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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity


 

Cultism

 


 

 

“The nature of psychological compulsion is such that those who act under constraint remain under the impression that they are acting on their own initiative. The victim of mind-manipulation does not know that he is a victim. To him the walls of his prison are invisible, and he believes himself to be free. That he is not free is apparent only to other people. His servitude is strictly objective.” Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited
 

 

Editor's 1-Minute Essay: Cultism: A Temporary Stage of Human Developmental Growth 

Mette Ivie Harrison: The Impulse to Cultism 

Jiddu Krishnamurti: Why It's Harmful To Follow Gurus

Attorney Adrian Smith: how Post-Modernism, one of the most pernicious cults, erodes personal liberties and undermines the West’s heritage of the rule of law

Dr. Rupert Sheldrake: Challenging the Cultish Dogmas of Materialistic Science
 

 

 

I recently spoke on the phone with my old college friend, Adrian. We were discussing the threat of a new economic downturn. Adrian begins to laugh:

"You and I don't have anything to worry about. We'll never have to stand on a street corner banging a tin cup for loose change. We can always start our own cult religion, we were taught by the best."

And now we're both laughing at this; unfortunately, we do understand cults very well - we learned the hard way.

 

Adrian Smith, circa 1970

 

Cultism: it's much more than drinking the koolaid

Maybe you were you thinking of cultism in terms of crackpot minority religion. It's more than that.

  • Tom Wolfe: "A cult is a religion with no political power." 

Definitions of cultism easily devolve to bigotry; meaning, it's always the other guy's religion. Tom Wolfe well understood that consensus, majority opinion will sanctify and smile upon certain "kook" religious ideas while condemning less-popular minority views - as if reality were fashioned by voting. This kind of venal subjectivity, however, is just another example of egoic "me versus them."

But there is a larger picture to consider. Some years ago I came to realize that the spirit of cultism extends beyond religion to be found in every facet of society. There are hard-core versions, to be sure, but cultism's essence is a much bigger problem than "one true doctrines" with which we disagree, or even the isolated and dramatic Jim-Jones kind.

  • Philip S. Hoffman: "You can look at anything as a cult."

Hoffman is exactly right. Anything can take the form of a cult because people attempt to quiet the inner neediness, the sense of "I am not enough," by identifying with almost any power symbol. We'll talk about this.

 

the endgame of all forms of fundamentalism is totalitarian control 

Editor's note:

Adrian's book, "A Prison For The Mind," is available on Amazon. His assessment is correct: "the endgame of" all forms "of fundamentalism" is "totalitarian control."

Why is this so? The needy dysfunctional ego, in its writhings of "I am not enough," cannot help itself but to reach for greater heights of power and control.

 

 

the meaning of the word cult

The word cult derives from a family of Latin words with the basic sense of "cut."

This core concept of "cut" leads us to images of refinement and fashioning; by extension, also to development, control, pattern, order, and system.

We see the root-word cult in cultivate, which, when applied to plants, offers the prospect of increased plant development and greater control over the growth process.

A cultured person is refined and developed, with social imperfections pruned and cut away, now conforming to well-accepted elite-group mores and codes of conduct.

A particular ethnic culture is one in which elements of life are ordered, chosen, and sanctified in a certain way; modes of living are systematized, given blessing or spurned, executed according to a particular pattern.

(1970) See my old 4020 John Deere on which I spent thousands of hours during my teens. My brother here is changing a plow's coulters or culters, the cutting edges, the knife-blades which cut and turn over the soil. Today, farmers don't plow anymore, having moved on to "no-till" seeding.

 

The very word agriculture, most significantly, contains this root-idea of "cutting," that is, a refinement and fashioning, an injection of order and system relating to the food supply. As Will Durant reminds us in his monumental Story of Civilization:

"Three meals a day are a highly advanced institution. Savages gorge themselves or fast [with the soporific thought,] 'I do not have to think. I have plenty of meat'… In the last analysis, civilization is based upon the food supply."

