy and the forces opposing it, our methods are still more
ethical than those of the Theocrats and their religions. They
brainwash people with religious mind control as their strategy of
first choice, whereas we employ such methods very sparingly. When we work with people who are consciously learning occultism, we
try to inform them exactly what is going on as well as we can.
The
more spiritual information they learn and the stronger their
conscious psychic powers become, the more they are able to avoid
subconscious telepathic mind control by either side in the War in
Heaven.
For example, you yourself seem to be quite capable of
questioning us on ethical matters and making your own value
judgments about what you receive in the process of writing this
book.
Let’s get back to the description of what the magician spirits in
the Invisible College do. Placing information about Theocracy in the
minds of living people is only their second most important job. The
principal service they perform for the human race is assisting other
souls in reincarnating. It’s an old Spiritualist tradition that
mediums and their spirit guides offer help to the souls of the
recently deceased that seem in distress. This sometimes comes to the
public attention when it is done after someone has reported seeing a
ghost, but many Spiritualists do a lot more of it privately. They
consider it a good deed they can do in payment of the good that is
done for them by being in direct conscious contact with the spirit
world.
Unfortunately, the traditional Spiritualists and those of their
spirit guides who held similar beliefs during life do harm as often
as good when they attempt to aid lost souls, because most of them
lack even the most rudimentary knowledge about Theocracy.
Q. I know exactly what you mean. Only rarely do Spiritualists make
an overt attempt to help such spirits reincarnate. Instead, they
talk about such lost souls being “Earthbound” in the sense of being
confined to a portion of the astral plane in direct contact with the
Earth plane, and they try to assist the distressed spirits to enter
the “higher astral.”
Before I made the breakthrough, I had no intellectual knowledge to
make me disagree with this cosmology and the resulting treatment of
lost souls, but I always felt an instinctive emotional unease
whenever I witnessed or was told about such a ritual. Now I know
why: the whole astral plane is in direct contact with the Earth, and
the only parts of it that give the illusion of not being closely
linked to Earth are those under the control of the Theocrats.
A. All too often, when Spiritualists and similar occultists assist
souls in “entering the higher astral,” they are actually sending
them straight into the control of some band of Theocrats, to be
enslaved and devoured. That is because the majority of Spiritualists
and the magician spirits that serve as their spirit guides are too
friendly to deistic religion and too ignorant of the realities of
life on the astral plane. This is beginning to change now, but it’s
still a major problem.
In many cases, people who had read a lot of occult literature during
life put up more resistance to understanding the true nature of
Theocracy than atheists, agnostics, and even some believers in
orthodox religion. It’s actually easier to show religious people
that their gods are impostors than it is to show occultists that
there are no “planes higher than the astral.” The beliefs of the
former are easier to refute because they are simple and clear-cut.
The delusions of occultists are more complex and sophisticated.
Many of them tell us, “OK, so some Heavens are really Hells of
psychic vampirism. I’m going to keep looking until I find one that’s
not.” Unfortunately, there are Theocratic bands specifically
designed to entrap spirits like this, bands run by Theocrats
who
were occultists themselves during life.
Q. In other words, the Invisible College faces the same problems in
dealing with people on the astral plane as I have in getting people
on Earth to accept the information described in this book. There are
thousands of years of false knowledge to overcome, and virtually
every body of available spiritual information is heavily corrupted
with Theocratic propaganda. It strikes me as miraculous that you
were able to start teaching such knowledge widely, both on the
astral plane and on Earth. Can you describe how?
A. About seven hundred years ago, scientists from our world
established two-way contact with spirits on Earth’s astral plane.
Accidents in interstellar transportation had already marooned quite
a few extraterrestrial spirits on Earth, but they were not capable
of communicating with the societies they’d come from.
(Ironically,
psychic machines capable of establishing such communication existed
on Earth’s astral plane, but none of the spirits who came here by
accident possessed the specialized skills for using them.)
Of course such spirits were forced to reincarnate periodically, and
every time they did so, they lost a portion of their original
memories. This meant that Earth people remained ignorant of the
basic facts about spiritual reality, including the true nature of
the Theocratic spirits who claim to be gods. There were always a few
spirits around who knew the truth, but they were seldom able to
communicate more than hints of it to others before they lost the
memory of who they were and where they came from.
