The Paradox of the War Against Drugs

Easily, those who would be most set against the legalization of Drugs would be the Drug Lords themselves. It is the illegality of drugs that keeps them in business. The money is tax free and the entire industry is completely unregulated. It goes far in explaining why the competition is so intense to seek placement in that Illicit Industry that the people are killing each other for positions and markets. Need we wonder that no legal industry has quite that same level of intensity. Being made illegal is not so much a deterrent as it is the primary condition that establishes the attractiveness of the commerce.

Of course the Drug Industry cannot stand alone… there is the minor problem of what they call ‘laundering’ all of the cash money, as the modern Western Banking Establishments require explanations on where money comes from. But here enters in the Gaming or Gambling Industries which allow any careful player to almost break even. One can take any amount of ill-gotten moneys into a Casino, cash it in for chips, and while losing a reasonable percentage, soon cash out with perfectly clean and legitimate ‘winnings’. Yes, one needs to pay cash on these winnings, but that is in part what makes them legitimate. And this is to say that the Governments who tax these Casinos are in fact part of the money making chain of the illicit Drug Industry.

Additionally, there is simply so much cash involved in the illicit drug trade, and then in the gambling industry, which is impossible really to regulate properly since they sell no traceable product, having no inventory to account for, so that they can declare whatever profits or losses they wish to declare, and who could ever know the difference. Essentially this creates a great deal of free and unaccountable money.

Now, let us ask ourselves why nearly every single Politician in the Western World, liberal or conservative, Right or Left, is totally enthusiastic toward maintaining this War against Drugs. Well, it must be obvious. A great deal of this unaccounted for money must be going into their political coffers.

And then there is Law Enforcement itself. You see, Law Enforcement does not even pretend to claim that they have stopped the import and sale of illicit drugs in their jurisdiction. You see, in effect, when a product is outlawed and made to be a contraband item, then it automatically creates a Black Market in which the Police become the Gate Keepers – the unofficial licensers of the commerce. Indeed, this effect is tacitly acknowledged in many developing nations and communities where the local police are paid only token wages and salaries, while they are expected to make their real livings by controlling those areas of commerce that had been outlawed specifically in order to generate revenues for the police departments. So it is that in countries that culturally condone gambling, prostitution, drugs and alcohol, that these commodities are made illegal anyway, as it subsidizes their police forces. Indeed, in Mexico many of the police have no compunction about driving around openly in stolen vehicles. In their frame of Cultural Reference, to be a policeman simply makes one a King of Crime. And so we hardly need to wonder that nobody tries nearly so hard to make an honest living.

Then we may consider Public Policy. In most of the Western World, even in the developed nations, we have economies regulated by the Banking Interests so that there is a real level of unemployment that resides at about 10 to 12% (yes the ‘rate’ of unemployment is lower, but that ‘rate’ of unemployment considers only how many people lose their jobs over a certain period, but then little effort goes toward calculating what percentage of the population then remains chronically without work). Now, when more than 10% of the people have no income, exactly how do the politicians suppose that these jobless individuals can keep buying food, paying rent, etc? Well, it simply must be assumed that there is some sort of an underground economy that is covering for this high level of unemployment. So it is that in America’s Inner Cities, where unemployment levels approach 40% that the illicit Drug Commerce, Prostitution, Auto Theft are frankly encouraged. Yes, arrests are made occasionally, but the prison terms are made intentionally short and bearable, and indeed serve as schools of crime where all of the criminals involved can compare notes and form their business connections. Think of the Ocean’s Eleven movies, but on a Macro-Cosmic scale.

Then there is the Vested Self-Interest of the Prison Industry itself. In America there are more Prison Guards – correctional officers they call themselves – than there are Teachers and Doctors put together. Indeed, the reason why America has such crappy standards in both Education and in Medical Coverage is because so many resources are tied up in their Prisons. More than 20% of America’s population live behind bars. Oh, we may also think of the costs of prison construction. Then there are the Criminal Lawyers. America has more lawyers than engineers, mostly because they need hundreds of thousands of lawyers to prosecute Drug Offenders, and then hundreds of thousands of additional lawyers to defend these same people. For every criminal there are two lawyers, or actually three, since there must also be a Judge, who could actually do all of the work himself, but sits on his hands while the other two take up time and money squabbling for effect. Indeed, it would create a crisis in employment for these otherwise useless ‘Suits’ if drugs were ever legalized. Unemployed Lawyers and Prison Guards would swamp our towns and cities. But it would allow Society to reallocate these resources. Those of the Right Wing could go off and die for their Country in thinly veiled Petroleum Wars, and those of a liberal bent could become health care providers, engineers and teachers. Yes, there would have to be a period of adjustment while they grew accustomed to not being quite so useless.