But my favorite insight from Durant regarding agriculture and civilization is this:

"Civilization is social order promoting cultural creation... It begins where chaos and insecurity end. For when fear is overcome, curiosity and constructiveness are free, and man passes by natural impulse towards the understanding and embellishment of life... A people may possess ordered institutions, a lofty moral code, and even a flair for the minor forms of art, like the American Indians; and yet if it remains in the hunting stage, if it depends for its existence upon the precarious fortunes of the chase, it will never quite pass from barbarism to civilization... The first form of culture is agriculture. It is when man settles down to till the soil and lay up provisions for the uncertain future that he finds time and reason to be civilized. Within that little circle of security - a reliable supply of water and food - he builds huts, his temples and his schools; he invents productive tools, and domesticates the dog... at last himself. He learns to work with regularity and order, maintains a longer tenure of life, and transmits more completely than before the mental and moral heritage of his race. Culture suggests agriculture, but civilization suggests the city ... civility [literally points to] the refinement which townsmen ... thought possible only in the civitas or city."

The first form of culture was agriculture, which allowed for stability of life, an ordering and systemization, as the food supply became more predictable; all of which allowed for a refinement and control regarding daily living.

 

but what does the term cult signify in reference to religion and philosophies of living

Given the above discussion of cultism as systemization, we begin to see that a definition within the arena of religion and philosophy will relate to a patterning and ordering of ideas.

And now we must ask the question, "Is there anything wrong with bringing order and pattern to our religious views and philosophies of living?"

The answer is nuanced and can easily lead to confusion.

 

ordering and patterning of data has been one of the great achievements of civilization

Aristotle was one of the fathers of classifying information about the world. He organized living creatures in terms of mobility and apparent mental capacity. This was a great advancement for humankind.

In our day, Mortimer Adler undertook the massive project of cataloging and ranking what he called "the great ideas" of the last 2500 years. These 102 most important topics derive from the writings of history's greatest thinkers.

 

bringing order and pattern to data is one thing - but when attempts at system and control are aimed at the minds of human beings, now we've stepped over the line into dark cultism

 

Many of my writings deal with this cultish assault upon the dignity of the human essence; as such, I will not attempt to reproduce those discussions here, but will refer you to my core articles:

 

Afterlife Bible Hell God
Jesus Christ Clear-Thinking Satan Summary

 

However, I will offer a brief summary of this issue.

 

the 'Absolute Sovereignty of a Human Being' principle:

we are not allowed to abrogate a sacred mandate for self-determination  

 

The following is a quotation from Adrian Smith's new book, "A Prison For The Mind"

 

The central doctrine of [the English] constitution is known as “the legal sovereignty of Parliament.” This means that Parliament can legislate on any subject matter and having legislated, no court or other body can challenge the validity of that legislation… There are only a few things that Parliament cannot do. It may not bind its successors with such wording as “this Act shall be for all time to come.” Parliament must remain free to change its mind and Parliament may not abrogate its unique powers by giving them away to some other body. Parliament is omnipotent in all things, save the power to compromise its own omnipotence

I have often thought that I would like to adopt a personal constitution on the UK model and make it my own operating system. We could call it the Absolute Sovereignty of a Human Being. We can have our opinions and convictions, but never bind yourself and always remain free to change your mind. You may not abrogate your unique responsibility [of final word on the course of your own life]…

In the holographic universe, which some scientists believe we live in, the whole is contained in each of its tiny parts. This means that the infinite creative power of the whole universe is enfolded in the individual. We need to stand confidently in the full knowledge of who we are and to command those spirits who would [cultishly enslave us and] keep us ignorant of our true identity…

[When we fail to live our lives according to the sacred directive of self-determination, a personal power vacuum is created in our spirits. During such phase of our lives, Needy Egos, requiring external affirmation, will step in to fill the void.] Perhaps these people are just our teachers at some deep level. They are what happens when you give away your power, when you violate “the absolute sovereignty of the individual” principle. If [a particular cultish leader] had not existed, I would have had to invent him. [In other words, this was an accident poised to happen; if not with that one, then another despot would have arisen to provide the lesson of self-hegemony]...

The entire universe, and we in it, are participants in [an evolutionary process]. The rejection of fundamentalism [not just the religious sort, but all guises in society] allows for a return to the evolutionary path. Fundamentalism, on the other hand, is an evolutionary cul-de-sac, a prison for the mind.

