The Faculty of True Discernment

 

True Discernment

 

1  Hi Everybody.  This is Leo Volont and this is a rewrite of a Blog I did back in 2018 which was a rewrite of a Blog I did in 2008 under the name “The Faculty of True Discernment”… yeah, apparently my Discernment gets better every couple of years.   So let’s get started.

 

 

When I first started with Kundalini Yoga, decades ago, my old Guru had told us that the Kundalini, particularly at the Ajna Chakra, would make us ‘smarter’.  Well, that made me wonder for two reasons.  The first was that such a pragmatic consideration was something of an outlier in the more etherealized and anti-elitist atmosphere of the broader Spiritual Community, and, secondly, well, nobody among the Guru’s entourage seemed particularly “smart”.

 

2  And apparently the Smartness wasn’t the kind that would automatically kick in.   Yeah, one time during a break in one of his informal talks, I took the opportunity to go outside and grab a smoke, and the Swami quietly barked at me that “Smoking wasn’t the most positive thing I could be doing and so quitting it would be making my Yoga work for me”.  Yeah, I understood what he was saying and immediately began quitting, and after 3 years I never smoked another cigarette again.   But there was the problem of him having to tell me, but if the Yoga had really been able to make me so much Smarter, well, the added Intelligence probably would have been able to speak for itself, right?   

 

3  But then something else happened.  I remembered it just the other day in one of my “An Informal Evening with Leo Volont” videos concerning “My Initiations”, that in the year after my Crown Chakra High Initiation I had that Dream where I was told that “the Principalities of the Sky vie for my Soul”, implying that I would have moral choices to make.  Well, that was a Huge Dream and now that I think about it, what would have made me so important to the “Principalities of the Sky” unless it was my walking around resplendent with Spiritual Energy all Lit Up and with me wearing a Crown Chakra on my Head: yeah, all that would be invisible to mere mortals but to Spirits, Angels and Demons, well, I’d really stand out from the Crowd.

 

4  But what about that Dream? – with Elijah in the Dark Cave of Prayer that turned into a Blue Sky with Flying Dragon wheeling all around in arial combat; well, I had been thinking all these years that it had been an Archetypical Dream, and if I had it, well then Everyone would have it too, and even if that IS true, well, each person’s moral choice would NOT be pre-determined.  You know, being in league with Evil might actually come with a huge Benefits Plan, where Riding the White Horse like me might give you a Saddle, but not much in the way of Saddle Bags. And Religion has been so very much discredited in this Age that many people today might find Evil to be the more appealing bargain, since they also seem so convinced that Religion is Evil too.  Yeah, to them it might not be much more of a moral choice than deciding to be a Lawyer instead of a Doctor.

 

5  But, most of the High Initiates I’ve known neither became Giants of the Darkness nor the Light. Apparently the Principalities of the Sky weren’t fighting over everybody.  So I think that the Guru simply miss-spoke about being Smart.  I think that Yoga is really only about Opening a Door to Spiritual Possibilities, but you’d have the same Will to Action as you had before, and only your own Will would ever be able to push you forward so that your Yoga could then make it easier for you to get anywhere.  At first Experience would give you Knowledge, and with Knowledge one could begin to Act Effectively and then finally Successfully, and that would bring Confidence, and Confidence looks a good deal like being Smart, doesn’t it?  So maybe the Guru said “Smart” as a kind of a shorthand to save himself a more complicated explanation for people who are mostly just looking for Simple Answers anyway.   

 

6  So, I guess most of his High Initiates just spent their entire Lifetimes lingering at the Open Door of Spiritual Opportunity that stood before them.  The Guru never did much to exhort them forward.  And the Swami had received a Modern Education and so I think he was really concerned with Justifying Spirituality before the Worldly Gods of Nihilistic Materialism, you know, he had probably been a Marxist back in College, and so I suppose those  Materialistic Assumptions had broken his sense of Moral Confidence, shattering any comprehensive Moral Vision he might have communicated to us.  But, well, to do the Old Man justice, he did tell us to ‘experiment’ and be creative, you know, basically telling us HE WANTED US to think for ourselves.   But most people who’re attracted to Gurus want to be told what to do, right?  A Guru should know that better than anybody else.  So he should have known to at least issue a Warning that all of his System could come to naught if all we did was stand still at the Open Door and wait for the results to come to us.

