Trunk/Chapter 8 of Silent Oracle
Let's look at the significance of humantruth in relation to religion, or any beliefs and faiths which we currently hold, usually as the result of upbringing and education under the Machine, and of certain inexplicable events and phenomena which we may vaguely experience.
First of all there is a widespread belief in some kind of all-powerful, mysterious god (however that god may be identified) which is beyond full comprehension yet held to be deeply meaningful. Even though they cannot understand or clearly identify their god, believers claim the right to declare their faith and hold it true. But such belief, though deeply felt and well-intentioned is misplaced, because it is not founded in truth; it is a matter of self-will choosing from a selection of incompletely reasoned conclusions of the conscious mind (which as we have seen is incapable of understanding truth). The wilful self wishes, or feels compelled to adopt some consciously invented faith or belief as an ostensibly tangible substitute for the intangible but persistently felt close presence of its own postconscious mind and the vaguely sensed far-off presence of the universal truth and its influence, neither of which the conscious mind understands; both of which the conscious self acknowledges as superior, yet from both of which it long ago cut itself off. In consequence, humans see god not as intellectually one with their postconscious minds - the unity of all superconsciousness - but as an inexplicable, distant and remote, all-powerful and/or all-wise other entity with which the conscious self may choose to strike up some sort of arm's-length relationship.
This arm's-length relationship with god may offer some reassurance, but such wishful thinking is unlikely to be enough when we consider that we are to die whereas god goes on forever, nor is it likely to be enough when we face the actual moment of death and are then alone. No doubt this was the reason why we conceived the idea of a soul, a sort of independent essential inner self shared between us and god, which can leave the body temporarily, or in the end permanently when it would live on in heaven (or hell) either immediately or after several steps of reincarnation. According to this concept the soul is the disembodied spirit of man. Spirit means breath of life. So things spiritual, in the belief of many humans, are things to do with us before death as fundamental beings in relationship to god, or cosmic consciousness, and to do with us after Earthly death as souls in some kind of other existence.
There is no true virtue in the individual or group contriving to attain personal goodness in a false world. It is the responsibility of every one of us to make way for general goodness by making our world humantrue.
The desire for spiritual existence probably arises from dissatisfaction with life-experience and with the concept of individual life as a brief flash-in-the-pan, utterly finished at death. The individual conscious mind cannot be prevented from imagining to the point of believing anything false that it wishes, but in my lengthy experience no such belief is confirmed by the postconscious mind. Spiritual desire lies behind much of the objection to reasoned beliefs or truths, yet you will find that those desires are to be more than met by the concept of supraconsciousness, and by fulfilment of humantruth.
If life on Earth were to become the best possible fulfilment of humantruth, then I imagine that the normal span of human life, ideally seventy-five years or so, coming to an abrupt stop in an individual nothingness, would be acceptable to most. It is the unsatisfactory nature of human affairs, both caused by and contributing to the confused and incomplete state of human minds and our conviction that little can be changed in this life, that makes us wish for an after life which does have meaning and at least the prospect of joy. The idea of life everlasting might have arisen from our awareness of the indestructibility of universal truth. Likewise, gods, spirits, souls and reincarnations have to be human inventions arising, no doubt understandably, from the wish for some kind of better life after death, belief in them adding its weight to the utterly misplaced opposition to a conviction that the present world urgently needs to change fundamentally.
This is easy enough to say, and ranged against it are millions of religious believers, many more millions who dare not come out as total unbelievers, tens of thousands of impressive churches, untold numbers of bibles, of the koran and and other books, much compelling music, many thousands of priests. Nevertheless, postconscious whole truth is true. Even so, it is the nature of human minds as presently made up to refute truth. But whilst divisive insistence on groundless belief in a variety of different gods is an obstacle to fundamental change for overall human good, such belief alone is unimportant and dispensible. An opposite influence, which should encourage that change, is the fact that religious or not we all share, through conscience, the same basic moral awareness.
