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.”
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.’
Whenever hope seems lost – never give up. Rise again! This is the message of a favorite folk song (which I have linked below).
Maritime Canada has a long seafaring tradition, which is reflected in its music. Stan Rogers’ “The Mary Ellen Carter” is an inspirational ballad about a ship which sank in stormy seas. For the owners, she was just an insurance claim; but for her devoted crew, those who knew her best, she was a beloved companion to be rescued from the ocean floor. Newly unemployed, they combine their strength, their skill and their resources to raise the Mary Ellen Carter from the deep.
No one experiences hardship more than those who go down to the sea in ships. In the video introduction, a sailor describes his ordeal in the cold North Atlantic when a fierce storm sends his ship to the bottom. Floating in the freezing water, waves crashing on his head, ready to expire, he finds the strength to sing himself back to life with the lyrics of “The Mary Ellen Carter”; and for him, this was the difference between life and death
The song is a message of hope for all those to whom adversity has dealt the final blow.
No matter what you’ve lost be it home or love or friend like the Mary Ellen Carter rise again!
Christians can understand the mythic significance of rising from a watery grave in the baptism ritual and in the story of Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. When all hope seems lost, rescue is at hand. In an ancient Egyptian myth, Osiris, a murdered king, is brought back to life and restored to his throne; and likewise, those heroes of a thousand faces from diverse cultures – suffer a descent into the underworld, followed by a miraculous restoration.
Mythology contains profound truths to sustain us in life. Novels, music, poetry and works of art which tap into these universal motifs have a special and enduring significance because there is a recognition from deep within our subconscious mind.
It is Friday, April 2, in the year of our demiurge 2021, a Good Friday, as fate would have it. My wife and I have finished a meal of fish chowder and I am feeling good, except for a mild discomfort in my abdomen. The discomfort grows to an acute pain extending in an ever-tightening band from front to back. Sometimes the pain subsides, only to come back like the turning of the screw.
Hours go by without relief. I try numerous remedies, including extra-strength pain killers, but nothing helps. After 24 hours of increasing and unbearable pain and no sleep, I surrender to the inevitable and we call an ambulance. I know that a blocked bowel can be life threatening and that sometimes cancer causes the blockage. The bumpy road to the hospital provokes heavy vomiting and I feel better for a while but the pain soon returns.
At the hospital I am given morphine. Two nurses appear and, through the nose, insert a tube into my stomach. The tube won’t go through the nasal passage, causing even more pain. They tell me how sorry they are as they push harder, switching from one nostril to the other. I am moved by their compassion and their courage to do what is needed, however difficult.
One more night without sleep, this time in a hectic, well-lit and bustling triage area. In the morning a surgeon appears, a black African of kindly disposition, notifying me of impending surgery. He tells me I am garnering a reputation in the hospital as a real troublemaker. I burst out laughing. I can still laugh. That’s good! Where there is laughter there is hope.
As I revive from surgery, that same kindly voice is telling me that no blockage was found despite the CAT scan results clearly identifying one. The surgery had been, in that event, only exploratory, a far less invasive procedure. I would next be given a camera pill to swallow, which will, in theory, work its way to the blockage and then stop, all the while transmitting images to technicians.
It is Saturday, April 3, and I am transferred from triage to the main hospital, a shared room with three other patients. Sitting up in a bed across from me is the perfect image of General George Armstrong Custer. When Custer speaks, which is often, his voice carries halfway across the ward. He plays loud movies on his entertainment system and keeps complaining that he has no access to the Disney Channel. He constantly asks the nurses for help, but none of them are able to solve his technical problems.
Custer is in a really bad way, something he does not seem to realize. He gets in loud arguments with his wife and sons about when he is going home, but he requires 24-hour attention. His wife tells him, “I am really stressed out about it” but he keeps on minimizing the situation. He will live in the garage to avoid the stairs, he says. His wife starts to leave, wishing him good night. He starts talking again and she says good night one last time. The phone rings and it’s number one son. “Your mom’s mad at me,” Custer says. “She stormed out — didn’t even say good night!”
Custer plays his 3AM movies at full volume. The nurses tell him to turn it down. “I can’t hear anything,” he says. “Well, use earphones then!” Custer never surrenders. “They hurt my ears,” he responds.
So this is what it’s like, I find myself thinking, this descent into the underworld. I can’t sleep, I can’t eat or drink and if I bend my arm it sets off an alarm on the IV machine. All I can do is observe. I think of holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl. Everything is taken away from you, he says, except one thing — the power to choose your state of mind. I close my eyes and let the situation be what it is.
My throat is sore and my mouth so dry I can barely speak, so the nurse brings me a cup of crushed ice, which I must administer sparingly to avoid the ‘no fluids’ order. I am amazed at how much joy can be derived from a few pieces of crushed ice.
A young nurse visits me frequently, always asking, when she leaves, “Is there anything I can get for you?” I know there is nothing she can get for me and she knows it too but it’s her way of saying I care, I want to help. She has an elaborate tattoo on her forearm and hand, a pink and yellow floral pattern interlaced with light green vines. I come from a generation where tattoos were for merchant seaman and dockworkers, the flotsam and jetsam of the high seas, those who frequented seedy, smoky waterfront bars in Halifax or Saint John. I could never understand why anyone would want a tattoo, least of all a young woman; but barely visible amongst the vines on her arm is this powerful word — LOVE. I am moved almost to tears. I could tell this gentle soul was born for this line of work. Her every instinct was only to help, to make things better.
How good it is to be wrong! Being right is so dreadfully overrated. How pleasant to observe one more foolish prejudice burned in the crucible of my own experience, this silly thing about women and tattoos. Being wrong can be liberating when it frees the slave from his own stupid opinion. Our capacity to get things wrong is simply enormous.
Saint Paul was chastened by his vision to not call anything clean or unclean. In his former life as a Pharisee of the Pharisees, he had been full of judgments and definite opinions.
I’m beginning to see gnosis as the end product of a process of refinement, the burning away of false judgments, erroneous thinking, and miscalculations to arrive at the pearl of great price.
I have had my bellyful of thinking I’m right, and old Custer is driving this home for me. I reflect upon the various Custer decisions of my life, and the lengthy postmortems in the wake of them. What’s the point of being right if it does nothing for the advancement of your own soul? Surely this is gnosis — nothing to do with correct doctrine. Gnosis is an epiphany. It moves you to your core. Who cares about being right or wrong?
An amazing thing happens after midnight on Saturday. The camera which is supposed to get stuck does not, completes its run without incident. On Sunday morning the order comes through: I may resume eating and drinking. Roxanne arrives later with a care package. It’s now Sunday. There will be more time in the hospital for observation, but the crisis is ending.
The surgeon tells me they do not know what caused my problem. There was no mistaking the CAT scan and blocked bowels do not unblock themselves, he tells me.
So there it is, three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, disgorged (discharged) at last – exhausted, chastened, but renewed. Could this be a metaphor for life itself? Our life’s experience exhibits an intelligence all its own, almost like a dream, full of hidden meaning. We have strayed too far from the centre of things, to a place of confusion and suffering, and now we are finding our way home aided by the deepest levels of the unconscious.
Hardly the Easter celebration I had in mind, but I emerge the better for it.
Autonomy Now: 