 

7  But I had made choices and moved forward, through Experience, and then Knowledge and then Action and finally to a sense of Confidence, but, no, not just Swagger but a kind of Epistemological Confidence, you know, that my Knowledge transcended Opinion and became Truth.   Yeah, I found I could recognize the Truth and have a sense of certainty about It whenever I would hear It or see It.  Maybe I was also incrementally better at ‘thinking up’ the truth of things, but becoming a more Creative or a particularly inspired thinker was only a small part of it.   It was not so much a case of thinking faster or better but of thinking with more Certainty and Conviction.  I became More Sure of the Truth of things.  But I would need to encounter these Truths first.  I’d have to Find them before I could Know them.  The Path is a Path and one needs to keep Moving along it, and you can’t get anywhere by standing still.

 

8  I was lucky to be able to identify a certain point in time , a moment when the transition came about, when that brand of ‘smartness’, that sense of Confidence and Certainty in Truth kicked in.  It had been about 30 years after my High Initiations.  That’s half a lifetime, isn’t it?   Yes, Spirituality is not for the timid and the slow and ‘he who hesitates too long is lost’.  But, Yes,  this special moment had been punctuated by a Dream, my Dream of True Discernment.     

 

 9  The Dream Scene had been a sun lit grassy field with large rocks and fallen trees that offered a natural gathering place for hikers and nature lovers to sit down, rest and take in the ambient beauty. Well, in this particular Dream Scene, there was this woman who was playing a guitar and one would have to describe her as being ugly.  But her guitar playing, really, her finger picking style, was the most beautiful I’ve ever heard.  She made the guitar sound like a harp.  But, then came along these guys, who might have been nice enough if taken singly, but together they dropped on the Evolutionary Scale to being Primitive, that is, they acted like a pack of jerks.      As they approached they started in with ridiculing her for her looks… yes, they were speaking among themselves, but they knew she could hear them.  I was concerned that this would annoy her enough so that she would stop playing, and besides, it was difficult to hear her through all their noise, and so I yelled out to them, "Hey, guys! Everything else being equal, can't you hear that playing. We are in the presence of some real talent here, right?  So why don’t we all just shut up?" Then the lady, who had seemed oblivious to all of us up to this point, suddenly looked up, and looking me square in the eye said, "The faculty most worthy of cultivation is the faculty of True Discernment".           Then, well, BOOM, In an instant I was transported into a second dream; to the midst of a grove of trees lit up by the silver light of the Full Moon.  It was young growth forest with as many bushes on the forest floor as the trees around them,   The air was cool, and this felt like a nice place to be.  

 

10  In this dream I had been a disembodied presence floating up above the scene by about a dozen feet, simply watching.  What I witnessed down below was a beautiful Greek Goddess… I would guess, Diana, Goddess of the Hunt.  She was clad in a pearl-white translucent toga, made of not much more than a few yards of material, and belted at the waist.  She was barefoot and she also had a bow in her hand and a quiver of arrows slung over her shoulder.  It was breathtaking, and I knew this must have been some kind of special vision. 

 

11  But the tranquility of it all was shattered when along came this strong virile heroic looking man – too old to be young, but not old enough to be wise.   Well, He was delighted to happen upon such a pretty young Goddess and of course I supposed he was all perked up to make her acquaintance. He said in a boastful tone which may have had a degree or two of double entendre, "I’m on the hunt tonight and I feel sorry for the poor creatures that’ll happen my way, because I’m such a good shot they’ll surely not stand a CHANCE".

