WAR IN HEAVEN

First	Tribal Shamanism
Second	Mass human sacrifice
Third	God-Kings
Fourth	Major modern religions
Fifth	To be discussed later

The chief characteristic of first-stage Theocratic religions is 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 among certain tribes of North American Indians, Africans, and Australian Aborigines. But most have been evolving into more advanced types or have been replaced with outside religions since these peoples came into contact with foreigners over the past few hundred years.

The terms "primitive" and "advanced" are 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. (This reminds us of the term "Advanced Beings" (AB) employed by Paul Von Ward to designate beings who have the power to control the relationship with ordinary Earth humans. Actually most first-stage Theocratic religions 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.

The shamans who serve as clergy are conscious psychics, and their religious services are usually conducted with the entire congregation in a psychic trance. For this reason, the majority of people in these societies who learned signficant psychic skills in a previous lifetime have an opportunity to develop them consciously during the present lifetime. This is in direct contast 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 religous mind control. A shaman is much more likely to put his or her own psychic development above the telepathic commands of the Theocrats. Also, shamanistic mythologies often contain major elements of the truth about Theocracy, and so teach people an instinctive aversion for mind control and enslavement by spirits.

Most shamanistic religions teach that some spirits eat souls. However, the information is usually encoded in such a way that the believers, including the shamans, 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 Amerind tribes), or the ghosts of human criminals and outcasts. The shamanstic religions usually teach that the tribe's own gods protect 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 H.P. 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.

At this point, Griffith states that he himself feels a deep instinctive fear that maybe the Theocrats can in fact forcibly take over the minds of living people or somehow damage their souls. His guides respond by saying that he learned this from a psychic and social environment that is dominated to some extent by the Theocrats and their propaganda. But they 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.

At a certain point in the future, the Theocrats will probably become more powerful. This subject will be treated in a later part of the book. But the Invisible College states that it is nothing to be unduly alarmed about, because they are prepared to deal with it.

At any rate, 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 don't allow the Theocrats to control them on the astral plane. Either they reincarnate, or they set themselves up as independent Theocrats in their own right.

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 laborious, painful, and dangerous.

As to the non-shamans in those societies, they usually can't be enslaved by the Theocrats either, because their 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. So the Theocrats of a primitive shamanistic 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.

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.

Such practices were also part of many primitive shamanistic 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.

Second-stage theocratic societies, then, were large, densely populated, totalitarian, and practiced human sacrifice on a large scale. The most important factor is deism: belief in gods that are omnipotent or at least significantly superhuman. This separates the 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."

Cannibalism 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 sufficent 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.

Today's Theocrats, all of them, like to see cultists do terrible things such as performing human sacrifice, even though they don't usually get control of the soul of the sacrificial victim (because there aren't enough people present at such ceremonies to generate sufficeint psychic power). They support any practice that gives occultists and others outside Theocratic religion a bad name.

Griffith asked why so much less is known about second-stage Theocratic societies and their religions than about either primitive shamanism or more advanced societies. It seemed to him that the ancient Egyptians and Hebrews were not societies with second-stage Theocratic religions.

The guides replied that 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.

And this is the reason why the Romans so utterly obliterated Carthage. The Carthaginians practiced human sacrifice. Now, the Romans did also, 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 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.

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 religons were short-lived is that they couldn't compete with third- or fourth-stage Theocratic religions when they came in contact with them.

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.

Third-stage Theocrats tend to be short-lived, 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 of the two.

One of the chief characteristics of all third-stage Theocratic religions was that their practices were not much concerned with the condition of life after death. Greek and Roman mythology, for example, gave 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 it was stressed only by a few elite groups comparable to modern occultists -- such as the Greek and Eygyptian Mystery Cults.

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 pregrammed living people to send them the souls of sacrificed animals, and to broadcast psychic energy during orgiastic rituals.

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 enteing "eternal bliss in Heaven" or "union with the Godhead."

The nature of fourth-stage Theocratic religions has already been adequately discussed.