It should now be perfectly clear that there are so many vested interests involved in maintaining the War Against Drugs, that it should be considered almost as the Foundation for our Modern Democratic States – the proceeds funding the Political Establishment, subsidizing Unemployment, Law Enforcement, the Legal Industry… indeed, the free money finds itself almost everywhere. Thus it is that there is not a single political voice advocating the legalization of Drugs.

But let us consider the legalization of drugs simply in theory. First, legalization should go beyond simply allowing for the legalization of the present list of contraband products. As pleasant as the existing range of drugs are, if the Pharmaceutical Giants – the Large Drug Companies – were permitted to apply themselves to the Recreational Drug Market, then we could anticipate a far better range of products – drugs without all of the stupid and unhealthy side-effects of the accidental biologically based drugs that we see now. Indeed, now the Pharmaceutical Companies have their hands tied. One suspects a certain Puritanical bias in the Drug Regulators. For instance, it must be remarkable that none of the Drugs now being designed to deal with Depression do anything to make anybody happy, that is euphoric. One would think that being a little bit ‘high’ would be the perfect answer to depression. Indeed, on the street there are a great many simple drugs that can induce harmless but happy states of euphoria. But the Drug Regulators absolutely forbid any drug that can be described as ‘pleasing’. And so it is that all of the drugs now being sold for depression are actually more likely to induce states of lethargy or stupor. Indeed, they are depressing in and of themselves, and so it is that the Puritans of State permit them.

This Puritanical Bent in Western Societies is curious in that it is relatively recent phenomena. One only needs to go back in history just a few centuries to see that Great Britain and Europe had gone to war against China for not permitting the trade in Drugs – the Opium Wars were conducted in order to protect Europe’s legal trade in Drugs. Apparently, since then, certain interested parties figured out that the industry would be more attractive if it were made illicit… effectively turned into a Police State Monopoly, which is really what contraband black markets are anyway.


Anyway, though the Vested Interests of Corruption would take a big hit, for Society in general there could be many advantages to Drug Legalization. We should consider first legalizing Drugs – all of the stupid drugs we have now, simply in order to shut down the Cartels. But subsequently we should then allow the Pharmaceutical Companies to create and sell any number of concoctions just so long as they are not absolutely poisonous. The benefit here would be that the legitimate money involved in the Legal Pharmaceutical Trade in Recreational Drugs would be taxable and so would add to the resources of the legitimate economies and social infrastructures. Of course, the Bankers would have to rearrange their policies concerning what they believe to be acceptable levels for Unemployment, because we need to realize that the Illegal Drug Industry is in fact one of the World’s largest Employers.

Then we should consider that without their hands tied that these Giants of the Pharmaceutical Industry would eventually be able to conjure up some pretty interesting pills… again with simple market forces almost guaranteeing that annoying side-effects would be kept to a minimum. So the work-a-day world of keen sober efficiency would not be too adversely effected – people would still want to keep their jobs and be sober enough to do them (as they do now with the wide availability of illicit drugs). Only people would have a bit more help with enjoying their leisure time.

Spiritual Self, Animal Self, Dream Self

One often hears people say that God created all of our animal appetites and so therefore all of our animal appetites are tantamount to being sacred. Well, this completely misses the point of the distinction between spirituality and carnality.

After all, most Religious and Spiritual Traditions come to us with mythologies that very well indicate the distance between spirituality and carnality. Carnality is often depicted as a decline from some original pristine spirituality. Well, to be candid, if the truth be told, there probably never was any original pristine spirituality. Indeed, it is likely that we have arisen and evolved out of the basest animal materialism. But the mythologies are there not so much because they are literally true, but because they are trying to make a point. We can see ourselves as spiritual beings, or we can accept ourselves as simple beasts.

We can see this in not only the religious mythologies but also in the spiritual practices, where in all of the various ascetic traditions we note the intention of controlling, mastering and even transcending the physical appetites, all the things of the animal body.

You know this distinction between animality and spirituality is not so cerebral, not so obscure, as one might assume. I had once read an essay by a French author who argued that there were two basic elements of humor – two things that people find funny and make people laugh. The first was ambiguity, a double meaning. We could also have what is a corrupt form of ambiguity, that something simply not make sense… that it be merely stupid, which would be enough to make idiots laugh. The second element of humor is any suggestion of human mortality or animality. You see, most people live with an innate assumption of being Spiritual Beings, and so when it is suggested or indicated that one is actually mortal, actually an animal, then that evokes a laugh. Sex humor, poop humor, pratfall humor, it all confronts and challenges our almost universal assumption that we are spiritual beings. Well, those who have no sense that they are spiritual beings probably don’t have much of a sense of humor. Indeed, even ambiguity is something of an attack on our sense of spirituality, that our minds – our spiritual discernment – can be tricked with a play on words.