Editor’s note: The apostle Paul in I Corinthians asserted, “We know in part” – yes, there’s so much we don’t know, creating, what Dr. Richard Feynman called, “an expanding horizon of ignorance.” But fundamentalists say the opposite: “We know, we provide certitude, we have final answers.”

This kind of dogmatism posing as knowledge shuts down the evolutionary, the personal development, process. If we know everything, if all mysteries find resolution in the testimony of a denominated Infallible Guru, with the rest of us as mere plebs of the hive, then how are we to move forward from this “prison of the mind”?

Fundamentalism creates a closed system of reality. It hates debate and discourse, as such rational free-flow of ideas would invite scrutiny of its anti-humanistic party-platforms. And this is why fundamentalism so easily and readily drifts toward censorship, ad hominem attacks, and narrow views. All of which short-circuit the normal and natural evolutionary path of human beings.

It will be asked, why is there a mandate to enlighten oneself, to honor the “Absolute Sovereignty of a Human Being”? Who will stop us? If we feel fine-and-dandy, if we feel comfortable remaining as loyal drone in a neighborhood or national cultish organization, maybe that’s our choice.

Well, “choice” sounds very “PC,” but it will cut no ice in certain circles. Who will stop the march toward mindless fundamentalism? The answer is – you will, I will, the “higher self” of each sacred individual will.

If we enter into hard-core alliance with cultish elements of our world, then, when we cross over, when the mortal shell is set aside, we will find ourselves in a dark place. It’s a kind of detention where people, having violated the Absolute Sovereignty of a Human Being principle, will be forced to enter into honest communion with themselves. No angry “Sky God” with a long white beard sends us there. We, ourselves, our higher selves, arrange for this 1-star accommodation.

Why does it happen? It happens because “penalty flags” have fallen as we’ve forgotten that our purpose is to enter the sacred evolutionary path toward godliness. READ MORE on this page.

 

 

how do you bring system and order to an entity whose capacity, like an inner cosmos, as Father Benson eloquently stated, has "no discoverable upper limit"

How do you build a fence around the infinite, the illimitable? How do you contain, bring pattern and formula, to creatures who are like the prairie with its magical panorama of endless horizon - unbounded, untrammeled, unfettered; an inexhaustible human aptitude - vast, wide open, without discernible demarcation; the wondrous sacred destiny of those "made in the image."

 

 

 

Religion seeks to organize metaphysical reality

Krishnamurti's lecture, Berkeley, California - 06 February 1969

One must have observed that throughout the world man, the human being, has always been searching for something much more than the transient. He has always been, probably from time immemorial, asking himself if there is something really sacred, something that is not worldly, that is not put together by thought, by the intellect...

And organised religions seem to have supplied the answer. They say there is - there is a reality, there is God, there is something which the mind cannot possibly measure. And they begin to organise what they consider to be the real. And man is led astray by organised religions.

a humorous illustration

You may remember that story of the devil and a friend of his were walking down the street and they saw a man ahead stoop down and pick up something from the road. And as he picked it up and looked at it he was very startled, there was a great delight in his face.

And the friend of the devil asked, what was it that he picked up.

And the devil said,

'It's truth'.

And the friend said,

'Isn't that a very bad business for you then?'

The devil said,

'Not at all, I am going to help him to organise it'.

 

organizing reality is the essence of cultism

Krishnamurti's little joke has it exactly right.

We’ve discussed that the etymological root of “cultism” is “to cut”; that is, to pare and prune, to refine and order, to systematize and regulate. The history of science might be viewed as a long chronicle of humankind attempting to control and bring order to the material universe. This is “cultism” in its finest sense. But it all goes wrong when a self-denominated elite, purportedly God’s excusive agents, pose as gurus and infallible teachers. When this happens they will attempt to systematize and regulate, organize and craft, truth and spiritual reality. This is when the shooting starts.

Krishnamurti well understands the pernicious role of religion in history. The ego loves to identify with the apparent solidity of Religion’s infallible doctrines. What better way to secure for oneself a sense of safety and security in a hostile world?

For this reason, religious people, more than other dysfunctional ones, have felt justified, have more readily killed and tortured, in the name of God.

