Those things that go wrong with human relations and actions, from personal unstable, antisocial or aggressive behaviour to international nuclear confrontation, are effects of one and the same cause, stemming from exigencies of existing reality - symptoms of the automatic disease. These symptoms may be cured in the attempt to live with the disease, in individuals by psycho-analysis or meditation or religious faith, and internationally by such as a ban on nuclear weapons. But this way the disease remains to erupt elsewhere, perhaps in different forms. It shows itself in the general lack of common ground between employers and workers, husbands and wives, police and criminals, sons and mothers, due to their mind-sets, roles, and the pressures upon them being so different. As supraconsciously aware individuals, we should intend to prevent and eradicate the disease so that there is never again cause for the symptoms to arise.
When the time comes that a humantrue reality exists we shall be acting contrary to present automatic precepts, but the way to achieve it is not by offensive action against existing institutions, nor by attack on those who serve them. We once needed leaders to save us from catastrophe, just as oppressed people in the Machine turn to new leaders for liberation. But established leadership is a feature of automatic reality, and one way to defeat the Machine is not to oppose leaders but to persuade them to reject their own function. Leaders also have true intellectual potential, and are best regarded as ordinary humans, their automatic role ignored. In this and other ways, rather than confront the Machine head-on we should withdraw our support from it, where this does no human harm. We should act according to the alternative humantrue ethos where this is within the Machine's law (and it can never be contrary to moral law).
However 'ordinary' we regard ourselves as being, we can bring our indirect actions to bear, independently, privately and inconspicuously, in ways whose combined effect could be the most powerful of all against the Machine. This applies more to we who are the privileged, affluent peoples of the world, and less to those the fact of whose deprivation itself should strongly spur us to these actions. Remember that the aim of humantrue reform is not so much to relieve deprivation as to abolish it by defeating the Machine that causes it.
Perhaps the greatest of all obstacles to reformist movements and the spread of supraconsciousness is the fact that most of the spontaneous warmth and friendship that exists between people is presently closely involved with automatic reality. We contrive to express and foster good personal relationships despite the Machine and the first humantrue reformers, who would wish to distance themselves from automatic reality, could be made to look austere, grim, inadequate and, if they let it get them down, downtrodden.
If we are to act in unity, with the courage of our convictions, we need an inspiring spirit of good intention and good comradeship. And then, to remove those nagging doubts which can blunt the edge of our enthusiasm, we need to see that there are many gentle ways and means of quelling the Machine that only require our concerted determination to succeed. We need to believeourselves capable of transforming our reality, and that only this irrelevant, established, inhuman thing- the fact and concept of the here and now, and our conventional obedience to it - stands in the way of a humantrue alternative. We have to resist the manipulation of our morals by the norm, remembering that in the past, when the Machine has prospered social welfare has benefited but when the Machine has been in recession the already less fortunate underprivileged have had to bear the brunt.
It is the present will of automated humanity that we disagree with each other. To do so, all the individual has to do is to express a contrary opinion. There is little compunction to observe truth. To combat this reformers have to put across the humantruth that differences of opinion indicate lack of common intellation, and that agreement is vital. It is not that conflicting opinions are necessarily formed recklessly but that they are automatic choices, representing degrees of acceptance or rejection of different aspects of conflicting reality - ways of reconciling our personal moral behaviour and our false automatic role or attitude. Our opinions are almost always wrong because the Machine, which they accept overall, is wrong. We shall agree when truth is the only guide of our reason.
Politics reflects this present practice and serves to maintain the overall concept of existing reality, making only such humane but marginal changes as the Machine will tolerate, and therefore depends upon remaining in a permanently restrictive state of conflicting, disagreeing deadlock.
Politics draws the 'public' into the fundamentally irrelevant political debate, supposedly to shape human destiny but in fact, as an extension of automatic competition, merely to decide which of the slightly different roads to follow to an automated destiny. This is all that the power of our vote gives us. Individuals generally, if unconsciously, recognise this and vote in elections for political, not humantrue, expectations. Therefore we reformists, since we have become opposed to the automatic road and seek an alternative destiny, might well decline to vote. By not voting we shall gradually discredit politics and show that it is our awareness of the humantrue alternative that represents us.