Stage	*War in Heaven*	*Gods, Genes, and Consciousness*
First	Tribal Shamanism	Naturalistic
Second	Mass human sacrifice	ABs appear. Magical explanations
Third	God-Kings	ABs empower kings and priests. ABs depart. Kings and priests claim divine rights.
Fourth	Major modern religions	Supernatural religions
Fifth	To be discussed later

I cannot leave this topic without drawing a comparison with the stages of religion as outlined by Paul Von Ward in Gods, Genes, and Consciousness. Note that "religion" does not equate with "Theocracy" as defined in War in Heaven. The Theocracy is a particular group of beings and a power structure. It is largely non-physical. Religion is a social activity, seemingly organized by humans in response to a sensed divinity (in the case of modern religions), but putatively fostered and controlled by the Theocracy.

Von Ward's information is derived from a liberal analysis of historical and archaeological data. From his sources, he constructs a model of intervention into a preexisting naturalistic human culture. The model of Griffith's presentation is derived from non-physical players who can view the Theocrats on their level of being and action. The stages described by Griffith are as they are seen from the inside, as it were, and in terms of the needs and aims of the Theocracy, for whom the gods of religions are fictionalized stand-ins.

A crucial difference between the two scenarios is in the nature of the ABs. Griffith's Theocrats would definitely qualify as belonging to the class of Von Ward's ABs, but they did not come swooping down onto a humanity in its naturalistic state, as Von Ward suggests. Rather, in the War in Heaven scenario, they were already present at that stage. How the Theocracy arrived or originated is not explained at this point in the book; it is very clearly dealt with in later chapters.

There is a second apparent difference suggested by the table above: the nature of the second stage. Actually this is somewhat spurious. Von Ward would probably not equate the practice of human sacrifice and cannibalism with the magical stage of religion, though he would likely agree that it did take place.

There are three main groups of spirits in the Invisible College: enlightened ones, magicians, and space people.

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 the cause of the Invisible College, 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.

The idea that much of the universe is �maya� or illusion is 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.

What happens to saints in the Judeo-Christian religions after death? Most 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.

However, even some 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. This is because the Eastern religions teach belief in reincarnation as part of their official doctrine.

The political structure of Judeo-Christian Theocracy on the astral plane is complex. 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 has been 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: the passages in which various people ask Jesus if he is Elias or some other Hebrew prophet returned to Earth. Liberal Christians often use passages of this type as Scriptural authority to support reincarnation, which, of course, they are.

Although Jesus denied that he was the reincarnation of any of the Hebrew prophets, this was just a simple �No� to the specific questions. He had 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� -- that is, everything this book is saying.

Getting back to the point, 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.

This is the second major group in the Invisible College. 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, Santaria, etc. Still others had been commercial fortune-tellers 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.

These spirits all 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.

This accounts for the propaganda against Ouija boards and other aids that help people achieve independent, consciously-controlled contact with disembodied spirits. The warnings about demonic possession through engaging in mediumistic workings are especially ironic, as 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.

But passing information to people with conscious mediumistic powers is one of the less important things magicians, 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.

Griffith brings up a point that worries him and he believes may worry some readers: he doesn't like the idea that a spirit or another person can plant in his mind an idea that he will consider the product of his own memory or creative powers. This, he says, is an invasion of his privacy and of his right to make decisions for himself. It is a matter of ethics.

The response: �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 of spiritual knowledge to remain neutral in the war between the Theocrats and the Invisible College. If the Invisible College doesn't manipulate them subconsciously, then the Theocrats will do so anyway. Their own code of ethics applies the principle of �greatest good.� An individual manipulated by both sides is better off than if he or she were influenced by the Theocrats alone.

As to �informed consent,� 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. They call this �making a personal breakthrough in spiritual consciousness.� They want people 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, the Invisible College thinks their methods are still more ethical than those of the Theocrats and their religions. Brainwashing people with religious mind control is the Theocrats' strategy of first choice, whereas the Invisible College employs such methods very sparingly.

When they work with people who are consciously learning occultism, they try to inform them about exactly what is going on as well as they can. The more spiritual information people 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, Griffith himself seems to be quite capable of questioning them on ethical matters and making his own value judgments about what he receives in the process of writing this book.

Getting 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 who seem in distress. 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. Instead of attempting to help such spirits reincarnate, they talk about such lost souls being �Earthbound�, and they try to assist the distressed spirits to enter the �higher astral.�

But 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. 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.

Griffith observes that the Invisible College faces the same problems in dealing with people on the astral plane as he has 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 him as miraculous that the Invisible College was able to start teaching such knowledge widely, both on the astral plane and on Earth. He asks how this was done.