 

 

here's the most important point I would have you know about the essence of dark cultism

The history of science and philosophy is a chronicle of humanity's quest to control and manage the forces of nature. In early times, primitive man saw himself as helpless pawn of the gods; but with the hard-won discoveries of science and philosophy, humanity began to cast off fear-based concepts of superstition and fate, taking to itself a sense of mastery over the world. It's been a long, slow climb out of the pit of ignorance into the sunny open air of rational enlightened thought.

All this is well and good, and we need more of it. It could be said that here we find the good version of cultism which seeks to fashion and shape, pare and refine, manage and control, the wild and untoward elements arrayed against us in nature.

At this point in the process, however, some veer off into dysfunction. While the clear-thinking scientist and philosopher will season their views with generous sprinklings of humility, dark-spirited cult leaders reject such equanimity; the former readily admit to partial knowledge and incomplete understanding of the universe... 

 

Dr. Richard Feynman, Nobel Laureate, considered to be "the most brilliant teacher" of physics: "We do not yet know all the basic laws [of physics]: there is an expanding frontier of ignorance... one needs a considerable amount of preparatory training even to learn what the words [of physics] mean... Each piece, or part, of the whole of nature is always merely an approximation to the complete truth, or the complete truth so far as we know it. In fact, everything we know is only some kind of approximation, because we know that we do not know all the laws as yet. Therefore, things must be learned only to be unlearned again, or, more likely, to be corrected."

Confucius: "Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance."

Professor Daniel Robinson, Georgetown and Oxford Universities: "What is there? - the common answer is, Look around!... but ancient man engaged in spear-fishing and learned early that where you think the fish is in the water is not quite where the fish is, and you've got to learn to adjust to the fact that your senses might deceive you. Might they always deceive you?"

Bertrand Russell: "The biggest cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid people are so sure about things and the intelligent folks are so full of doubts."

Apostle Paul, I Corinthians 13, The Message translation: "We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete... When I was an infant at my mother’s breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways [of believing in complete information] for good. We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist..."

Ralph Gomary: "Instead of accepting information as fact, we ought to be taught that it is only a fragment on the edge of the unknown. That pushes us to look further."

J. Robert Oppenheimer: “There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry … There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors. Our political life is also predicated on openness. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it and that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. And we know that as long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost, and science can never regress.”

 

 

... but the latter, the dark-spirited cult leaders, with bloated vanity, speak pompously of:

  • infallible teachings by infallible teachers
  • "one true doctrines" offered by a "one true church"
  • infallible holy books
  • exclusive possession of "the truth"
  • exclusive commissioning, directly from God

I could go on. 

 

everything you’ve ever learned or heard or read or were taught is wrong

Everything, including what Grandma said, or what your PhD research revealed, or what you learned from 40 years of experience, or what the Nice Young Man at Church preached to you -- it’s wrong.

Everything you’ve ever come to believe as true, as a fact of the world, is either patently wrong, wrong on its face, or effectively wrong, obsolete-wrong, in that, though an aspect of it might be true enough, as new information becomes available, it will find itself in a more expansive, more complex setting, thereby rendering what we thought to be a final answer as something childish, utterly incomplete, merely a subset of a much larger reality – to be cast aside as a few-years-old college textbook, for sale now in the bargain-book bin for 50 cents.

Newton’s “clockwork” universe seemed so authoritative that, in his day, it was taken as the very voice of God, with no major new discoveries in physics deemed to be possible. And his “laws of motion” were impressive and did take us to the Moon and back. However, today the Newtonian worldview has been relegated to status of mere subset of a larger system. This same paradigmatical diminution is currently afflicting Einsteinian explanations of the cosmos. It’s a big place out there with lots of knowledge to be discovered, and, at best, we perceive “one grain of sand.”

Editor’s note: Everything we think we know is defective because there’s too much to know; however, there’s another, more troubling, reason. In Kant’s Critique Of Pure Reason, he begins by lamenting the chaotic state of people’s thinking and philosophy at-large, creating mass error and confusion. See my extensive Editor’s note on the “Kant” page.

There is no fact of the world which shall escape this degradation. There is nothing that you can know about the world that can endure the onslaught, as Abraham Lincoln used the phrase, the “silent artillery” of new discovery, new research, new information. All “final answers” are swept away in this tidal wave of progress.

I said “fact of the world” and that which we may know “about the world.” All externals tumble and swirl and dance a death of obsolescence. What I say here is true in our world and also in the worlds to come. All knowledge, here and there, like a river’s torrent, moves inexorably forward.