The two-way contact we speak of roughly coincided with the
beginnings of modern Western civilization. There are numerous
passages in occult literature from the late Middle Ages on about
telepathic conversations between mediums and spirit-entities who
resemble modern UFO-contactee descriptions of space people much more
than they do the traditional angels, demons, or spirits of deceased
Earth people. Several of these accounts include what appears to be
advanced information about physics, astronomy, and other sciences –
and is exactly that. The accounts that have survived are just a
small part of the whole.
As soon as this contact was established,
spirits from advanced
civilizations started coming to Earth deliberately to attempt to
build an advanced civilization here. The fight against Theocracy is
a necessary negative step that has to be taken before the real goal
is accomplished, which is to make the Earth a fit place for human
beings to live.
Q. Both traditional occult literature and
modern UFO-contactee
stories are full of vague references to these telepathic contacts
with extraterrestrial spirits, but such stories lack sufficient
detail to make them credible. Usually, they’re just full of truisms
and banalities that don’t much impress the person who hears them.
A. This is true. It’s taken centuries to prepare people even to
think about what life in a truly advanced society would be like. The
process has to be done gradually, over a long period of time, and
most of it has been done on the level of action, not that of
intellectual theory.
Q. Why couldn’t the space people, the spirits from advanced
civilizations, take some kind of direct action against the Theocrats
right at the beginning? Logically, getting rid of the opposition of
the Theocrats would be the first step in building an advanced
civilization here, not the last.
A. It simply wasn’t possible. The space people don’t come here
physically, but as naked spirits transmitted across vast distances.
We come here with a certain amount of knowledge, a small part of
which we can communicate directly to Earth people, and with psychic
powers that are highly trained but not especially powerful in terms
of force. The average Theocratic spirit is actually “stronger” than
one of us in terms of sheer ability to radiate psychic energy as a
disembodied spirit.
Q. Why is this? It would seem more logical to assume that your
better training would give you more raw psychic power as well.
A. This is rather hard to explain, but you should be able to grasp
at least some of it. Remember that the space people are as human as
you are, though not all of us inhabit bodies at home that resemble
yours. Every human soul is intended to link periodically to a body.
That means it has a certain size and shape, a fixed composition and
patterning of astral matter, that is natural for it. A normal spirit
can transmit only limited amounts of astral energy through the
psychic powers. This amount of energy is actually lower, not higher,
than that which can be radiated by the psychic powers of a similar
spirit incarnated in a physical body.
Q. I’m already familiar with this idea: the incarnated soul draws
energy from the physical body to energize its psychic powers.
A. Now, the Theocratic spirits are not bound by this limitation,
because they don’t incarnate periodically and don’t have to worry
about keeping their astral soul in a natural condition. Instead,
they absorb energy from other spirits and grow as much as they can.
Abnormal growth gives them access to more internal astral energy and
hence stronger psychic powers than a normal spirit possesses.
Q. OK, I understand this. You are forced to use finesse rather than
brute strength in fighting the Theocrats, and also forced to enlist
the aid of living people in many different ways. I would also like
to point out how closely some of the matters just discussed tie in
with certain details in the Shaver Mystery as discussed in Chapter
Two. But what about psychic technology? I know you now have access
to it. Couldn’t space people have activated these psychic machines
long ago, and saved Earth people centuries of misery?
A. We didn’t do this until the present because the process requires
large amounts of astral energy. One of the reasons we have assisted
you in building a physical technology is so that we could tap some
of the psychic energy raised by the electronic mind-control networks
and use it to repair and run psychic machines constructed of astral
matter. We could have done it previously only by using the methods
employed by second-stage Theocratic religion: mass human sacrifices
and mass destruction of human souls. This is far beyond the limits
to which we will stretch our ethics. It’s a means that no end will
justify.
We will discuss psychic technology further in
Part Three. For now,
we’ll continue discussing the wars that free spirits have been
waging against Theocracy throughout history, starting with the
concept of “The Devil.”
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Chapter 17: Satan and Buddha
A. The whole mythology of Satan and the
Rebellion of the Angels was
the creation of spirits fighting Theocracy long ago, and the
original teachings of the Buddha contain similar elements.