Religion, being partly an attempt to explain life but mostly a reaction to what seemed to be an unalterably unjust world, rather than attempting the seemingly impossible task of making life better, introduced the dazzlingly rewarding concept of a perfect after-life for all in an imaginary heaven. Miracles are unusual events, elaborated by imagination, used to prove the existence of god, and to reinforce the promise of heaven. Disasters were used to portray the wrath of god, and his promise of hell for wrongdoing. Worship of god takes away from humans the responsibility to make life good and places it in the hands of an imagined figurehead. Despite the fact that prayer can have no god-given effect whatever, and events continue to fall out according to cause and effect, the practice of prayer continues by use of a simple ploy. Good results are taken to be prayers answered, bad results to be prayers refused, according to the will of a god who 'walks in mysterious ways'.
Paranormal events are those which cannot be explained or understood in the usual ways. They are marginal events, otherwise they would become normal. All the same, many people give them special significance. Perhaps the reason for this is, again, that the norm - our existing reality - is far from satisfactory, and we are constantly on the look-out for new discoveries and powers to be tapped which would make this a much better world. Whether or not we call it god, most of us for one reason or another do seem inclined to believe in an unidentified omnipotent power greater than ourselves, because we have not yet imagined, much less experienced, our own great potential power of truth. We are generally reluctant to accept that there is no greater entity than truth, and that we are part of it, potentially at least.
Commonly part of spirituality is belief in the existence of a human aura. This is said to emanate from the human body as a surround of presumably electric current, varying in colour according to mood and state of health and visible to certain individuals. I have not seen an aura, but am perfectly willing to accept that the phenomenon exists, because our physical system depends on electro-chemical processes, but I see no reason for giving it any supernatural significance.
Cosmic consciousness is, I believe, the expression we give to some imagined form of powerful and superhuman universal understanding into whose strength and knowledge the individual might tap. Such belief in cosmic consciousness must derive yet again from misunderstanding of our veiled awareness of our own postconscious mind and from a sense of the influence of universal truth. The postconscious mind, its function truth, is the significant human faculty. The essence of human life, then, is truth which, including our personal contribution to it, is everlasting. But our physical, conscious life is temporary - meant to be the supraconsious tool and vehicle of whole truth. So cosmic consciousness could be said to exist, not as something separate to be revered but as the truth to which we should be party. Perhaps it might be given the name cosmic supraconsciousness, ie the contribution of individual minds to universal understanding. But see Br.19 The Holographic Dimension
At birth, the human baby is equipped with a partly grown brain which requires a further fifteen years or so to grow fully. This growth coincides with the development of intelligence to its optimum capacity at approximately the same age. The intellectual facility at that age - the extent to which the brain has developed a mind whose potential fulfils the brain's enormous capacity - depends upon the degree to which its curiosity has been stimulated and upon its own determination to be truly aware.
The human child has, as its most advanced faculty, its postconscious mind. It has animal instincts also but, in respect of the most significant features of its behaviour, these are, or should be, now superceded. The child has innate ability, and opportunity, to develop in a highly intelligent way, with the help of an enlightened society. It is endowed with the power of intellect, and might be expected to develop accordingly, ie according to true morality, the function (though we don't yet know it) of pure intellect. However, almost without exception human children do not develop in this way. Why not?
We, as children, develop falsely because in our existing civilisation the intended main effect of UPBRINGING AND EDUCATION is by no means to allow the child mind to go on and fulfil itself truly. The world into which the child is born is not founded upon truth and does not accommodate, nor easily tolerate true fulfilment. The present world is founded in instinct, which is why its children readily revert to behaviour reflecting the savagery of instinct. All children are represented by a wilful conscious self which enables them to choose, from whatever options have been opened to them, what to be and what to do. The individual child is faced with a dichotomy - whether to fulfil its true inner moral nature by putting first the subtle guidance of honest thinking in the interests of conscience and truth, or whether primarily to surrender to the instinctive values of amoral reality and obey its dictates in the interests of parent and peer pressures, conformity or competitive self-interest, or for convenience.