The education system could be eroded by children themselves. It may be forced on them but their minds are essentially within their own control so that they cannot be forced to accept its lessons against their will. If, when they begin school, they already have a basic understanding that the concept of automatic reality is false, and approach the school's teaching with humantrue awareness, they will not be conditioned by formal education as it wants but will take from it only as their minds truly need.
The first parents to achieve supraconsciousness, through intellation, shall be highly morally aware and their children likely to be the more truly stimulated minds and amongst those likely to win in the competition of education. Those parents can strike a blow for humantruth by persuading their children of the senselessness of competition compared with the true sense of cooperation. Their children could then obey school instructions by sitting down in the examination room, but then decline to submit to the examination - either returning blank pages, or writing across them 'not willing to compete' or by writing an essay explaining their beliefs.
The law cannot forbid this, and the examination system relies for effectiveness on our ingrained competitiveness - our instinctive will to win. If enough children, and especially the most apt absorbers of information, were to act in this way the examination system could be so devalued as to become pointless. This might do little immediately to change the character of education since children would still be taught by, about, and for automatic reality, but it could stop the price-tagging of children with pieces of paper which indicate their future economic and social status, and it could erode the influence of automatic conditioning.
Such action might not do much to change the concept of the Machine as the overall employer either. However, if the examination system were to be discredited it might cause individual employers to return to giving jobs without undue prejudice; to return to apprenticeships which can relate work to a liking and talent for its character and especially for its physical skills which schools do not much respect and encourage; and, most importantly, it might increasingly lead young people to choose work according to conscience - to its true human usefulness rather than according to the personal advantage offered by automatic expectatioins and financial valuations.
For those at higher levels of specialist training, refusal to be automatically graded might so reduce the numbers of young persons qualifying as to cause confusion, reducing specialised autoprogressive activity and bringing into question its true human value - whether it goes on for the benefit of humanity at large, or merely for the Machine and those it selects for its privileged service. For example, young people now grasping for opportunities in the electronics and computer industries, because they are available, new, exciting and highly paid, might stop to think and question whether they are advancing in a humanly worthwhile direction. Without willing new workers such industries would be unable to develop, or even to continue.
This is not to say that much present education is not of value or is not beginning to move in this direction, but that in general it represents the training and moulding of minds for automatic advantage. There is an educational barrier to true awareness. Not only does this barrier keep out areas and levels of understanding which the Machine will not recognise, but those fields of understanding which it does let through are too fragmented, disoriented or prejudiced to admit true awareness. In other words that which is given to speak can not say true, and that which can say true is not given to speak.
Schooling is oriented towards the highest pinnacles of academic achievement, according to which standards the majority of us are failures and the work we do inferior. It should be a matter of development of mind related to humanity, independent of the Machine, and non-competitive - not bound to existing concepts of reality but in a position to assess them critically. Individuals' attitudes to automatic reality, and the work they feel called upon and willing to do, would then be tested in their own minds. Their ability to do the work would be tested in the field and assessed by themselves as well as others, for none of us would have any interest but that the work is needed and must be done properly. Hopefully, individuals would now see their contribution to human life as giving of their best to that which is most useful, rather than taking the most they could by meeting the highest demands of the Machine.
When we know our present mode of upbringing and system of education to be wrong, and are unsure what is the best way to rear and teach our children, I think we should bring them up in a vacuum, so to speak. They should be mentally stimulated but given no definite instructions as to how they must think and behave, only shown the path by which they will judge themselves - the way of humantruth. I have already suggested that we might persuade them not to compete, but this persuasion might be achieved by example, and by the way we answer our childrens' questions, rather than by positive teaching. This way they would not adopt any fixed character or settled attitude based on conditioned and limited thinking but, by doubting, questioning and criticising everything, would become intellectually fulfilled by intellation. This will make them unsatisfactory from the viewpoint of the Machine, but that is the price to be paid for true enlightenment in the world as it is. To so equip the young that they can cope successfully with the here and now is to allow them to be automated, and condemned to a continuing false future.
To facilitate humancommunication across automatic boundaries, individuals, despite established resistance and inertia and independently of the Machine, could invent a new world language, circulate means of learning it, learn it and speak it regardless of the norm. It might become the language of humantruth and the alternative reality, by-passing the Machine and, as the alternative is realised, eventually superceding all other languages.