Indeed, by the way we say we are Human Beings, so as to distinguish ourselves from the animals, is another indication of our inherent spiritual pretensions.

But we still have people who say that since God had created us with all of the animal characteristics and animal appetites, then we should be delighted to be animals. Well, here let me argue that since God can only be understood in terms of His Eternal Being, and since Eternity is not nearly over yet, then God’s job of creating us can not be considered to be done and over with, not yet. We may have started as animals, but we should consider that we are all in the process of being made, by God, ourselves and the Universe, into Spiritual Beings, like the Angels.

Also, we should take the long view and consider that we will not have much of a future as animals, since the longest we may hope to live for is about 70 or 80 years. Death destroys the animal. Now, if we apply ourselves to our spirituality, then we can survive death and continue on as Astral Beings, or whatever. But those people who delight that God had made them into wonderfully sensuous animals, well, that simply can’t last. The identification with the body becomes problematic. Young people may not be aware of any trouble in this regards. You see, it is young people who can so easily glory in being bestial and sensuous, as all of their equipment is working without the slightest hitch. There are no humorous hints to their flawed mortality. But as they get older and sensuality goes into decline; indeed as most of the appetites encounter the problems of decline, then it is no longer so easy to simply assume there is a strict correlation of identity between soul to body.

You know, the spiritual practices from the various established traditions are probably the best way to go, but everyone has something of a built in Religion, if they know how to pay attention to is. We all dream. And dreams present us with messages, quests, choices, tests and opportunities – enough to carry us through a lifetime. Of course, one can waste these dreams by making all the wrong choices, all the wrong responses, taking all the wrong forks in the road. But, as I said, one needs to pay attention. Dreams will tell us when we are wrong. Recurrent dreams will give us second chances if we are smart enough to take them.

It is because of the inherent spiritual wisdom of dreams that many primitive cultures can attain to an adequate enough level of shamanistic spirituality simply by taking their dreams seriously. Dreams give us Angels, Gods and Goddesses, ideals, advice, guidance, and then even the doorway to Astral Projection and out of body experience.

If one becomes accustomed to identifying with the Dream Self and then the Astral Self, then one is less likely to be spiritually weighed down by body consciousness. Now, many people assume that the Dream Self is simply the same of the Body Self, but caught in a purely subjective dream world of what they suppose is a personal subconscious mind. Actually, the Dream Self has a rather large life of its own. Here I will suggest that you try something in your dreams, and you need not have to be entirely lucid to do so, as you can influence your dreams simply by suggesting to yourself to perform certain actions and to make certain choices, though you may in fact become lucid in following these suggestions. Ask yourself to access your dream memory. It need not be any big thing. I once simply wondered to myself during a dream about the last time in a dream I had been to this one certain cross roads. Well, the memories flooded upon me, of numerous dream visits to this vicinity, and then memories of other nearby areas and towns. It was overwhelming. It became obvious that my Dream Self went way beyond the dreams that I could remember, those brief REM experiences. You see, even when we are not visiting with our Dream Self, as we do when we have our Dreams, our Dream Self is still busy and active in its own Dreaming.

I suppose that this Dream Self can be quite primitive at times, though noble in its own way. And so it is that when the Body Self gets to merge and visit with the Dream Self during dreaming, it provides a chance for the Body Self to instruct the Dream Self in certain point of Civilized Wisdom. Particularly if one can attain to the state of Lucid Dreaming, where one can impose one’s Waking Consciousness upon the Dream Self – this gives the Dream Self an experience of the Waking Self and may substantially alter its moral perspective of things.

Now, I am not one to insist that everything from our Waking Life is better than everything in our Dreaming State, so the best wisdom is probably that the Waking Self and the Dream Self can learn from and be informed by each other. Oh, but this does presuppose that one in one’s waking life has acquired to any wisdom – spiritual, religious or otherwise. If not, then the Dream Self may perhaps have a monopoly on all of the good sense.

Well, anyway, what it all comes down to is that one cannot say definitively that God created us this way or that way. You see, our lives are a continuous process of creation and expansion of consciousness, where we have every opportunity to become more and more spiritual, being able to go way beyond simply being two-legged animals.

Jesus vs. Muhammad

Jesus asked us to love our enemies.

Muhammad loved to have enemies.