Q. Why does the Invisible College deliberately use terms like
“Satan”? Doesn’t your use of this kind of terminology make it easier
for Theocratic propaganda to accuse all of your friends on Earth of
being “devil-worshippers”?
A. Somewhere in this book we’re going to have to deal with
accusations of this sort, so we might as well do it here. We have
good reason to use terms that encourage people to take a closer look
at the Biblical myths about Satan, which we’ll describe later in
this chapter. For now, we’ll just refute the charge that the
Invisible College advocates worship of Satan, because we totally
reject the concept of “worship” as the term is usually defined:
“Absolute, unquestioning belief in and obedience to a spiritual
being or a body of doctrine.”
Individual sovereignty is the most fundamental postulate of the
philosophy of the Invisible College. Each person must assume full
responsibility for making value judgments on ethical and political
matters. We never advocate absolute obedience to any authority, even
our own. We urge people to resist orders from leaders if they
disagree with them, and to use laws, customs, and ideologies only as
guides for making their own decisions on specific issues. Assuming
personal responsibility for running their own lives makes people
wiser and stronger, because they are usually rewarded for their
successes and punished for their mistakes.
Unquestioning obedience
to orders or fixed doctrine only makes them increasingly dependent
and powerless. To get back to our discussion of the devil, the concepts that
Satan
is a “God of Evil ” who demands the same kind of worship as
Jehovah
or other Theocratic conceptions of deity, and that he tempts people
to do exactly the reverse of all the individual ethical principles
in the Judeo-Christian moral code, are both Theocratic propaganda
incorporated into religious doctrine to keep people from
understanding our original and constructive purpose in creating the
myth about Satan and getting it incorporated in the Bible.
Q. This is obvious once you point it out.
Satan has a much more
favorable image in literature and folk-tradition in all the
Judeo-Christian cultures than you’d expect him to have if he was
really the archetype of reversed Biblical morality that religious
doctrine claims he is.
A. Quite true. Look at all the folk tales in which
the Devil simply
opposes the puritanical, “bluenose” aspects of Christian morality
that say that sex and other sensual pleasures are intrinsically
evil. We’ve already pointed out the role these puritanical doctrines
play in the religious mind-control process.
The Theocrats want religious believers to feel guilty every time
they feel sexual desire or enjoy any “pleasures of the flesh.” The
guilt literally addicts them to attending church services that
subject them to religious mind control. When the Devil of folk
tradition says that sensual pleasure is not immoral in itself, then
he is actually advocating an ethical code superior to the
Judeo-Christian one.
Q. Satan, in other words, often preaches a perfectly valid,
humanistic morality, rather than the inversion of Judeo-Christian
morality that religious doctrine attributes to him. I’ve certainly
seen examples of this in literature from many different countries
and eras.
A. In ancient Hebrew, the word “satan” simply meant “adversary” or
“enemy.” We communicated the myth about the “temptation of Adam and
Eve by the serpent” to some of the prophets who wrote the Old
Testament just to ensure that people who read Judeo-Christian
scripture would realize that Jehovah has enemies. We are also
responsible for other elements in that myth: that disobeying Jehovah
by eating the “forbidden fruit” enabled human beings to discern good
from evil, and that there was another secret, that of the "tree of
life” that would give people eternal life without involvement with
Jehovah or other Theocrats.
Q. Now that you point it out, the whole myth of the “Fall of Man”
doesn’t seem to belong with the rest of the creation myth in
Genesis.
A. The material in the book of Genesis, even though it pertains to
the Creation and the earliest history of the Hebrews and the Jewish
religion, was mostly dictated to Jewish prophets after the Exodus.
Judaism started to adopt important elements of fourth-stage
Theocratic religion during the Egyptian Captivity, not long after
Ikhnaton tried to change Egyptian Paganism into a fourth-stage
religion and failed. Fourth-stage Theocratic religions all have a
creation myth that includes the concept of Original Sin.
Q. I had formed the impression that
Christianity was a fourth-stage
religion from its beginning but that Judaism was still in the third
stage at the time it was founded. My understanding is that the
practice of animal sacrifice is the primary distinguishing
characteristic of a third-stage Theocratic religion. First-century
Judaism still practiced animal sacrifices at the Temple in
Jerusalem.
