Another great interview with Miguel Conner of Aeon Byte Gnostic Radio. How does the spiritual seeker navigate this political turbulence and polarization? We spotlight the powers which should not be and their ultimate objective. Is this the endgame of The Fabian Society and other influential players?
“It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I’m glad Adrian Smith, author of A Prison for Your Mind, will join us to find a better world. We’ll discuss politics from a Gnostic stance. Adrian will provide many potent ideas, from the Gnosis of John Adams to the concept of Utilitarianism to the malevolence of the Fabian Society. In the end, you’ll get valuable and necessary antidotes to the various Wetikos that block your sacred mission and infect the collective human psyche. We got Yaldi Balid right where we want him.”
In conversation with Steve Seven, prolific author, transpersonal psychologist, expert on the psychology of Freud and Jung, New Testament scholar, and much more.
In Part 1, we discuss transpersonal psychology, Gnosticism, spiritual evolution and wonder-working in the invisible world, and the name of Steve’s Facebook group.
In Part 2, we discuss the hidden hand behind events in the materium.
An inspiring discussion with Taoist priest and master, San Qing, creator of Consciousness of the Way 126podcast and YouTube channel. We explore the Gnostic path and similarities with Taoist practice and tradition.
Another great interview with Aeon Byte. Joining the discussion is friend and author, Cyd Ropp Ph.D.. We discuss the problem of evil in our world and how to oppose it.
When my early life as a fundamentalist minister came to an abrupt and traumatic end, I surveyed what could be salvaged from the general shipwreck of disappointment. A few valuables could be gathered up, for sure; but that old ship would never sail again. Disappointment is an understatement. What is left to believe in when belief itself has betrayed you? We are held captive by belief (ideology, narrative, meme). Manipulation of belief is the basis of mind control, a clear pathway to dystopia.
I spent time in the corporate world. More accurately, I “did” time there. But to survive and thrive aboard the ship of commerce, one must believe without question. “True believers” embrace with total commitment, the paramount importance of production. Quotas and achievements give meaning, purpose, and a direction in life. Scientific materialism produces labour-saving machines and fascinating gadgets which do nothing for the soul. So, with the passage of time, belief falters. “We keep you alive to serve this ship,” the Roman overlord tells the galley slave. I would abandon the ship of commerce to find a new direction.
A man can only stand so much disappointment. I even thought I might become an atheist, but I couldn’t do it. Those who confidently champion scientific materialism, and deny any spiritual reality, are true believers but not true scientists. A true scientist examines the evidence on its merits without pre-conception. No need to review the evidence, they say, we already know the answer. But evidence does exist for a supernatural or paranormal reality. The scientific research of sincere parapsychologists and paranormal investigators is met with derision and ridicule. This is getting much too close to that original experience of belief which tolerates no dissent. The militant atheist has much in common with the religious fanatic.
I graduated from The University of London with a degree in law. Here I began to re-evaluate the fatal attraction of belief. Asking the right question is more important than finding the right answer. Appreciating a good argument is more realistic than an over-abundance of certitude. Adherence to core values of justice, truth and morality are the foundation of natural law. Pursuing what is right, is more important than being right.
Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow. (Isaiah 1)
I discovered Gnosticism by a process of elimination, filtering out that which was reminiscent of my original experience of fundamentalism. Fundamentalism is a mentality, transcending any particular belief system, religious or otherwise. The devil (demiurge) is a shapeshifter. Changing a disguise does not alter the true nature of what lurks beneath the costume. On a good day, the adversary is rigid, inflexible, arrogant, intolerant, argumentative, narrow minded, and contemptuous; on a bad one, unhinged, vicious and violent. The same mental virus infecting the Christian mob which murdered Hypatia of Alexandria also infected the Jacobins of The French Revolution. They believed in extensive government intervention to effect revolutionary social change, in some ways, an early version of Marxism. Thomas Paine was arrested in Paris after he recommended mercy for the royal family. Only an intervention by Thomas Jefferson saved him from the guillotine. A different context yes but the same counterfeiting spirit.
Beliefs are toxic when held tightly. Toxic beliefs thrive on ignorance. Exposure to a wide range of ideas is an effective antidote.
Gnostics believed different things and argued amongst themselves, but that melting pot of ideas uncovered an array of possibilities which could not be known otherwise. When constantly exposed to new ideas which challenge old ones, we avoid the cult of belief. Gnostics hold beliefs lightly. Theirs is a unity of Spirit. Their gnosis (knowledge) is experiential and shamanistic. Beliefs are provisional and subject to change.