Using Spirituality for Miracles and Magic

Over and over again we hear from our modern New Age Gurus and Media Gurus that Spirituality is not to be used as a means for acquiring magical powers. We are told that seeking for miracles is an infraction of some sort of spiritual code of ethics. Teachers therefore renounce miraculous powers while insisting that their students do the same.

Now first, before we get any further into this topic, let me take note of just how ridiculous is this renunciation of the miraculous. It should be laughable that people who had never ever in their lives even seen a miracle can pretend they can renounce miraculous powers. I may be a bit cynical but it seems to me that any such self promoting Guru who makes it a point to renounce the gift of miracles, that such a person is attempting to create the impression that otherwise he would in fact be in the same league as perhaps Jesus Christ or any other of the great saints. Really, now. Isn’t it much more likely that these Gurus renounce miraculous powers so they will never have to explain why they do not have any. And isn’t it likely that they insist their students renounce miraculous powers so as to avoid the lessons that the teachers know they are not qualified to teach.

Also, we should all understand the incredible arrogance that could be behind any sincere renunciation of supernatural powers. Those who claim that miracles violate their higher ethical sensibilities pretend to a moral superiority over Jesus and every other Saint in History.

Okay, so let us understand that all of our New Age Gurus are only making the pretence of renouncing miraculous powers as a cover, to excuse their lack of miraculous powers, which they would not so glibly renounce if they actually had any of these powers. This being so, it should now seem redundantly silly for any aspirant to spirituality to vow to avoid miraculous powers. Their Gurus do not deserve such loyalty or obedience. One should follow one’s Guru everywhere but into foolishness.

Indeed, while we see the general renunciation of miraculous powers in many of the New Age spiritual traditions, still, there are some New Age Cults that present as their primary attraction the pursuit of the miraculous. The most popular Movement in this regards of “The Course in Miracles” – some lady had pretended to channel Jesus Christ, writing a huge book which voluminously presented just one simple argument – that if one wishes hard enough, one can create miracles. One must transcend all doubts, that is, to have complete faith, then one can do anything. What the followers do with this Doctrine is that they emphasize every case in which they got what the wished for (never anything supernatural or truly miraculous, but the sorts of things that women generally wish for – romantic affairs mostly and winning small card lotteries), and then for every time that they did not get what they wished for, they were able to point out that they did indeed have their doubts – oh if only they had stronger Faith. And this brings us to the Doctrine of Faith which has always been something of a sham as I can explain.

You see, the Doctrine of Faith has never really been used to explain why miracles happen, but rather to explain, in the negative, why they do not happen. Simply look at all Spiritual History, apart from those particular scriptures that are meant to deliberately (and spuriously) set out arguments for the Doctrine of Faith, and we find that Miracles are presented to people, individuals or crowds, to their surprise and amazement. No faith was required as these miracles occurred unexpectedly. So, where is it that Faith becomes a factor? Faith, or rather the lack of faith is cited as the cause for why miracles are stifled. Who first presented this backwards Doctrine of Faith or Lack of Faith. It was the false apostle Paul who never was able to perform an actual miracle. If one reads the Bible closely one can verify this, that nobody attributes any significant miracle to Paul except Paul himself, and the few incidents that are cited as miraculous, are mundane happenings that are easily explained away (once Paul was present after a young man who had fallen from a window and had the wind knocked out of himself eventually caught his breath, which isn’t much of a miracle, is it? And then Paul’s other ‘miracle’ was that he yelled at a little old man until the poor old guy had a stroke. These are the complete list of Paul’s ‘miracles’. Oh, Paul had insisted that it was a ‘miracle’ that he had survived some earthquakes and ship wrecks, but, honestly, there have been other people who have survived such things without asserting Providential Interventions. What should have been remarked was that God had been trying so hard to kill Paul). Anyway, Paul contrived the Doctrine of Lack of Faith in order to explain away his impotence in regards to the miraculous – when his congregations complained that they were not getting the miracles that the congregations of the Real Apostles were getting, Paul fired back with the accusation of blaming them for their lack of faith. “It’s not my fault. It’s all your fault.” Then, as the Gospels were written, stories were created and inserted whereby a fictionalized Jesus attributed a few of his many miracles to the faith of those who received the benefits of these miracles, but we can be sure that it simply did not happen in this way. Where we have it reported that most of the miracles of Christ were wrought in surprise and amazement, having nothing to do with anybody’s faith or lack of faith, then we can assume that they were all equally ‘faithless’. Paul was simply using Faith – lack of Faith – as an excuse and a cover for his spiritual impotency. Indeed, everywhere today that we see New Age Gurus citing the Doctrine of Faith, if we look closely enough, we will see this doctrine not being used to explain how all their miracles are occurring, but rather to explain why nothing is happening. “You would be able to move mountains except for your lack of Faith”. And all the while the maps aren’t changing very much.