A. No, Judaism was almost entirely into the fourth stage itself when
Christianity broke away from it. It started becoming a fourth-stage
religion at the time of Moses, though the process was gradual rather
than sudden. Survival of limited amounts of animal sacrifice was
just an atavism. The core of Jewish doctrine from the time of Moses
down to the present has been that Jehovah is both an angry,
judgmental deity who condemns people for Original Sin, and a loving
god who forgives their sins after various acts of faith and ritual
atonement. All the Christians did was assign separate names to these
two different aspects of the one deity:
Jehovah, or God the Father,
to the judgmental aspect, and Jesus, or God the Son, to the
forgiving aspect.
Q. OK. I understand this part well enough. Please continue
explaining the creation myth in Genesis and the origin of the
concepts of Satan and the War in Heaven.
A. First of all, a fourth-stage Theocratic religion has no need for
a god of evil to tempt people into sin: the concept of Original Sin
itself makes any sort of Devil superfluous. However, if such a
concept survives as an atavism from an earlier stage of the
religion’s development, it does no harm, any more than did the token
sacrifices of doves by the Jews at Jerusalem, as described in the
New Testament. Judaism had originally been a polytheistic religion.
Most of the angels with names ending “iel” had originally been “god
of...”; for example, “Barakiel -- God of Lightning.” Therefore
Judaism already had a concept of “Satan” similar to the “adversary”
or “trickster” gods in other third-stage religions. It was quite
natural to incorporate Satan into the creation myth to tempt people
into Original Sin.
Q. Was the Hebrew Pagan deity
Satan originally a god in serpentine
form like Damballa and some of the other African trickster deities?
A. Possibly. We really don’t know. What we’re telling you here is
mostly derived from our knowledge of modern religious and occult
works, supplemented to some extent by rumors that have circulated on
the astral plane for thousands of years. We have no exact historical
details on any of this, just educated guesses. However, the choice
of a serpent image for the deity that tempted people into disobeying
Jehovah is obvious if you realize that it was enemies of Theocracy
who dictated the myth in the form in which we know it.
The serpent was intended as a symbol of
reincarnation, because
snakes shed their skins, leaving behind a casting that resembles a
dead snake to a casual glance, while the animal crawls on about its
business with a shiny, new, young-looking skin. The Theocrats who
called themselves “Jehovah” did not want people to believe in
reincarnation, even though the fourth-stage religious concept of
“dwelling in the House of the Lord forever” was probably not known
to the Jews at the time the creation myth was first dictated.
Q. Many scholars today don’t think the
concept of reincarnation was
even known to the Jews at that time. Was it?
A. As we said before, we have no exact historical knowledge of the
time, just age-old rumor and inference from literature on Earth.
However, our best guess is that every human culture throughout
history and back into prehistory has had at least rudimentary
knowledge of reincarnation. There are references to it in literature
from every culture we know about, including those in the ancient
Near East contemporary with the people who wrote Genesis, so we
assume the concept was known to them. More important, a small number
of people in every culture have always possessed enough conscious
past-life memories to circulate persistent rumors about
reincarnation, even though a Theocratic religion does its best to
suppress them.
Q. An aside. I’ve gotten the impression from what you’ve told me so
far that the Invisible College has only been in existence for a few
centuries, that it started around the end of the Middle Ages or
after. If so, who was opposing Theocracy at the time of Moses, or
whenever the myth concerning Adam and Eve and the serpent was
written?
A. Exact names for the forces
opposing Theocracy are actually
arbitrary and unimportant. We prefer to reserve the term “Invisible
College” to refer to the highly organized opposition to Theocracy
that started when large numbers of spirits from advanced
extraterrestrial civilizations started coming to Earth voluntarily
about six or seven hundred years ago. However, small numbers of such
spirits have been accidentally transported to Earth’s astral plane
throughout history and far back into prehistoric times, and many of
them have tried to fight Theocracy as best they could. One spirit
with advanced knowledge could have been responsible for the creation
myth we’re describing here. You already understand how the Theocrats
dictate “Holy writ” to religious believers, don’t you?