Whether or not this language obstacle is removed, other steps can be taken towards achieving better communication between independent human minds. The United Nations, as part of its human rights campaign, could be pressed to declare freedom without reprisal for all intellators, anywhere, who do not seek to be party political leaders but to enlighten peacably and honestly. They should be helped to have their writings published with the support of law. The initial judge of whether the work merited publication would be the writer, and thereafter the readers would determine whether it should be widely distributed. These judgements would be made according to the true value of the work's contribution to the human good, by-passing the normal automatic judgements based on acceptability to the here and now and money-profit. A feature of the scheme must be that writers receive basic income support and do not profit from publication.
It is not our truenature to be violent, but the nature, and permission, and compulsion of the Machine that makes us so. If individuals both inside and outside the military institutions choose to be non-combative, those institutions will be rendered harmless. The same applies to the industrial manufacture of armaments. No humantrue individual should have anything whatever to do with designing, making, selling or transporting weapons. Without willing hands for such work there can beno weapons.
War is inseperable from the lores and laws of supply and demand. It is the traditional automated way of settling ultimate competitive conflicts. It includes many authoritative and powerfully entrenched institutions of the Machine; the defence ministry, the war office, military colleges, navy, army and air forces, arms factories, weapons research establishments, intelligence and espionage networks. Warfare is integral with our way of life, part of the familiar fabric of world society, and of our existing concept of reality. It is a logical lore of the Machine, an instinct with intellect applied, so it is recognised by international law and has become a necessity to automated humanity, for it employs millions.
Many of us recall the horrors of past wars, and are in a position to see them as stupid folly, yet we still rattle the sabre and wave the flag. Many of us still mourn for loved ones killed or maimed, yet permit our sons to join the forces, regarding it as a career opportunity. In the USA it appears that 60% of all scientific research is military research. The Machine trains the scientists, and then faces them with the fact that most of the scientific jobs available aremilitary. A scientist may have moral scruples but be under economic pressure to take an immoral job, and if further persuasion is needed it could be that the salary is temptingly high. But for the armaments industry he and hundreds and thousands of others would be unemployed. Though he, personally, would not hurt a fly, a man might well work for any inhuman project, without thinking beyond the belief that his first duty is to provide the best possible material standard of living for his wife and family.
It is true that whilst fanatical, and prejudiced, and powerfully dictatorial nations, or rather national governmentsexist, general national defence seems necessary. But this is the presently realistic case which should not obstruct our essential awareness that humantrue society would neither give cause nor opportunity for war. As a race we might get near enough to overcoming such barriers to moral awareness that the utterly futile inhumanity of war comes fully home to us and we determine to control it. But, misrepresenting its causes, we might not immediately attempt going further and breaking down the fundamental barrier to curing the cause of war for good - to breaking down our concept of competitive automatic reality. Yet, for the present, we might go so far as to recognise one major cause of the symptom of war, ie economic pressure, and take action to curtail it.
As long as the world is divided into separate nations it is inconceivable that all governments will willingly submit to an international law banning war. Even if such a law were passed it would be impossible to enforce, there being no higher authority with the necessary power. Governments reserve their right to national sovereignty, and to make war to defend, maintain and promote that right. They seek power in the world, and the most effective guarantee of power is military might, backed by economic strength which depends on manufacture supported by trade. But human feeling is rising against war, and whilst it is likely to be some time before everybodyrefuses to fight, the anti-war feeling may soon reach sufficient pressure that we shall strongly object to anybody profiting from the manufacture, sale, deployment or actual use of arms.
In response to this pressure it is perhaps conceivable that a United Nations decree be agreed and adopted with the object of removing some of the economic causes and motivations of war. It might be made international law that all armaments manufacture be undertaken by the state rather than by private trading enterprises; that both manufacture and sale require United Nations licence; that where sold only the basic cost may be charged, without profit; that no one engaged in this manufacture, from top to bottom - director to scientist to fitter, nor any member of the armed services - from private soldier to field marshal, be paid more than the lowest, basic, bare subsistence wage. Were this law to be effected it might then be seen how far the economic factor had previously influenced human individuals to produce weapons and join armies, and, without that factor, how strong would be the will for warfare on the part of those who prepare for it and actually take part in it.