 

12  Diana remained silent and seemed in no hurry to reply, but rather pulled a strangely unique arrow from her quiver. She held it out a moment so that the hunter, and maybe even myself, could see that it was probably the most crocked arrow that could still be straight enough to be shot from a bow. She loaded it onto the string and pulled back in preparation of shooting... then turned her head off to the side so it could be seen that she obviously had no intention of aiming, and she released the shot.   SHHHWOOOOPP!  The arrow whistled off and lodged inside a bush.   She walked over and took hold of the arrow’s shaft and withdrew it from the shrub, and, amazingly, there impaled on the arrow’s tip was a limp dead game bird. Then she spoke, not to the Hunter, but directly to me, "Chance? Nothing happens by Chance".'  Then I awoke.

 

13  Anyway, what do these two juxtaposed dreams mean?  Well, not many dreams come with captions, but these dreams did, and, of course, that should provide us with a great deal of insight.   But we really need to contextualize the statements to be certain we’re drawing the right conclusions, shouldn’t we? 

 

So, yes, returning to the First Dream, well, what happened was that I made two appraisals:  the first was that the Musical Lady was off on the far end of the Ugly Scale, and the second was that her Music was as far off in the opposite direction, going off into Extreme Beauty.  Then the group of Young Men arrived, interrupting my enjoyment with their loud discussion about the girl’s ugliness, and so I yelled over to them using words that effectively almost conceded the point that I thought the Lady was ‘ugly’ too, but rather than dwelling on that, I urged them to change their focus towards what was Beautiful, her Playing, but I could have been more polite in my approach with them.    And that was the point where she turned to me and said "The faculty most worthy of cultivation is the faculty of True Discernment".   Well, was she congratulating me on my True Discernment, or was she taking me to task for some Stupidity?  Yeah, it took me years to contemplate the possibility that I might I have gotten something wrong?

 

 14  But in the cases of both her Appearance and her Music, well, we’re in the Domain of Aesthetics, and so, really, both ends of the Scale were in the same Indeterminable Field where any number of Reasons could endlessly be argued back and forth, proving nothing.   Yes, it could be said that I was shallow for even noticing her Ugliness, but only Transcendentalists throw out all Distinctions, and even if we can’t all be Beautiful, well, we should all at least acknowledge Beauty as one of the worthiest of Evolutionary Ideals, right?   Just look at Flowers, Butterflies, Tropical Fish, Tropical Birds and most Cats, and that will show us that Evolution finds Practicality wrapped up in Aesthetic Beauty.   Also, to focus on humanity for a moment, we see that in Societies where Arranged Marriages become the norm, where priorities are dictated by property and convenience, while Personal Appearances become secondary considerations: well, the Peoples turn ugly and their general health declines.   So when we see a Beautiful People that means we’re looking at Healthy People and it’s Evolution’s Way of  telling us that it’s getting things Right.

 

 15  Then, in regards to the Music, that while I recognized the beauty there, well, again it was a matter of taste, and I couldn’t expect a “pack of jerks” to feel it all that special, like expecting Cats to appreciate Mozart.  Also, taste in Music is acquired, and unless people are exposed to fine music from their childhood, they’ll never really ever get it.  Also, with the Popular Music Industry ever innovating to provide a cheaper, simpler Product to Mass Market to the broadest and dumbest Demographic, well, the result is a global degeneracy in Music Appreciation.  Literature is also on a steady decline.  And God only knows how people don’t appreciate the best YouTube Channels… not that I’m complaining…  

 

16  So, well, back to our subject, where we need to ask ourselves what can be True when speaking of Aesthetics which are really just a matter of taste.  Well, it finally occurred to me: that there was the Intention behind the Music, while her Appearance was Unintentional.  The Art was a Communication, an Expression, and apparently her Intention had found resonance in me.  I understood her.  I connected to her through her Music.   And maybe there was even some kind of a Dream World Teleological Intention behind her Ugliness.  You know, I thought even at the time that her Ugliness must have been placed in front of me like some kind of a hurdle, some kind of a Test, requiring me to Look Past her Outer Appearance before I could enjoy her Essence.  So, yeah, maybe I got that right too.  And so, well,  where was it that I may have gone wrong.