But in this condition of perpetual change, motion, and evolution, there is one aspect of life to remain ever immutable. When you find love, the real love, it will plant a flag of permanence in your heart and being. Like an ember glowing, radiating, warming, it will live within you. Permanently. And though its initial visitation may have occurred decades ago, the warmth of that ember fades not, changes not. It will be there tomorrow, next year, and a million years from now, and beyond. Settled, abiding, imperishable.

Facts of the world, things to be known about the world, are derived intellectually. But love, true love, is apprehended as an altered and elevated state of consciousness. It is eternal as the soul; indeed, it lives as inherent aspect of the soul. Ultimate Reality itself might be defined by it.

Editor’s note: The foregoing observations of life are mine alone as fruit of my own meditations. Later, however, I realized that the apostle Paul had offered the same in I Corinthians 13. He spoke of a partial view of knowledge, and did so within the context of unremitting love.

 

 

Adrian and I ask ourselves, why did we put up with that nonsense for so long?

The arrogant decrees of Religion represent a throw-back to totalitarian views of the Middle Ages; to borrow a phrase of Nobel Laureate F.A. Hayek, it's all "counter-Renaissance," anti-humanistic, and unscientific.

Here's where the "cutting" of their brand of dark cultism comes into play: Dear Leaders attempt to mold and fashion, pare and refine, a hostile world with promises to make it all safe and secure. Dark cultism offers to create certainty in an uncertain world; predictability and absolutism amidst endless vicissitude.

 

they bought and sold you... controlled you...

 

While My Guitar Gently Weeps

I look at you and see the love there that's sleeping...
I don't know why nobody told you how to unfold your love
I don't know how someone controlled you
They bought and sold you...

 

 

We speak of charismatic leaders who draw to themselves an intoxicated "cult following." I think we can now see what this means. The party-faithful, in a psychology of the "inner child seeking for a strong father-figure"...

be it in a religious, political, corporate, pop-celebrity, or other context, delude themselves into believing that their Dear-Leader Hero will be able to fashion and shape, pare and prune, systematize and order, reality itself into a form less terrifying and more certain. For thousands of years, cult-followers have been seeking "saviors" to rescue them; but as Eric Hoffer masterfully points out, it is an ill-conceived attempted rescue, primarily from their own sense of "I am not enough," the "spoiled self."

 

 

 
“To do anything that suggests a taste for solitude, even to go for a walk by yourself, was always slightly dangerous. There was a word for it in Newspeak: ownlife, it was called, meaning individualism and eccentricity.” George Orwell, 1984

"The Wizard [of Oz, metaphor of society's thought-police] is threatened by the inner journey. The whole administrative structure of the manufactured reality is threatened." Adrian Smith

 

 

I need not ask others why such illusion is applauded. I need only bring to mind my own days in cult-religion with its "one, true this" and "infallible that."

Why did we put up with the nonsense? Why didn't we just walk away? Why did we stay for so many years?

We allowed ourselves to be psychologically bullied because of then-present states of mind our diminished levels of awareness and consciousness at the time. We had not yet sufficiently grown out of fear-based mentality and into self-respect and self-love; as such, it seemed reasonable to seek for some form of impressive external authority who promised to save us from our own "spoiled selves." As Aldous Huxley stated, in the masthead quote at the top of this page, those dominated by cult-religion do not realize that they are not free. In those days, I certainly did not.

 

everybody's looking for something, some of them want to abuse you, some of them want to be abused...

Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This

everybody's looking for something
some of them want to use you
some of them want to get used by you

some of them want to abuse you
some of them want to be abused...

 

 

the spirit of dark cultism, with its promise to reshape and redistill reality, making it safe and certain for you, is found in every aspect of society, not just religion

It is very important to understand that the spirit of dark cultism is to be found in all aspects of society. We find it in politics, the corporate world, the arena of music and the arts with its celebrities, in materialistic science, in academia...

 

  • Courtney Love: "Being a rock star is like being a cult leader - [like having] your own religion."

 

Dark cultism will be found wherever human dignity is up for sale due to lack of self-knowledge; where people willingly merchandize themselves to power symbols, to Dear Leaders in various guises, in exchange for empty promises of hope and change, security and safety.