Q. Well, I assume from reading about
Mohammed and the Koran and
similar cases that the process is almost identical to what we’re
doing here to produce this book: some form of automatic writing or
other mediumistic reception of data from spirits on the astral
plane. The only difference is that the spirits involved are
Theocrats instead of members of the Invisible College.
A. You’re right. However, it’s extremely difficult for the mediums
themselves to tell exactly who in the spirit world is dictating to
them at a given time. That’s why we always review everything you
receive from us several times and leave you to be the final judge as
to whether what you’ve received is really from us or is Theocratic
deception.
Q. I realize that I have to be responsible for that, to ensure that
what I receive is internally consistent and agrees with my own
rational judgment based on the evidence available in my memory. I
suspect that the Invisible College finds it easier to send
anti-Theocratic messages to the prophets of Theocratic religions,
who don’t normally question divine revelations, than its for
Theocrats to deceive conscious Spiritual Revolutionaries like me.
A. Yes. And this is exactly what happened with the myth about the
serpent and the Fall. A spirit hostile to Theocracy managed to
dictate the story to one of the Hebrew prophets, and somehow it
survived long enough in folk tradition to be written into the Old
Testament. And we’re glad it did, because it reveals some important
spiritual truths to anyone capable of understanding them.
One is that Jehovah has an enemy who communicates with people and
urges them to rebel. Another is that these messages of rebellion are
involved with ethics and morality. Jehovah says, “Right and wrong
are only what I tell you they are, and they are absolute values that
never vary.” Satan, on the other hand, says, “Use your intellect to
determine what is right and wrong in a given situation, because such
value judgments are highly dependent on the environment you’re in at
a given time.” Since the latter statement is rational and the former
irrational, people are put into conflict with Theocratic religious
doctrine every time they use their intellect to make rational value
judgments.
Q. Most organized religions seem rather proud of the fact that
people have to accept their doctrine on faith simply because it
isn’t rational.
A. They do, because they have no choice. And this religious myth is
one of the reasons why. The Theocrats don’t want people to become
consciously aware of the basically illogical nature of absolute
moral doctrine, but there is nothing they can do about it. The more
highly developed a person’s rational intellect, the less likely he
or she is to accept religious doctrine on “blind faith.”
The serpent myth is only a
minor detail in Judeo-Christian
mythology, but it has been very important over the centuries in the
fight against Theocracy. And it’s also obvious why the
Judeo-Christian Theocrats countered it with further mythology about
Satan as the Father of Lies who goes around telling people it’s good
to kill and steal and otherwise do the opposite of the religious
moral code.
The Theocrats tried to obscure the information about using the
intellect to make ethical decisions on a rational basis. They added
many extraneous details to the mythology about Satan. For example,
they included the idea that telepathy, mediumship, and other human
psychic powers are either “works of God ” or “works of the Devil.”
This allows them to forbid religious believers to communicate with
spirits hostile to Theocracy without revealing various facts about
spiritual reality that the Theocrats wish to conceal.
And then there’s all the propaganda about
demonic possession. As we
discussed earlier, the irony of the whole concept of “possession” is
that the Theocrats themselves practice something rather similar to
it when they program people into becoming willing slaves through
religious mind control.
The important thing to remember whenever
possession is mentioned is
simply this: no spirit, Theocrat or otherwise, can actually force
living people to do things contrary to their conscious will and
their customary ideas of right and wrong. Even religious mind
control can only reprogram a person’s opinions and beliefs one small
step at a time: it’s a slow, gradual process, not a sudden, dramatic
takeover. It’s very important for the reader to realize this.
However, we do have to point out that even gradual reprogramming can
produce some extremely evil and violent people if it continues over
a whole lifetime. There are plenty of people in this country right
now who are emotionally and morally capable of “killing a Commie for
Christ” or acting on the literal meaning of the Biblical passage,
“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” However, this has nothing
to do with the sudden, violent “possession by evil spirits” that
Fundamentalist propaganda spreads around so freely, and that many
serious occultists also accept. That, fortunately, is a myth.
Q. You haven’t covered the
Tree of Life yet. What was that supposed
to represent?