So let us all from this point on completely dismiss any notion of faith, or lack of faith as having any bearing at all on the Supernatural, unless your concern is simply that you would like to have a convenient excuse for being powerless. And as we have already determined, one needs no other excuse but to insist that one has no miracles because one has deliberately renounced them for ethical reasons… that one has more moral scruples than even Jesus Christ.

Okay, now let us move onto some more positive views, indeed, let us examine where miracles do in fact come from.

First, the bad news. If you have not already performed any miracles then it is not at all likely that you ever will. In the history of Spirituality we see case after case where the first miracles from known miracle workers occurred while they were still children. So skill in the miraculous does not seem to be an acquired skill but rather an innate talent. Yet there are some exceptions. I have a rare book, “The Healer of Los Olmos” about one Don Pedrito Jaramillo who had already attained to his adulthood before being given his powers to heal by an Angel. So, while attaining to the miraculous during one’s life need not be considered impossible, still we must acknowledge that all the best miracle workers are probably born that way. Oh, this reminds me of an earlier paper I had written concerning Karma, which points out not so much the special karma of our own individual souls but rather focuses on the biological karma of our families. In this regards, it may be easier for you to hope for miraculous powers if you have a long family history of spirituality, religiosity, righteousness and saintliness. Whereas if your genealogy is large with whores and horse-thieves then perhaps you should consider that your interest in miracles might only be academic.

Next, we move onto a seeming paradox, and we can remind ourselves here that paradoxes seem to be one of the hallmarks of any genuinely thorough spiritual explanation… yin and yang and all of that. Here the paradox is that while almost every saint and miracle worker in history insists that it is not they themselves who perform the miracles but rather that the true agents are God Himself or his angels; but despite these personal disclaimers, it appears on the surface that their miracles closely follow their own will and intentions – they appear to plan out the details of their miracles and they appear to be giving all of the orders. It does not look as though they are standing by passively while God and Angels are doing all the work. Now, what could resolve this seeming paradox is the notion that our miracle workers are summoning, or, to say it vulgarly, that they are conjuring God or the Angels. Well, this would seem extremely blasphemous in the context of some people’s religious traditions. But we need to look at this spiritually. So look at it this way, that spirituality is unitary – it involves an intrinsic Oneness of all things. But while we are observing actions, behaviors, and, indeed, any manifestation, we are likely to see such things dualistically.

What I suppose happens with our typical Miracle Worker is that at some very effective level that includes their will power and volition, there occurs a merging into the Collective Consciousness, which we may call ‘God Consciousness’ if we incline toward the religious view of things.

Well, this brings us to the difficult part in our path toward the miraculous, that we need to transform our existential orientation from that of individual consciousness to that of a collective consciousness, that is to see yourself not just as a single individual person but actually as one of the central points of consciousness of the Universe itself. Yes, sometimes we have people who see themselves as the central point of consciousness of the Universe, and therefore conclude that they are God Himself; however, this is the result of some incomplete thinking. In a Unitary Universe where there is extension within space, there are in fact multiple centers within this infinity of consciousness. And so it is that God Consciousness would not be exclusive to any one particular point in the extension of space. So it is that one crazy person claiming to be God Himself would not preclude a second person from honestly and actually making the same claim. Oh, and this reminds me that when Jesus said that he and the Father were one, that it never precluded the possibility that another soul could experience the same truth.

Oh, and speaking of Truth, we may here come to an unfortunate acknowledgment, and that is that being a Miracle Worker does practically nothing toward making one intellectually coherent. Saints are not necessarily capable of explaining their Sainthood in comprehensible terms and cogent arguments. While nothing else was impossible to them, explaining themselves was. Indeed, in some traditions they really needed to keep their mouths shut. For instance, in both the Catholic and Islamic Traditions their saints were carefully monitored in everything they said so as to discern their conformity to accepted doctrine. The Catholic Church has thrown out thousands of miracles and disparaged many a righteous miracle worker into the halls of heresy because the miracle workers had said something that disagreed with Paul and the Paulist doctrines of the Church, which really should have made somebody in the Vatican think, but all of their training was focused on renouncing such spiritual common sense (Think about what? Okay, the Doctrines of the Church had been drawn up by a man who never performed a miracle but who was skilled in making Big Promises – Salvation, Free Sin, Eternal Life. Those who actually do perform miracles are then measured by the standards of the guy who can’t perform miracles, but was good at making Big Promises. Common sense would lead the Church to rather except the Miracles and question the guy with the Big Promises than the other way around).