Take back your life, declare your independence today, from this slavery, this mind-control -- all forms of cultism.  

 

 

Henrik Ibsen, Peer Gynt, 1867: "What's a man's first duty? The answer is brief: to be himself."

Henrik Ibsen, Brand, 1884: "The man whom God wills to stay in the struggle of life, He first individualizes."

Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People, 1882: "The strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone."

 

 

 the ‘spoiled self’ can find immortality, not as an individual, but in merging with a collective-ego institution

George Orwell, 1984: "We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship... The first thing you must realize is that power is collective. The individual only has power in so far as he ceases to be an individual. You know the Party slogan Freedom is Slavery. Has it ever occurred to you that it is reversible? Slavery is freedom. Alone - free - the human being is always defeated. It must be so, because every human being is doomed to die... [but, he can find immortality] if he can escape from his identity, if he can merge himself in the Party, so that he is the Party, then he is all-powerful and immortal."

1984 was assigned reading for Mr. Olig’s senior English class. In those long-ago days, with little life experience, I could not grasp or appreciate Orwell’s profound – even, unique – insights into the dark side of human nature. Look at the above quote. What an incredible perception by Orwell! It would take me 50 years to understand what he meant.

How often have we seen some aging Dear Leader – be it in a political or religious context – going about his or her untoward business of oppressing the unwary, enacting laws which reduce personal freedoms, employing policies which denigrate human dignity. We see these white-haired mannequins on television, appearing as “warmed over death”; they might even have themselves carted out of the "terminal-cancer ward" for a business meeting. And we are left to wonder, “Have you nothing better to do during your last days on Earth? Why aren’t you at home with your grandchildren or tending a rose garden? In a very short time you will be food for worms and maggots, and here you are, with your last gasp of strength, doing all you can, as usual, in your elitist ways, to obfuscate, deceive, and lord it over others.”

But, Orwell explained the madness to us. There's a tortured coherency and logic to the insanity, if you create a certain premise: They don’t really accept that they’re going to die. They believe in "legacy." Their “legacy” will live on. How often we hear Dear Leaders coveting their “legacy” - so very important to them. Allow me to translate this code-language:

Legacy means that I have cheated death and will live on, immortalized, in the Collective-Ego Cult. While my checkered individuality, my ‘spoiled self,’ no longer exists, I have gloriously merged with the ‘body-politic’ and now enjoy a derivative existence via fame and remembrance, and this shall go on and on, unfettered by the weakness of the flesh. I am an immortal god via the mysticism of the Ageless and Eternal Cult.”

Editor’s note: The glory of legacy is a craving that impels the aged dysfunctional egos of our world. Virtually all of these power-seeking insane ones are materialists. They don’t believe in post-mortem survival of consciousness. Therefore “legacy” is their ticket to immortality.

But Adrian Smith reminded me of what’s really going on as we draw back the curtain of hidden reality. The corrupt and power-mad Dear Leaders, sporting their big sloppy grins to fill the screen of your television, are mere puppets under the control of the utterly perverted in the Dark Realms.

See the channeled testimony of Franchezzo serving as a missionary Spirit Guide in the dark spheres. There, he encountered powerful discarnate entities, former dictators of Earth’s history, who continue, unabated, to seek for dominion of our world via psychic manipulation of like-minded ones here.

an unremitting mindset to span generations 

And this is the real reason why the corrupt and power-insane, which curse Earth’s society with their presence, never give up their quest for totalitarian hegemony of the entire planet. The hidden puppet-masters drive them on, and on.

Final note: as discussed elsewhere, the highly symbolical New Testament document Revelation – addressing the question of the future of evil - offers metaphorical imagery affirming the same untoward dynamic: the Wild Animal and the Lying Teacher (“Beast and False Prophet”) are “thrown alive” into the fire of ultimate perdition. Why this detail of “thrown alive”? It is so in the nature of things. The dysfunctional ego never gives up. It cannot be reformed, only transcended. Its hungers and cravings will not allow it to give up. It’s active to the end, that is, displaced by the true self, the life within.

 

 

“Will the real cult member please stand up?”