A. As the serpent myth represents the concept that people have the
right to determine good and evil for themselves through the free
exercise of the conscious intellect, the Tree of Life represents
certain essential details of the breakthrough information – the
concepts that people can only achieve immortality through
reincarnation and that the “eternal life in heaven” offered by
deities is a delusion. However, you must remember that the Tree of
Life is mentioned only so the Theocrats can gloat that they
prevented people from gaining this knowledge.
Q. The myth states that Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the Tree of
Knowledge and learned to distinguish right from wrong with the
rational intellect, but they were expelled from the Garden of Eden
before they could “eat also of the fruit of the Tree of Life, that
is also in the Garden, and become like unto us.” Many occultists and
Biblical scholars have been intrigued by that passage, not just for
the tantalizing references to a secret of immortality, but because
it s one of the only passages in the whole Bible in which Jehovah
uses the first-person plural, “us” instead of “me”.
A. The secret referred to in this passage is not just
immortality,
but the complete knowledge that Theocratic spirits have about the
nature of the soul, reincarnation, psychic powers, etc. Apparently
the spirit who dictated these passages tried to communicate the
whole breakthrough and failed.
The beginning of Buddhism is a similar case in which enemies of
Theocracy tried to help people to make the breakthrough but didn’t
quite succeed. After the Buddha achieved enlightenment, he made some
statements that seemed self-contradictory, at least on the surface.
He attributed his spiritual progress to his own efforts, not to a
“gift” from omnipotent deities. He also stated in so many words that
ordinary people could achieve enlightenment through practicing the
proper psychic development techniques. But at the same time, his
statements about reincarnation appeared paradoxical. He said that
achieving enlightenment meant that he no longer needed to
reincarnate, but he also said that he would continue to do so to
help other people achieve enlightenment.
Q. This seems to be a major contradiction, because if
enlightenment
had made him a sort of “super-god,” superior to the Vedantic gods,
then he wouldn’t need to incarnate to assist people in spiritual
development. He could do it as a disembodied spirit, remaining on
the astral plane and using his enormous psychic powers to
communicate whatever information people needed.
A. Once people make the
breakthrough, it becomes obvious that there
is no contradiction in any of these statements about the Buddha.
What the Buddha called his enlightenment is actually a version of
this breakthrough. He became consciously aware of exactly what the Vedantic gods really are and how they operate, even though the words
in which his followers wrote down his knowledge are somewhat
confusing.
They understood the most important part of his message quite
clearly: the path to enlightenment is the disciplined practice of
various psychic development techniques. Notice too that the Buddha
himself didn’t limit his followers in which specific techniques they
used, because part of his knowledge must have been that different
techniques work better for a given individual than others. He was
quite vague on this, and Buddhists ever since have practiced a wide
variety of techniques drawn from Yoga, Tantra, and other sources
within Vedanta.
However, the basic teachings of Buddha are anti-deistic whereas
those of Vedanta were highly deistic. Many modern Buddhists believe
that if they personally achieve enlightenment, their souls will
merge with the soul of Buddha into Nirvana, a “state of blissful
nothingness.” Vedantic doctrine in the time of the Buddha already
taught that enlightened souls would merge with Brahma or some other
god. This doctrine was grafted onto the Buddha’s teachings after his
death, when Buddhism was taken over by the Vedantic Theocrats.
Q. You’re saying that Buddhism was originally founded to fight
Theocracy?
A. Yes. So were Gnosticism and some forms of
early Christianity. But
to get back to Buddhism, the Buddha implied by his own example that
the enlightened were capable of transcending reincarnation but
deliberately chose not to do so in order to be of service to the
human race. The Buddha realized he could become a Theocrat and
remain on the astral plane indefinitely, but he refused to do so for
ethical reasons. This interpretation of the early Buddhist teaching
is possible for people who have already made the breakthrough from
some other source, but it is not stated clearly enough in the
writings themselves to make finding and understanding it very easy.
Even though he founded a major religion, the
enlightenment the
Buddha achieved was still only a partial breakthrough. Much of what
he learned from the Invisible College was on a subconscious level;
it is reflected indirectly in his various teachings and practices as
described by his followers after his death when they wrote the early
literature, but much of it never came out in so many words in his
actual teachings.