Experience of the world shows us that most of us take the latter road. We know this from the state of our world adult society. It helps to understand the reason if we consider the difficulties which face the child which determinedly decides upon taking the former, true path. I think that such a child must make this decision at about 4 years of age - old enough, and freely independent enough to be capable of making such a decision but not yet at an age where the mind has been largely taken over by reality. We should bear in mind that children under four, even before birth in the womb, are almost entirely conditioned by their parents and the home environment, not to mention their genes. This conditioning may be enough to rob the child of most or all of its freedom and independence of thought. The free thinking child, however, might be one whose early experience has influenced it in two seemingly opposite ways. Whilst being strongly empathetic with highly and sincerely moral but unworldly parents, it may also be highly critical of them because they are so weak and ineffective against the Machine at the same time as they bitterly criticised it.
The child who sets out on a humanly true path presently finds little support or encouragement. From the beginning the overwhelming pressure on children is to conform to reality in thought and action. The accepting child (and adult for that matter) can concentrate the major part of its attention on competing to make a satisfactory place for itself in the Machine. The non-accepting child, probably like its parents before it, finds itself losing in that competition because its mind concentrates upon criticising Machine-reality and trying to discover what is wrong with it, not on conforming.
As children, we are obliged to attend school to be educated. The education institutions are a part of our amoral reality confined to the conscious sphere. Sometimes education, like reality, appends moral principles to reality in line with conscience, but it is generally understood that inconvenient morals are, as history shows, dispensible. These moral appendages are embodied in religion, a compulsory subject despite the fact that it has no foundation in truth.
Because of religion, and other similar contradictions, child-mind formation is founded in confusion. As children grow, their questioning of the postconscious becomes less insistent as their conscious minds become more engrossed in obligatory learning. Education is imposed by institutions which depend for their authority, indeed for their very existence, upon Machine-reality. In some instances, particularly in UK public schools which aim to produce future Machine-leaders, the conditioning is so rigidly strong as to make it impossible for some victims to reason truly or feel gently and deeply throughout the rest of their lives.
Educational institutions are guardians of Machine-reality; consequently they require of students who wish to succeed that they too embrace that reality, also that they combine with truly necessary knowledge and sentiment much opinion, attitude, belief and feeling that is humanly unnecessary and false, but realistic. For example, it is quite common for new students to enter university full of radical ideas, but for these to be knocked out of them in a year or two. Whilst these radical ideas alone are truly, humanly oriented they are roundly, specifically and generally discredited. They are discredited ridiculed and opposed by the erudite dons because radical ideas are a threat to the concept of a wise and fixed establishment and an insult to privileged, hierarchical authority. They are also publicly discredited because the relatively uneducated people assume that the authoritative dons know best.
Education as we know it can be said to have two objectives. One is to create an erudite and self-justifying super-class to fill high places held ready for them, who can hold their own in exotic conversations and give each other preferential treatment. The other is to standardise practices, such as the money economy, which are required currency for upper-hierarchy jobs and careers but which are, in their amoral orientation, not only unnecessary but harmful to the true interests of humanity at large. Young persons who, despite their educators, learn much that is humanly true are a genuine intellectual success, but because they lack the official seal of approval (also popular appeal) they are actually regarded as failures, their ideas destined to go unheard and unpublicised.
In this way, succeeding generations of humans constantly establish and re-establish fundamentally the same Machine-reality, despite the existence, in every human mind, of conscience. Humantrue society, the right alternative society for humanity, is never established, so its moral principles are never made fundamental as they should be, and as they must be if that humanly true society is, in its turn but by commonly and overwhelmingly agreed consent, to be established and unquestionably re-established in the future.It is necessary for us to realise that there has never before existed any person, or book, or philosophy capable of teaching truth, and thereby capable of laying the first foundations of a humantrue society. We are caught fast in a huge and sticky web of false reality - willingly, it would seem on the surface, but inwardly we know it to be false and unworthy. We are unwilling to recognise that it is only by the individual's own effort that human truth can be discovered, and we are unwilling to make that effort because we are daunted by the prospect of so seemingly huge a task. But that task is sure to be lightened and simplified by being shared. Also the actual realisation of a humantrue society shall be made much easier by the discovery of truth, because it shall then be a matter of common determination. To continue, click here