 

17  So, yes, I probably fell short with the Young Men.  Afterall, this was a dream, and from other dreams I’ve had, with Monsters far more intimidating than “those guys” were, well, the trick I found is simply to approach and give them the lightest touch, which then transforms them to Friendly Congenial Spirits.  Yeah, I found out about that ‘Trick’ by accident once, where I only put up my hand to ward off an attack, but that simple action proved to be far more effective than I ever imagined.  And it doesn’t take Faith or Confidence either, because in these approaches with my Hand held up, well, it’s typically shaking from Fright.   But, yes, apparently these Young Men weren’t terrifying enough for me to take them that seriously and so I let my temper get away from me.  I treated those silly fools more roughly than I would have treated Demons from Hell.  So, yeah, it may be that I had failed to Discern the Truth of the Situational Social Dynamics, you know, not playing the situation to my greatest advantage, and so that is probably where I should focus in my Cultivations.  

 

18  Then there is the Second Dream with the Goddess Diana and the Hunter.  Really, fresh insights into that dream have left me ashamed of myself.  You see, I’m rarely ever just a Point of Consciousness in a Dream, so why in this Dream?  Well, now it seems obvious that it was me who had been intended to play the part of the Hunter, but the Higher Dream Mind anticipated that I wouldn’t have the Confident Swagger to Play the Part, you know,  to strut forward and hit on the Goddess with that Pick Up Line: "I’m on the hunt tonight and I feel sorry for the poor creatures that’ll happen my way, because I’m such a good shot that they’ll surely not stand a CHANCE". Yeah, smooth right?  But the Higher Dream Mind didn’t trust me with it.  And we know that it should have been me because we only have to look at the denouement of the Dream where she looks straight at me and gives Me the answer that rightfully should have been addressed to the Hunter, and that clearly means that I was, or should have been, the Hunter.    But, then, yes, at least, as it played out, I got a chance to see how the Higher Dream Mind interprets my Persona, like the Dream Mind casted Brad Pit to play my part:  Strong, Confident, even Attractive, but not so completely Wise, and, well, 3 out of 4’s doing pretty good, right?  

 

19  But, now, what did the Dream Action and the Goddess’s Statement mean?  Okay, she killed that bird without aiming, BUT she had the Will to kill it.  She is the Goddess Diana, and, as a Goddess, her Will is the dictation of Fate.  What she Intends is Destined to Be.   But the Hunter, well, he also appeared to be willful and he was confident in the certainty of outcomes, but it was largely swagger, wasn’t it?  It was confidence in his own skills, both with hunting and with, well, ‘socializing in the Evening’, let’s call it.  But only the Divine can ever count upon Absolute Certainty.   “Nothing Happens By Chance” is an assertion that can only come from a God, or be attributed to one.  But as Humans we require Will to Action even to just put “the ball into play” where Fate can find us as being a factor for consideration.  Without the exercise of Will the Gods will simply ignore us.

 

20 But, now, well, what do these two dreams mean together?  Okay, accepting the Word of the Goddess as axiomatic, that “Nothing Happens By Chance”, well, that should help us in “Cultivating the Faculty of True Discernment” because it should eliminate from our considerations that anything that Happens could possibly be random, coincidental, arbitrary or meaningless.  “Nothing Happens by Chance” means that everything has meaning, and if we don’t recognize the Meaning of Something then we aren’t paying sufficient attention.   The advise coming from the first dream, to cultivate Discernment, means simply to stay focused on paying attention.  Yes, Cultivation is just another way of saying Practice Practice Practice.    

 

21  So, yes, even equipped with all the accoutrements of Kundalini Yoga, apparently there has to be some intent and practice in order to ramp up one’s abilities in regards to True Discernment.  Well, what I’ve found to be a very good practice is to just talk to people, and not just talk to friends but to everybody: store clerks, cashiers, people in elevators, pedestrians on the street where you’re waiting for the same crossing light.  Just talk and often they’ll say something that will just LIGHT UP as TRUE, that is, that you not only understand their intent, but in a way feel a connection to them, clicking with another person in a kind of Shared Reality. 