A world without belief becomes administratively unworkable. What is there to manage if people are allowed to believe what they want. Authority demands one truth, a narrowing of the imagination. Brute force is clumsy and expensive, better if the masses accept or even demand their servitude. For this they must believe.
I have also had time to reflect upon all the false beliefs (narratives) we hold about ourselves which, quite apart from those in the world at large, also keep us locked up in a prison for the mind.
This process of calcification drove the Gnostics underground, their wisdom reduced to fragments found in pots. The Library of Alexandria was burned to the ground and with it the natural curiosity of the human mind. If you want to control the world, control the mind.
Paul of Tarsus was once a man of definite belief, a Pharisee of the Pharisees, as he described himself. Early Christians were heretics of Judaism and he participated in their persecution. Paul was later transformed, not by a new belief but by a bolt of lightning, a vision on the road to Damascus, a transformative religious experience (gnosis).
He emerges much less certain about belief.
I am determined not to know anything,
He who thinks he knows, knows nothing yet as he ought to know.
Where there is knowledge, it shall pass away.
He speaks of that impermeant or provisional knowledge which often fails but not of gnosis, that revelatory experiential knowledge which is transformative and everlasting.
Psychologist Carl Jung, referring to gnosis, says it best: “I do not believe, I know.’
Two young fish are swimming through the water when they are approached by an older fish who asks, “How’s the water this morning?” They carry on swimming, somewhat puzzled, then one fish turns to the other and says, “What the hell is water?”
Our belief systems (or what I call “fundamentalism”) are the waters within which we swim. A belief system is natural to us, so we do not observe it, neither can we imagine anything else.
This is important because our adversary (the demiurge) uses this propensity to control us. His strategy is divide and conquer. The adversary is a master counterfeiter, often appearing in one disguise or another. The spider frequently moves its nest. If the spider appears in the disguise of our favorite belief system, we will identify with it even though behaviour contradicts the carefully constructed narrative.
A certain emperor disguises himself as a feminist. When someone uses the word “mankind”, he corrects them and instructs the use of “people kind” instead. The people cheer! The emperor appoints as his Minister of Justice, a Native American woman, to create an appearance of furthering “equity” and “diversity”. In the exercise of her duties, the Minister prosecutes a business favored by the emperor. He orders her to stop. Recognizing a gross violation of the nation’s constitution, the Minister refuses, so the emperor dismisses her. It seems the emperor actually dislikes strong, principled and competent women, but in order to preserve the narrative, true believers block or forget the contradictions even as they multiply.
In another time and place far removed and at the opposite end of the political spectrum, a certain president invades a country to overthrow an “evil dictator”. In order to garner the necessary public support and to conceal the real reasons for the invasion, he tells lies about the dictator having weapons of mass destruction and of being connected to a major terrorist attack. None of this is remotely true (and no one argues differently to this day), but people are whipped up in a frenzy of patriotism and moral outrage. Even as the contradictions and inconsistencies mount, they are blocked from consciousness or ignored, and so the bloody and destructive wars continue, one after another. Few think to ask: They have lied repeatedly in the past, why should I believe them now?
This is sophisticated mind-control, and the use of contradiction is part of the game. When subliminal contradiction is accepted into the field of perception without resistance, the critical faculty is stunned, and the mind becomes receptive to suggestion.
The mental anxiety induced when people observe the lies and contradictions is called “cognitive dissonance”. Now they have a choice to make. Question their ideological commitment, or forget the inconsistencies in order to keep believing the lies.
“Winston sank … into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly forget it again…
George Orwell 1984
It’s easy for people on opposite sides to observe the foolish behaviour of their counterparts and not see the beam which is in their own eye. Truth telling invites ridicule and contempt. As we continue to fight each other, the spell-binding machinations of the magician go unnoticed as the hidden agenda moves forward.
That is how the divide and conquer strategy works and that is why we stand on the brink of totalitarianism and WW3 (if we are not there already).
My interview with Miguel Connor of Aeon Byte Gnostic Radio, home of the virtual Alexandria (see recommended section). This is a doubleheader with Sean Stone, son of filmmaker Oliver Stone, well known for such classic films as JFK and Born on The Fourth of July. We discuss Sean’s latest documentary, Best Kept Secret, a powerful expose, speaking truth to power. I have included a link to the documentary in the Media Section.
The interview continues, examining those forces which control our “reality”.
Autonomy Now: 