As the Catholics had to stay discretely mum, equally, the Sufi Saints in the land of Islam had to refrain from saying anything about the doctrines of Mohamet, or the ubiquitous Sword of Islam would have come into its play.

So it is that the Catholic and Sufi Mystics and Miracle Workers either said nothing at all or they cloaked their conclusions in intellectually incomprehensible poetry, which isn’t very helpful unless one is another poet.

The Oriental Traditions from out of India are far better in regards to deriving any solid understanding of what is going on. Hinduism is better than Buddhism, largely because Buddhism is very conscious of being dismissive of Hindu Traditions, and so where Hinduism may be correct as regards to anything, than Buddhism insists upon being wrong simply as a matter of proud contrariness. This is most noticeable as in regards to the concrete Spiritual Truths, particularly as regards to the Minor Gods and Goddesses, as we see in our dreams (proving their psychological reality at least). Hinduism has never rejected the Gods as Buddhism insists upon doing. Indeed, this reminds me of Catholicism which excels in regards to its worship of the minor Gods, calling them Angels and Saints, and in the worship of its Goddesses, the various forms and incarnations of Mary Mother of God. So it is that this Goddess is actually appearing time and time again, as well as its Saints and Angels, making Catholicism, despite its numerous errors of oversights, one of the last Living Religions with a vein of true Spirituality. But, getting back to the East, what I have noticed about Buddhism, especially as it approaches the most genuine Buddhism of Gautama Buddha Himself (a spoiled rich kid from start to finish), is that it is atheistic, escapist and nihilistic, and tries to over-simplify everything. Well, I believe it is this tendency for oversimplification which makes it the favorite of neophytes in the West. Babies in spirituality find Buddhism well within their grasp. But those of higher culture and education come to prefer the far richer traditions of Sanskrit Philosophy and Yogic Vedantic and even the Tantric Traditions to the more sterile outlines of Buddhism that draws its philosophy with crayons in the form of three fingered stick figures.

But in either case, the Miracle Workers from the Indian Subcontinent, because they feared far less recriminations, could be far more open, even the Sufis if they could get out of the Islamic neighborhoods. So it was that the Wisdom and Philosophy could develop and grow from each succeeding generation to the next. It was a literate culture with a common written language and so knowledge could be widely shared, and since records had been kept, we can see the progress and advance in the knowledge of Spiritual Metaphysics. Indeed, it has come to something of a Golden Age. The 20th Century saw Vivekananda, Yogananda, Ramana Maharshi, and Aurobindo as well as a plethora of fine Sanskrit Scholars, all publishing, all teaching. Its all quite an impressive field of Spiritual Knowledge and Wisdom. Also remarkable is that English has become something of India’s Common Language, and so it is that most of the important Spiritual and Philosophical Works have either been translated into English or were written in English in the first place.

Now we arrive at an embarrassing problem for this essay, and that is that I must admit that despite this huge cornucopia of spiritual wisdom being available to us, there are today almost entirely no miracles. How can this be explained. Well, turning myself from an Intellectual to a Prophet, I can provide the insight from several dreams I have had. Remember what I had said about the Collective Oneness. Well, we have more than ourselves to consider while in the pursuit of the miraculous. While the personal self has to attain to something of an adequate perfection of attunement to the Collective Will and Universal Consciousness, on the other side of it, the Collective Being has to be healthy and vibrant.

The problem today is that the Collective Consciousness and the Collective Life Force may be morbid. God may not be dead, but He might be terribly sick. I have had several dreams which spoke of the World being inflicted by a Spiritual Drought. Recall how Christ and the Christian Mystics had spoken in terms of the Vine of Christ – the Universal Body of Christ to which the Saints attach themselves. The Life of Christ flows through us all. Well, if that Vine were healthy, then it would blossom in leaves, build in strength and grow, bloom into flower and then into Fruit – fruit being the Providential Miracles that are the proof of Divinity. But now we are witnessing a Spiritual Drought where even the Universal Vine of Christ is weakened and withering.

Well, on the hopeful side, my dreams indicate that a Lake of Spiritual Waters will be revealed, and the Spiritual Health of the Vine of Christ will return to the World.