 

22  But in talking perhaps the most important thing you have to do is listen.  Most people who are ‘in conversations’ are using up most of their brain power in thinking of what to say next.  Well, don’t think about what to say.  You’ll surely think of something, right?  Also, if you are fully engaged in listening, then what you’ll probably think to say, when it comes your turn to speak. will be something related to what the other person was just talking about, that is, you’ll be appropriately responsive.  People like that. And so they keep talking, and eventually you get the Truth out of them.  And when you hear it, and Know it, well, it is like finding a Treasure.

 

23  Oh, now I should mention that another dream came along which would affect my view of the World and help me in my Pathway towards attaining to the Faculty of True Discernment.  In this Dream I was walking on a narrow board that lay across a Chasm so deep that looking down I could see only Darkness. Suddenly the board was pulled away and I found myself falling.  Well, before hitting bottom a Dream Guru appeared, pulling me out of the Dream to tell me “Remember this, that Perfection consists in Randominity, so Be Not One Thing, and Be Not the Other”.  

 

24  Okay, so what’s that mean?  Well, the two sides of the Chasm are the “One thing” and then “the Other”.   Then the Unknown Darkness below is the Infinity of Random Possibilities that lie outside our well defined but confining conceptual structures.  And maybe the Randominity is only Dark because it only becomes visible after we manifest something out of it, making Randominity a kind of Blank Slate that we can draw freely upon. 

 

 25  But, yes, in translating this Dream into Life Advice, I took it to mean that I shouldn’t be predisposed to any particular belief system, which would induce a kind of a Tunnel Vision.   So, yeah, apparently one has to be able to see Patterns in the Complexity, or we’d just lose the World in the Fog of an Undifferentiated Oneness, but at the same time we’d need to refrain from over-generalizing about what are essentially just instances of imaginative guess work.  And most of our Civilized Institutions were structured as material responses to particular problematic situations and so we could expect that they’d no longer be a perfect fit for our Present Day Conditions.

 

26  Next we need to discuss the inevitable discoveries of unpleasant Truths.  Yes, the Truth is always good to know, but its not always good news.  People often live paralyzed by Denial of the Unpleasant.  But if you are sleeping at night and even think you might smell smoke, well, you have to IMMEDIATELY think Fire and jump out of bed.    And here’s another example: On my first stint of World Travels, just starting out, I met a World Traveler in the Far East and he gave me some particular advice which we can use to come to a generalized opinion.  Now, the thing you need to understand about World Travelers is that they often don’t know the Languages and they don’t know the Cultures, and so all their Information needs to come largely from raw instinct, feelings and intuitions.   So his advice was, “well, if you ever sense the energy in a Bar Room or Club turning sour, Man, well, walk out fast and just leave your drink behind, Man, walk away from it.   Yeah, man, People get killed because they want to finish their beers first.”   Yeah, what that advice means, when we generalize it, is that we need to limit the time we waste in Denial, and that once we feel the threat of an immanent danger, we can’t distract ourselves with the wishful thinking fantasy that it might turn out alright.   Yeah, that reminds me that I once read a study that Pessimists react better to emergencies because they always expect the worst and so they walk around prepared for it.  So, yeah, when things get rough the last person you want with you is a happy person who believes in Positive Thinking. They go into shock too easy.   

 

27  But, again, we need to avoid extremes, and in contextualizing our realizations of Unpleasant Truths, we’d need to acknowledge that Nothing is Perfect, especially in regards to any kind of a Social Group, Organization, Corporation, Cult or Religion.  Even becoming a Couple in a Relationship is to form an Imperfect Organization.  In regards to these Connections we can rationally suppose that we should stay balanced in the idea that we should be prepared to leave as soon as it’s clear that leaving would result in less trouble than staying.  And “trouble” can come in may guises.  Even being demoralized for reasons we can’t fully explain to ourselves is “trouble”.  But we need to remember that there might be trouble on the other side of that Exit Door too, and the ancient proverb tells us to prefer “the Devil we know to the Devil we don’t”.