The basis of action is attitude, and given a universal humantrue attitude, reform such as this would be quite straightforward, though otherwise it seems impossible. Look at it this way. If the great majority of humans do not want war, then any government which involves its people in war goes against their interests and endangers their lives, which is equivalent to ill-treatment. It is acceptable to remove a child from parents who are ill-treating it. Therefore the human world should accept that such as the United Nations Organisation should restrain, or remove from authority, governments which are ill-treating whole populations in this way.
Whilst humantrue reason would see such initiatives as encouraging steps in the right direction, automated reason views them as quite unrealistic. As long as national governments remain in power, and the money economy remains intact, international law will be as ineffective on world affairs as human morality. The pressure of money interest, on both individuals and institutions, would contrive to circumvent laws against war. So we are thrown back onto the supraconscious awareness of the individual as the only effective key to humantrue change. The Machine will never bend entirely to our reason - we have to uproot it utterly. By putting our faith in laws and their enforcement we abdicate our true responsibilities, for this is to trust in a Machine which has already determined that ourmoral laws are made to be broken by itslores. We must return to the understanding that when no individual consents to carry arms there can be no war,and support it with the conviction that as this good is within our power to do, so shall we do it.
I am saying that humanity can come into its own only over the Machine's dead body. I have already said that automatic institutions such as the United Nations Organisation cannot be expected to do more in the way of radical reform than they have shown themselves able to do. Nevertheless nations are primarily people, so the UNO should represent us. Therefore to state that UNO should turn against the Machine is humantrue. In theory, widespread individual involvement in UNO should give it more clout. Whilst UNO exists let it be part of the process of tilting the moral balance from the Machine to our humanity. Let it promote the idea that peopleshould put loyalty to this organisation before loyalty to their own governments in respect of moral matters agreed by the majority, and let each nation's decision on such matters be subject, without the right of veto, to a public referendum. Even though in automatic practice neither UNO nor any other humanitarian institution can have significant effect, that this were clearly shown to be the case would surely help in making humanity aware of the vital need for fundamental change.
The autoprogressive energy-expression of the Machine comes of its persuasion and temptation of human will to press ever forward towards its goals and targets, for its rewards. Every single individual involved in this reckless race is at liberty voluntarily to withold most of that energy. That is our individual power, a kind of negative force against the Machine, which becomes a positive force when our energies are united behind the humantrue alternative. At present hardly anyone is aware of this alternative, or believes it to be viable by any stretch of the imagination. It is hard for the lone individual to boycott the Machine when to do so has little or no apparent effect, but even if we don't apply that negative force in the ways suggested in the following pages, to be aware of the Machine's power over us, and of ways to combat that power, is half the battle.
Much of that automated energy is expended on competing to acquire things. Although the Machine makes possession and the competing for it lawful, we are not bound by law to desire unnecessary things, or to fight to possess them and keep hold of them. We can voluntarily decline to possess, but simply use things according to our need of their use. We can refuse to recognise money values but take only what is our fair share and give to others what is equally fair for them. The more we give to each other the less we need fight to take.
The present energising of the Machine by competing both to acquire and possess things, and to profit by providing those things, excites other unnecessary activities. Consider the closely interrelated financial and contractual institutions of banking, the stock exchange, the professions of law, estate and land agencies, or insurance. These are functions of the Machine, inserted between the forces of supply and demand which are already in the hands of commercial undertakings. These institutions have created demand for their services by gaining control of the supply and valuation of money, of title to possession, or of security. We are practically bound to make use of these services if we wish to live by automatic means and to give our lives automatic support and protection. By doing so we strengthen our bondage to these institutions.
For example, we all need a roof over our heads and to get it we presently need money, to rent or buy. Either way we pay heavily, and buying is preferred because it gives possession. But that requires that we have a large sum of cash in hand, to buy outright or put down as deposit on a mortgage. We attempt to buy at less than the house's market value, which is a kind of cheating of the seller. But as sellers we try to secure morethan its market value. So as buyers or sellers we employ estate agents, lawyers and surveyors to avoid ourselves being cheated, and banks to give bridging loans, and pay them all substantially for the privilege. If we arecheated we might revert to the lawyer and pay him heavily too, to seek redress.
Finally, we pay yet more money to insure the house, and go on paying year by year. We are trapped into insuring, not only our house but our lives, our cars, and all our possessions in case they are destroyed, stolen or lost, or in case we are made liable for others' losses. We are forced into this trap because we know that should we suffer loss no one will help us since all are in the same trap. Only the Machine will compensate us, ifwe have regularly bribed it with premiums.