The first dream in the series indicated Peoples of Three Higher Religions, all experiencing the drought. Each People had a Mountain. One mountain was in the North, with another mountain off to the West, and then there was a mountain to the South directly under the North mountain by about half the distance. I saw a map that showed that the Lake of Spiritual Waters was just to the East of the Southern Mountain, but apparently the people of the South Mountain didn’t know how close they were to it, or failed to discern its importance (if people think that a Mountain is Spiritual, than they may fail to appreciate the value of valleys and lakes). The problem discussed in this dream concerned how it would be possible to lead these peoples away from their Holy Mountains and towards the Spiritual Lake.

The second dream, years later, showed the beginning of the movement of religious refugees. The problem of prying the peoples away from their holy mountains would solve itself as the drought worsened, and then the peoples finding it necessary to wander off to seek water. Necessity would be the best persuasion. We began collecting the refugees.

Incidentally, I dreamt a while back of a very righteous and spiritual Catholic Bishop who would die at about the same time as Pope John Paul (and the validity of the Catholic Church would die with him). In my third dream of the series, this same Bishop, having died just as predicted, came back as a Ghostly Saint from Heaven, dressed in Reddish Purple and wearing large spiritual rubies on his high belt and on his hat. This Bishop came with Providential Powers and used them time and time again to ease the way of the Nations of Refugees on their way to the Spiritual Waters. It turns out that the first Miracles were intercessions to stave off genocidal disasters, but the people themselves were unaware of their Luck. Disasters that do not happen are no problem. In this dream, when the Lake of Spiritual Waters was finally reached, and the World became happy and spiritual, those who knew everything that had happened established a holiday of thanksgiving, but the refugees wondered what all the fuss was about as they didn’t remember encountering much trouble along the way. But those who had been in the Higher Circle who had seen the providential miracles knew what disasters had been averted.

Will all of this occur in this generation? I think so.

The Danger of Liberal Political Freedoms

Allow me to state my premises as clearly as possible straight from the beginning, that liberal political freedoms have been institutionalized not for their own sake, but because of the enervating effects they have on any strong and effective central government. You see, liberal political freedoms have come down to us from Revolutionaries who had been intent upon bringing down their Ancient Regimes. They attacked Monarchies and even Parliamentary Governments, and while professing a high regard for Freedoms, and in some cases Equality, their effective intent was to weaken every means that Governments had to maintain law and order in the face of open rebellion and revolution.

Of course the Revolutionaries never themselves ever exercised the least bit of tolerance or constraint. While they demand rights for themselves, they extend none to others, and most Democratic Revolutions had waded in the blood of those whom the democrats would not tolerate. But the History books tend to suppress this kind of information, not wishing to project any somber shades on what they insist should be bright happy patriotic colors.

One really needs to be cynical about all so called revolutions. They always seem to occur when the upper and middle classes are beginning to crowd themselves out, and that while a few rich can get richer, a far greater number are caught in a declining standard of living. So up springs violent revolutions that effectively both thin out the over-population at the top as well as allowing for the pillaging of wealth, a re-distribution which is the real aim of every revolution. Well, then, we should hardly then consider any of the propaganda from these revolutions to be tantamount to sacred scripture, holding ‘founding fathers’ to be on the par with saints and prophets. They may well have been only motivated opportunists with a way for words, saying anything that could hurt their enemies while advancing themselves… much like we see in modern political rhetoric.

But I do concede that many revolutionaries have indeed believed their own propaganda. People are like that. They’ve never been trained in the intellectual discipline to use their reason and intelligence to attain to anything such as impartial Wisdom or any Absolute Truth, but they use their minds to justify their emotional intents. (a study was done where subjects were secretly hypnotized and given a suggestion to ring a bell on a desk when the Professors telephone rang. Most did. When those who rang the bell were asked why they rang the bell, 80% made up on the spot reasons, rationales, justifications for their behavior – excuses for why they did what they did. Only 20% confessed that it was purely an impulse and that they could give no reason for it at all, or that they suspected some trick, for, after all, they were participating in a study. Well, what this study demonstrates is that for about 80% of people, their intellects are used to justify how they will behave anyway, that they use their brains only to come up with excuses for themselves. Only 20% of the people can be counted upon to be intellectually honest). For most people their brains are put to the service of their feelings and appetites. And then there is the unfortunate fact that most people are really stupid, and we can’t really expect any valid thinking from them anyway. So, such people may be poor one day, rise up and kill all the rich people and then take all that wealth for themselves, and even after all that still sincerely believe that they carried out a good deed for the most altruistic of revolutionary goals. They killed millions and leveled cities for human rights and freedom. That it made their fortunes was only a happy coincidence. Indeed, people do have consciences, and I suppose they need to be able to tell themselves something so that they are not overwhelmed by guilt.