 

 28  You see,  Human Beings are Social Animals and our instincts compel us to Belong.  There is Safety in Numbers, and we can rarely walk out of any Social Relationship without effectively “burning all our bridges behind us”, and more options are always better than fewer.  And Societies would be impossible to maintain if we as Human Beings hadn’t evolved to have some degree of tolerance and forbearance built into us, and, therefore, we can assume that we can summon up from our deep store of internal resources the elasticity that can allow us to put up with Situations that are far less than Perfect.

 

29  But there are limits to forbearance and we can be worn down by patience.  So let this be the final note in this Blog:  the suggestion that perhaps the most important use we could ever make of our highly Cultivated Faculty of True Discernment is knowing when it’s time to quit.          

 

 

Well, that’s it!  Thank you everybody.  

 

 

the Power of Mythology

 The Power of Mythology

 

1  Hi Everybody, This is Leo Volont, and this is Part One of my two Part Series, “The Power of Mythology”.  In Part One we’ll be discussing some of the Consequences our Civilization has had to deal with in moving away from a Mythological Matrix of Cultural Traditions and Beliefs into a Rational Scientific mode, while confining ourselves mostly to issues of Health.  Then in Part Two we’ll speak of the possibility that in our future Machine Intelligence and Robotics Age, that for the good of the Health and Welfare of Humanity, Materialistic Cynicism will be abandoned and some new optimized Mythological framework embraced.  Yes, I know it doesn’t make any sense now, but that just means we have a lot of talking to do.  So let’s get started with Part One.

 

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2  We always hear about what we’ve gained from our Great Age of Science, but do we ever stop to think about what we’ve Renounced for it?  Yes, there was one instance in Time when the fledgling Age of Reason first started casting its creeping shadow over the Age of Faith, when Science seemed to make it’s Deal with the Devil and we traded away our Aesthetically Keyed Minds and Spirits for the benefits of only those things we could weigh in some sterile Scientific Scale.   Well, Let’s recall that Moment, along with the Memory of the Great Man it involved – Franz Mesmer.

 

3  It happened just a few years before the French Revolution would kill off both God and a King, sending the World reeling into over 2 Centuries of Chaos, with Predatory Winner Take All Capitalism, almost an endless cycle of Wars, and the tumultuous Anarchy of unrestricted Competing Self-Interests and the Paralyzing Polarization of Democracy, a form of Government which believes that Flaws are Virtues, and believes it with the intensity of a Quasi-Religious Fanaticism, even while it now leads us perhaps inexorably towards Extinction.

 

4  So, yes, it was a Time when numerous flaming Torches were being thrown through the ground floor Windows of our Civilization, which, yeah, it had grown somewhat Decadent, but it was still the Only Civilization we had.   Reform might well have been in order, but what we got was Revolution.  Well, Okay, but that’s all a really big subject, isn’t it?  So, for now, rather than standing back and viewing all around us the General Conflagration that ensued, let’s just focus in on the Fires related to Franz Mesmer and his Animal Magnetism.     

 

5  But, yes, Franz Mesmer, had set up a hugely successful and clinically effective medical practice in Louis the 16^th’s France, using an elaborate and very impressive Methodology he called “Animal Magnetism”.  Well, the French Doctors didn’t appreciate being eclipsed and displaced, especially by a German, and so they petitioned their King to shut Mesmer down.   So, the King appointed a Commission to see to it that some plausible reason could be found to pull Mesmer’s Medical License.

 

6  Benjamin Franklin, an American, was then Ambassador to France, representing the United States, and, yes, Franklin was very famous at the time, and, on behalf of the USA, Franklin did in fact owe the French King a huge favor for having sent the French Fleet that had boxed in the British Fleet at Jamestown, thus winning the American’s Revolutionary War for them.   And so it was that the French King, assured of Franklin’s pliability, appointed him to be Chairman of the Commission that was dedicated to Mesmer’s destruction.   