Someone I know received a letter from one with whom she’d been friends, best friends in the world, for 50 years. The letter stated that since they no longer shared a similar belief-system, and since the writer wanted “nothing but the Truth and the whole Truth,” they could no longer be friends, with no communication at all.

This shunning, of course, was extremely hurtful to the receiving party, who was not asking for anything, no request for her friend to change any beliefs, but only that each of them might enjoy the freedom of their own thoughts and feelings.

The world is filled with fundamentalism-cultism, in all of its forms -- religious, political, corporate, materialistic science, celebrity-worship, and others – and besets anyone who has not found the “true self” but, instead, seeks for a “strong father-mother figure” to provide security and safety to the inner-child.

The letter-writer, assuredly, would not have seen herself as a cult member: “I belong to a respectable church, and we have the one-true doctrines, the one-true holy book, worship on the one-true day, and follow the one-true infallible guru. I’m not a cult member. That’s for people who drink the kool-aid.”

The world's billions of cult members conveniently define cultism to exclude themselves. “Cultism is what the other guy does."

And how does each one know that he or she possesses that vaunted “Truth”? The answer is: “My infallible guru told me so”; or, “I read it in my infallible holy book”; or, “My mother or my grandmother taught me and she wouldn’t lie.”

Let’s understand that the Jim-Jones victims would not have called themselves cult members.

 

 

Editor's note: Consider, in the following passage, what Krishnamurti said about "organizing truth" - which is the essence of cultism:

Jiddu Krishnamurti, the famous "dissolution speech," August 3, 1929: "Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path… Truth cannot be brought down, rather the individual must make the effort to ascend to it... You are accustomed to authority, or to the atmosphere of authority, which you think will lead you to spirituality. You think and hope that another can, by his extraordinary powers -- a miracle -- transport you to this realm of eternal freedom which is Happiness. Your whole outlook on life is based on that authority... You are all depending for your spirituality on someone else, for your happiness on someone else, for your enlightenment on someone else… Organizations cannot make you free. No man from outside can make you free; nor can organized worship, nor the immolation of yourselves for a cause, make you free; nor can forming yourselves into an organization, nor throwing yourselves into works, make you free… Again, you have the idea that only certain people hold the key to the Kingdom of Happiness. No one holds it. No one has the authority to hold that key. That key is your own self, and in the development and the purification and in the incorruptibility of that self alone is the Kingdom of Eternity. So you will see how absurd is the whole structure that you have built, looking for external help, depending on others for your comfort, for your happiness, for your strength. These can only be found within yourselves. You are accustomed to being told how far you have advanced, what is your spiritual status. How childish! Who but yourself can tell you if you are beautiful or ugly within? Who but yourself can tell you if you are incorruptible?"

 

Why is it that many people will hate you just for disagreeing with them? They cannot hear you – even if reasonings are cogent and information is accurate.

Many are so identified with an ideal that, if you disagree with it, they will hate you, and some, if they could, would try to kill you.

Why the vitriol? Why not just believe what you want to believe and turn away and not say anything? But today, more and more, we see the venomous political attacks, the vicious statements on social media, the hate-filled rhetoric of those who disagree -- and with an air of moral superiority.

the inability of true-believers to hear you is an expression of allegiance to Dear Leader

When we thoroughly identify with a thought-form, an ideal, a mental picture of utopia – especially, a vision promoted by a Dear Leader, who wears a “mask of piety claiming moral superiority, stoking the anger of a purported victim class – then the true-believer followers will feel justified to commit any atrocity in support of said utopian vision. The great psychologists call this sense of permission the "divine numen", ie, the approving "nod" from on high.

And what does it mean to “thoroughly identify with a thought-form”?

The dysfunctional ego is led by dark perceptions of “I don’t have enough” because “I am not enough.” And because it feels itself as “not enough,” it will seek for a “strong father figure,” a Dear Leader, under whose mantle the ego seeks for safety and shelter in a hostile world. The ego will “identify” with this external authority, that is, it will “make itself equal to” this faux authority, will psychologically attach itself to it.

And this is why we meet so many people who are so angry when they’re disagreed with. To them, it’s not just an argument to be lost, but it feels like they’re fighting for their lives. They’ve attached their existential sense of worth, and of life itself, to precepts issued by Dear Leader. It is the sought-for security of the little child finding refuge in the shadow of a godlike parent.