But the most intelligent of them know the truth. For instance, we can see an example from the American Revolution. After the French defeated the English for them at sea, and the Americans were able to establish their own regimes, they found that all the social and political infrastructures were bankrupt and collapsing. Suddenly, when law and order was to be their own concern, they were extremely conscious of its demise, and wondered how they could go about rebuilding what they had just spent the better part of a decade deliberately tearing down. One of the most consciously intelligent personages of the American Revolution, Alexander Hamilton, was asked what might be done to ameliorate the chaotic situation, and he replied that the Colonies should first get their fiscal houses in order, and that while it would seem most ironical, ‘we should consider levying a tax on tea’. Hmmmm. Maybe it was meant as a joke, but all of the killing and rebellion had started with the Bostonians murdering British Police because of a silly tea tax. But Hamilton did push forward a wide spectrum of taxes on imported goods, and so he became something of a famous ‘reactionary’. But perhaps we should see it as some attainment of Wisdom, that the revolutionary had enough sense to put away the revolution after it had been won, and to move on to setting up a the New Regime, taking every precaution that it should not be as vulnerable to rebellion as the last Regime.

Today, every progressive liberal Government is being threatened by Islamic Extremists. In the face of these deadly serious threats, all of these Liberal Governments, having acquired their liberal freedoms in the wake of some kind of violent revolutions as described above, they all maintain that it is of some balanced and equal concern that they guard their freedoms and liberal traditions. They forget that these liberal institutions were put in place only to weaken their old governments so they could be overthrown, and then to keep these governments so weak that they could not interfere with the rise of unregulated property interests and various capitalist lobbies. The real aim was to paralyze effective government. Yes, many individuals were able to profit. Barbarians who steal the candlesticks of a ruined Civilization think of pillaging as an acceptable expression of freedom, when it is they themselves who get to do the pillaging.

But we now need to consider that certain foreign barbarians may now be attempting to take advantage of this institutionalized weakness of the West.

It is more or less inevitable that permissive institutions will decline to be replaced by stronger forms. The Greek Philosophers had enough experience of political life and their own history to draw up a delineation of a cycle of political evolutions. Those in the West might guess that Democracy would be the ultimate end and the highest point of the political curve, but it wasn’t. You see, Democracy was always simply an expression of revolution and rebellion, which was never strong enough to persist very long after having destroyed the regime it had originally targeted. Democracy would decline into factionalism, class wars or ethnic or religious conflicts. Democracy then would eventually either be co-opted by or conquered by a Dictator or Tyrant who could impose some kind of order. Well, Dictators often succumb to other Dictators, and so there could be an extended period of unrest, but when a strong and long lived Dictator comes to rule then the bureaucracies can be allowed to settle in and institutionalize themselves, and what finally results is a strong authoritarian government that after several generations has been in place long enough to warrant a sense of legitimacy. Remember that the Democratic Wars and Revolutions and then the Civil Wars of contending Dictators would significantly reduce the population levels that had originally triggered much of the original dissatisfactions. And so when there is the eventual stabilization of strong Government, the ensuing steady institutions usher in an age of Peace and Prosperity. Such good times could conceivably go on forever except that with time there would be the increasing population pressures that create a rise in revolutionary dissatisfaction. The cycle is then repeated.

Anyway, it is certain that our present institutions, designed with the express purpose of being weak and ineffectual, are not the High Point of Civilization, but perhaps better understood as a low point. While our own Citizens had been the only ones to take advantage of the open Pillaging, we failed to consider the potential for harm. But now we are being invaded by swarms of Islamic Extremists who rely upon every liberal protection and shield of due process to keep them invulnerable while they attack us.

Perhaps it would be enough to declare an Emergency. Indeed, we could institutionalize such states of emergency. For instance, when either statistics on crime or statistics on terrorism would hit a certain pre-determined target point, then a State of Emergency would automatically come into effect. Then Police of a certain rank could be given summary powers to be absolute magistrates within their jurisdictions.

Would there be abuses. Well, yes, almost certainly. But let us look at the choices we have. We can allow Civilization to collapse where upon we may expect the death of millions as the life-giving infrastructures of the World Economy brake down. Or we can acknowledge that there will be a relatively small number of abuses.

Yes, yes, I have heard the famous quote about “better a hundred guilty should go free then that one innocent should suffer”. Blah! Remember that such quotes are propaganda tools that come from revolutionaries that are intent upon destroying their Governments and toppling their Civilizations… so they may grab a golden candlestick that they had not had before. But now that our own interest is motivated in protecting Civilization we should re-evaluate that math, and be glad when we can dispatch 100 guilty terrorists with an uncertainty of only 1%.