As humantrue individuals, who have rejected the automatic concept of reality, we shall refuse to be taken in by all these institutions, and can cooperatively defeat them simply by not taking part in their practices. But whilst the Machine exists we may not then survive alone without difficulty, and shall need support from other like-minded individuals.
We should squarely reconsider our relationship with the financial, legal and property institutions, especially if we are bankers, lawyers, agents and the like. Where possible independent individuals should decide and act according to their humantrue principles, rather than making automatic reality their excuse for doing otherwise. Whilst we cannot yet avoid a degree of dependence on money we should eliminate it from our affairs wherever possible.
For example, if we can survive without profiting from the value of a thing we do not need we should give it away, or at least sell it without profit. Or we might exchange things, for mutual need alone and regardless of their market value, without the corresponding exchange of money or regard to the competitive principles of barter. This is to regard the moral case for needful use of things as superior to the legal right to the needless possession of them, until such time as humantrue giving and sharing is the order of the day. If someone cheats us or steals from us (as automated mankind sees it) who is more needy than we, and we do not suffer unduly as a result, we need not have recourse to the law, though we have legal claim to its enforcement.
The money-economy principle lays down that demand must be stimulated, exploited and supplied, and automated people obey. Come enlightenment, it shall not only be for members of the public to abstain from over-consumption of such as sugar, alcohol and tobacco. Individual refiners, brewers and tobacco growers will cease producing, publicity agents will cease advertising, grocers, publicans and tobacconists will cease retailing. Everyone shall recognise that we have to go against present tastes and interests in order to serve true future interests.
To escape the insurance trap and break its automatic hold on us, we can simply decline to be insured. To do so would mean, here in Britain, that we could not drive a car, or take out a mortgage, since the law insists on insurance in these instances. It could mean we suffered the loss of all we possessed, but none of us would even then be worse off than the many millions of utterly deprived people elsewhere in the world.
Our aim is to weaken the influences of the economic system by resisting and bypassing it, preparatory to abolishing it. Another step towards this objective would be to reform our use of money. Independent individuals could prepare and propose a scheme for simplifying the system by introducing one single world currency. If the economists' argument in defence of money were that it is a token of exchange and fair distribution, they could not legitimately object. This scheme might not be easy to carry through, but apart from that, if there were official objection to it in principle this would confirm that money is not merely a token, nor yet a national commodity, profession and occupation, but also an international profit-making industry in its own right.
We need look at what we personally consume as food, not from the viewpoint of what we can financially afford but what we truly need - not only according to our likes and dislikes but also to what the whole Earth can afford and what is our fair share. We need to eat and drink what is in every way good and right for us, and no more than we essentially require, choosing those things which are locally grown and prepared or processed to the minimum, or at least preferring stuff produced in our own country and declining to consume imported food and drink, as far as ever possible. We shall go easy with alcohol, preferring to make our own from local flowers and fruits in season, so that our thirst for it is tempered by the time and effort going into its making.
As far as possible we should aim to make our own country at least self-sufficient, which means looking into the practicality of producing many needs which we presently rely on importing. We can grow food in our gardens, allotments or any vacant bit of land. Fresh produce straight from the ground, sown, raised and harvested by hand and with the minimum of artificial aids, is not only better food but costs next to nothing in humantrue terms, whilst mechanised and commercialised production, preparation and transportation costs irreplaceable resources.
The same applies to medicine. The choice between homoeopathic and herbal preparations or manufactured drugs need not be a matter of scientific authentification, or convenience, or even of which is better. Humantrue individuals would prefer the former because these are essentially produced by nature, replenished by its recycling processes, and proved by experience to be reasonably effective. The latter are products of automatic factories which are essentially a one-way drain on the biosphere - part of autoprogression and its disregard of human and Earth consequences, only to be used where necessary and when there is no alternative. It is common for anti-Machine individuals to ascribe to all natural medicines almost magical properties, when in fact they have their limitations. Our humantrue approach will surely be that herbal, homoeopathic, and other natural medicines are generally appropriate, in conjunction with a healthy way of life, and in most cases we should be content with their limitations, not expecting automatically certain cures for all illnesses. To continue click here