'I can't hear you'

Children play the game of "I can't hear you" with a mock, sing-song voice, and then pretend to create a barrier of noise with "la, la, la, la..."

Adults do this, too, when they block you out and can't hear you. It happens when they fully identify with some external authority.

ownlife

In his seminal and prophetic work, 1984 (published 1949), George Orwell coins a term, “ownlife.” Totalitarians encourage their subjects toward a servile docility, an identification and psychological attachment. Those who resist such sublimation of autonomy are accused of clinging to “ownlife,” an insistence on individualization - and as such are deemed to be “dangerous,” “insurrectionists,” “domestic terrorists” by the dystopian autocrats.

a terrorized mind is incapable of listening

This state of total identification with an external source of salvation, a surrendering of self and critical faculties, is fueled by a terrorized mind – a dysfunction which believes “I don’t have enough” because “I am not enough.” This fearful mental state makes one incapable of living freely, incapable of listening, incapable of opening oneself to the messages of life.

a terrorized mind will block anything that threatens its security and safety

This is why, when you meet a true-believer such as this, you cannot talk to them; no matter how cogent your reasonings, they are incapable of listening. The fearful true-believer did not accept his or her beliefs on the basis of rational argument and careful weighing of evidence, and so they won’t be “argued out of” their mental positions by careful reasoning, either. More information, more content of the mind, will not help them, but only an upward shift in consciousness will solve this problem.

they can't hear you

The terrorized mind of the "inner child" blocks out anything that might threaten safety and security, which they believe will be secured by obediently following the dictates of Dear Leader as "strong father figure".

READ MORE on the "true self" page.

 

 

 

 

Editor's last word:

Freud’s colleague, Ferenczi, perceived that hypnotism, per se, does not exist. Hypnotists do not hypnotize, as such -- no external force can unilaterally invade another's unwilling mind; rather, the hypnotist convinces people to hypnotize themselves via the secret compulsion to merge with power-figures – what Freud called “transference.” Hypnotism reflects no domineering outside force but an inner slavishness, a hidden tendency toward blind belief and uncritical obedience. This compulsive neurosis of the fearful “inner child” to identify with strong “father-figures” finds ready expression in the sordid dynamic of all forms of cultism. The terrified “inner child” finds security and safety from the dangers of this world, and the next, by latching onto strong “father-figures”; in so doing, the obedient “child,” conveniently, has no responsibility, is “just following orders,” and hides behind the protective mantle of the all-powerful "infallible" cult-guru. This self-delusion and prevarication, this shirking of an existential duty to grow up and to be one's own person, earns for itself tragic consequences in the afterlife.

Similarly, in the "Repression" article, see Dr. Norman O. Brown's discussion on how humankind "creates culture" and civilization "in order to repress himself"; that is, to escape those aspects of the world which seem frightening to the "inner child."

And notice below how Einstein speaks of "fashioning" a private world suitable to a particular philosophy of life; how we attempt to "substitute this [private] cosmos ... for the [objective] world ... and thus to overcome [the world as it is]." This is the essence of cultism: a redistilling of reality led by personal agenda, making it "the pivot" of one's life in an effort to find "peace and security," which, one fears, cannot be obtained outside the domain of a Dear Leader.

Albert Einstein: “Man tries to make for himself in the fashion that suits him best a simplified and intelligible picture of the world; he then tries to some extent to substitute this cosmos of his for the world of experience, and thus to overcome it. This is what the painter, the poet, the speculative philosopher, and the natural scientist do, each in his own fashion. Each makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional life, in order to find in this way the peace and security which he cannot find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience.”

 

 

you can have it all laid out in front of you, but it won't make you think 

Concert for George
Royal Albert Hall
November 29, 2002
 

 

Horse To Water

you can take a horse to the water but you can't make him drink, oh no, oh no, oh no, a friend of mine in so much misery, some people sail through life, he is struggling, I said, "hey man, let's go out and get some wisdom," first he turned on me, then turned off his nervous system, you can take a horse to the water but you can't make him drink, oh no, oh no, oh no, you can have it all laid out in front of you, but it won't make you think, oh no, oh no, oh no

 

listen to Sam Brown’s sensational version of “Horse to Water” at the Concert for George