Q. In other words, he didn’t actually say that
the Vedantic gods are
evil beings who eat souls, or that enlightened souls need to
reincarnate for their own good as well as that of living people.
A. This vital information is implied, but never directly stated. For
example, the Buddha did teach that animal sacrifices and “austere
practices” – by which he meant self-torture, starvation, etc. – are
not mandatory for onto achieve enlightenment; but he didn’t
antagonize the Vedantic majority around him, or their gods, by
saying that “The gods are evil.” However, after his death, the
legends portrayed the Vedantic gods as “worshipping” the enlightened
Buddha, implying at the least that they had no power over him.
It is also important to remember that the
Buddha was preaching to an
audience with far different religious beliefs from those of modern
Westerners, or of modern Buddhists, for that matter. The Vedanta of
his time was a third-stage Pagan religion based on large-scale
animal sacrifice and orgiastic rituals, but its doctrine also
included many atavistic myths surviving from the first stage. As
well as being the priests of third-stage Vedanta, the Brahmins also
functioned as first-stage shamans who insured that various spiritual
beings were “fed” to keep them from eating human souls after death.
Direct references to the gods as “Eaters of Souls” occur in Vedantic
hymns used in the Soma ritual.
Q. I’ve also noticed another seeming incongruity about the teachings
of Buddha. He stresses that enlightenment is achieved only through
psychic development practices, but most of his actual sermons or
lectures seemed to be on ethics. Buddhist ethics are very similar to
the traditional Vedantic ethics of the culture he lived in. He
stressed certain elements more than others – for example, total
non-violence against both people and animals – but these were
already present in the Vedantic doctrines, which contained many
inconsistencies.
A. Yes, he preached a version of the Vedantic ethical code and
religious customs stripped of some of the worst self-contradictions,
like the concept of non-violence co-existing with animal sacrifice
and with various forms of violence against oneself in the name of
religious practice. However, it is easy to misunderstand what he was
actually doing, which was to separate ethics from the process of
achieving enlightenment.
Q. In other words, he said living ethically was important, but not
directly related to the psychic development that causes
enlightenment. Again, this interpretation is possible from reading
the Buddhist literature, but the point is not made clearly enough
for most people to understand it. Certainly most modern Buddhists
don’t.
A. Modern Buddhism, except for a few occult groups associated with
it, is a Theocratic religion. Buddhists feel that their ethical
conduct as well as their psychic development practices will earn
them enlightenment by pleasing various incarnations of the Buddha,
all of which are imagined to co-exist as gods similar to the Vedantic gods.
This is not what Buddha taught at all.
Q. Certain Zen masters, whom I class with the occult minority within
Buddhism, have said things like, “There are no gods; there are no
Buddhas.”
A. When they do this, they are fighting against the tendency of the
majority of Buddhists to worship the Buddha as a god, instead of
seeking enlightenment through their own efforts and practicing
ethical conduct for humanistic reasons – to serve their own
interests and that of other people – instead of to earn divine
favor. Zen masters have even told students who were drifting into
deism, “Contemplate the Buddha as a piece of dried shit.”
Q. Before I made the breakthrough, I put a pantheistic
interpretation on passages like this: “The Buddha is everywhere,
including in the desiccated turd.” Now I see that this is an attempt
to answer the Theocratic tendencies in Buddhism by trying to
extinguish the believer’s tendencies to fall into deism.
A. This anti-deistic, anti-Theocratic teaching is even more evident
in the doctrines of some of the Eastern occult secret societies
involved with the martial arts. These secret societies have often
worked under the direction of the Invisible College to fight against
the control of both religion and politics in China and Japan by the
Theocrats.
That’s why they sometimes tell initiates, “we are
devils,” because they are literally fighting against the “gods,” in
the sense of fighting deism and defending the idea that people can
achieve enlightenment through their own efforts. However, you have
to be careful when you read about secret societies of this type,
because many of them have fought for the Theocrats at one
time and
against them at other times, depending on the personalities and
beliefs of the members.
At this point, we’ll leave the
adversaries of Theocracy within
religion and go back to discussing the work of the Invisible College
in building modern Western civilization.
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