Griffith's guides state that about seven hundred years ago, scientists from their 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 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.

The guides acknowledge that both traditional occult literature and modern UFO-contactee stories lack sufficient detail to make them credible. Usually, they're just full of truisms and banalities. They say that 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.

As to why the spirits from advanced civilizations couldn't take some kind of direct action against the Theocrats right at the beginning, it simply wasn't possible. The space people don't come here physically, but as naked spirits transmitted across vast distances. We come 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.

The reason is that a normal spirit can transmit only limited amounts of astral energy through the psychic powers � less than that which can be radiated by the psychic powers of a similar spirit incarnated in a physical body. But Theocratic spirits are not bound by this limitation, because they don't keep their astral soul in a normal 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.

So they have been forced to use finesse rather than brute strength in fighting the Theocrats, and also have been forced to enlist the aid of living people in many different ways.

But couldn't they have used those psychic machines that were here? Not until the present because the process requires large amounts of astral energy. One of the reasons for assisting us in building a physical technology is so that they 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. They 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 they will stretch their ethics. It is a means that no end will justify.

Does using terms like �Satan� invite accusations of being �devil-worshippers?� They respond that they have good reason to use terms that encourage people to take a closer look at the Biblical myths about Satan. But the Invisible College rejects "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. The Invisible College never advocates absolute obedience to ANY authority, even their own. They 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. Unquestioning obedience to orders or fixed doctrine only makes them increasingly dependent and powerless.

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 the Invisible College's original and constructive purpose in creating the myth about Satan and getting it incorporated into the Bible.

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.

Look at all the folk tales in which the Devil simply opposes the puritanical, "blue-nose" aspects of Christian morality that say that sex and other sensual pleasures are intrinsically evil. The Invisible College has 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.

In ancient Hebrew, the word satan simply meant �adversary� or �enemy.� The Invisible College 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. They also claim responsibility for other elements of 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.

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.

Even though first-century Judaism practiced animal sacrifices at the Temple in Jerusalem, Judaism was almost entirely into the fourth stage 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.

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.

Griffith asks, �Was the Hebrew Pagan deity Satan originally a god in serpentine form like Damballa and some of the other African trickster deities?�

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.

Griffith asks if the concept of reincarnation was known to the Jews at that time.

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 re-establish rumors about reincarnation even if a Theocratic religion has managed to suppress them.

Here Griffith asks who was opposing Theocracy at the time of Moses, or whenever the myth concerning Adam and Eve and the serpent was written, if the Invisible College has been in existence for only a few centuries.

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.

The process by which the Theocrats dictate "holy writ" to religious believers is, like that used for 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.

Since it is extremely difficult for the mediums themselves to tell exactly who in the spirit world is dictating to them at a given time, Griffith's guides always review everything he receives from them several times and leave him to be the final judge as to whether what he has received is really from them or is Theocratic deception.

Griffith realizes that he has to be responsible for that, to ensure that what he receives is internally consistent and agrees with his own rational judgment based on the evidence available in his memory.

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 it is for Theocrats to deceive conscious �Spiritual Revolutionaries� (a term Griffith and the Invisible College were promoting when this book was published).

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 the Invisible College is 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.

The doctrines of organized religions have to be accepted on faith because they are not rational. 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 was 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, 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.

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.

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 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.

The Invisible College guides attempt to explain this. They state that what the Buddha called his enlightenment is actually a version of the breakthrough � that is, he became consciously aware of exact1y what the Vedantic gods really are and how they operate. But 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.

Buddhism was originally founded to fight Theocracy, as were Gnosticism and some forms of early Christianity. 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.

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. 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 one to 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.

Griffith observes that most of the Buddha's actual sermons or lectures seemed to be on ethics, similar to the Vedantic ethics of the culture he lived in, which contained many inconsistencies. The guides reply that he preached a version of the Vedantic ethical code and reIigious 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.

In other words, says Griffith, he said 1iving ethically was important, but not direct1y 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.

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.

Griffith: Certain Zen masters, whom I class with the occult minority within Buddhism, have said things like, "There are no gods, there are no Buddhas.�

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."

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.

The History of Theocracy

The Invisible College (2)

Satan and Buddha