 

7  But Franklin, to his credit, was fairly discreet and measured about it, given the constraints of the foregone conclusion he was given to deliver, concluding in his Commission’s Judgement that while Mesmer was clearly then the most successfully effective Doctor in all of France, that there remained the problem that his Animal Magnetism couldn’t be isolated, quantified or pinned down to any provenly axiomatic set of known facts.   There complaint wasn’t so much that Mesmer ‘misrepresented’ the mechanism responsible for all his Cures, as that they found no Scientific Means for contextualizing his explanation, and since they insisted on only being able to understand Animal Magnetism in their own terms, if at all, well, Mesmer was fixed to lose this battle.

 

 8  Also, we all sort of know that entrenched Special Interests often react to sweepingly successful Innovations, with Accusations that the Newcomers aren’t playing fair… yeah, it’s kind of childish, but they do it anyway.  So with Mesmer thinking independently of Materialistic Science, while hinging his Animal Magnetism on more Ethereal Causes, well, it was seen as somehow ‘cheating’, and they thought he needed to be stopped… not so much for his own good, as for theirs.  

 

9  So, yes, Franklin attacked the Cause for all the Cures while tipping his hat to all the beneficial medical Effects that he’d be shutting down.  Yes, this Chimera of Animal Magnetism, even while plodding its palliative Hoofprints up and down the Champs-Élysées, was declared to be Unreal because Science refused to See It.    And I believe it was at least partially because the Men on the Committee, who had never understood it, also couldn’t Prove it, and, really, they had no incentive to try.

 

10  And we should keep in Mind that God Himself (or Herself or Itself), along with all of the purely aesthetic foundations for any kind of a Civilized Social Morality, well, all of that kind of stuff, and anything else in our lives that sparkles with Unquantifiable Mystery – All of it would also have been tossed out by Franklin’s Commission, and for the very same reasons – that Science would reject anything it couldn’t or wouldn’t care to explain.   So, Materialism defaulted into becoming the only Ideology that Science could endorse.  

 

11  What we know of today as Hypnosis was derived from only a part of what Mesmer had developed – Hypnotism started out as “Mesmerism”.  But be that as it may, today’s Hypnotism is really very much held back by its Modern Scientific Context, you know, that it’s some “Trick”, and that in order to be effective, Hypnotism must first submerge itself under the defenses of a relentlessly critical and conflicted Modern Mind, going down to what we call our Subconscious Mind.

 

12 But think about what Mesmer enjoyed back in the Twilight Days of his Age of Faith when what we call the ‘Subconscious Mind’, was still Churning and Bubbling up upon the Surface, where even just a touch of Awe and Wonder would have been plenty enough to fully entrance the ordinary Man or Woman.  People’s Minds and Psyches were still largely Open.  It would take Science and Modern Cynicism to Close them down, and we went from the Age of Faith into an Age of Doubt and Moral Uncertainty. 

 

13  But, yes, after Mesmer’s Doom became irrevocable, Franklin himself had been cornered into better explaining all of Mesmer’s cures, and after having become more familiar with ‘Mesmerism’, well, he largely gave back with One Hand what he had taken away with the other, that is, Franklin attributed the Cures of Animal Magnetism, and the Wonders of Hypnotism, to the “Power of Suggestion”, and in re-naming Mesmer’s “Chimera”, well, that was apparently enough to Domesticate it.  

 

14  But wouldn’t we then suppose that Science would’ve then studied this now certified “Power of Suggestion”, to discover all its Possibilities, and to realize all their great Potential?   But, no, that didn’t happen.  And I guess we can see why –    that once Science tossed Mesmer out into the Cold Outer Darkness, well, who among the other Geeks and Nerds of the Time would’ve stood up in his Place?  Yeah, Sides had to be Chosen.  One could stand with one’s Profession in Affluence or stand alone in Poverty.   

 

15  The Scientific Community and the Medical Profession, then as now, was characteristically insular, stodgy and conservative, and besides, you know, those people are all borderline Autistic anyway, aren’t they?   And if they’re not Autistic as individuals, well, their Professional Culture behaves Autistically, doesn’t it?  So, the Idea of investigating the Power of Suggestion, by studying the Effects of Human Interactions and Situational Perceptions on the Healing Process, well, it must have seemed to this Stodgy and Diffident Scientific Community as being a little bit too much like taking a Walk On the Wild Side.  Yeah, just like with anything else that involves Personal Interactions and People’s Feelings, it’d be too far outside their cold professional autistic comfort zones.   

 

16  So, yeah, instead of seeing if the Power of Suggestion could help, well, no, they went in completely the other direction, where they attempted to control for and minimize the Power of Suggestion.  Any Beneficial Effects of Suggestion would be rejected as redundant to the Benefits of whatever Material Science was used in the Surface Treatment, you know, the pills or whatever.  Then, soon, within decades of Franklin’s Ruling, the Power of Suggestion was translated into the more clinical ‘Latinized’ term – ‘The Placebo Effect’.  Yeah, I had to look it up… it’s from the Latin, but it sounded Greek to me.

 

17  But when we think about the Placebo Effect today, well, it’s typically just a few percentage points greater than Nothing At All.  We can only scratch our heads and wonder about how anybody could ever have once thought that the Power of Suggestion was so Threateningly Powerful.   But we forget how flamboyantly theatrical Franz Mesmer was in asserting his Suggestion, where Animal Magnetism was being presented in an elaborate Show, with Pools of Chemically Treated Colored Waters, mingled with fragrances, and Ropes of Specially Braded Precious Metal Strands, along with elaborate Coils of Wire with Antennas, phosphorescent Lights, Bells, Incense, and Incantations… Everything but the Stained Glass Windows from the Notre Dame Cathedral and a Modern Laser Light Show!  Yes, in an Age where there were already so few Defenses guarding the Subconscious Mind, well, what remained would’ve been completely overwhelmed by the Conceptual Sublimity that was Mesmer’s Animal Magnetism.  

 

18  But today they kill all Positive Suggestion in a stifling Atmosphere of unrelieved Cautious and Conservative Prognoses.  Just listen to what they tell Sick or Dying Experimental Subjects in Drug Testing Trials…  that they’re going to receive either a medicine that’s still just only being Tested, and so they don’t know whether it’ll work or not, or that they’ll receive a “Placebo”, that is, some inert pill that’s purpose made to do absolutely nothing at all for them.   Yeah, the only Suggestion I see in all that is that their Lives don’t matter.  Wouldn’t it be more likely that people would just give up all together, after the Doctors they want so much to trust, give them a speech like that?

 

 19   Yes, this may be the very reason why we hear of so many really squirrely outlier Side Effects, which are probably just the direct effects of the Demoralization being Administered by the Medical Community on these poor desperate and confused Test Subjects. Yeah, it kind of proves that just being with Doctors nowadays is enough to make people Sick – kind of a Placebo Effect in reverse, isn’t it?  Yeah, how Ironic that what they don’t want working for them, ends up working against them.

 

20  But what if the same dynamics still apply now as in the days of Mesmer, that the Power of Suggestion could still outperform Material Medicine, or at least significantly augment its effectiveness?   Are we really just willing to throw away all that extra healing power?  Why not lean into the Placebo Effect and the Power of Suggestion and put it all to Positive Use?

 

21  But, yeah, I’ve talked to some Doctors that do wish to be more successful in their practices, and so they work in such a way as to have the Placebo Effect in their Corner, with the Winds at their backs.  So what they do, when they feel they can legally get away with it, is they insist to their Patients that their Treatments will undoubtedly make them better, you know, without clawing any of it back by citing Statistical Probabilities, and all the Reservations or Provisos that involve their Patient’s Baseline Health, Age, Weight or any of the other Health Factors that most Doctors site nowadays in order to seemingly sow Doubt and Confusion.

 

22  Yes, these Good Doctors, going All In with the Placebo Effect, with their Priority on Healing, well, they just want their Patients to walk out the door with just One Splendidly Consistent “Golden Vision of Health and Wellness” shining in their Mind’s Eyes and cherished in their Hearts, you know, so it’d be almost like they’re feeling better already. 

 

23  And these Doctors, while not as Theatrical as Mesmer, well, they do try to make the best show they can of it.  They have their patients wait in Treatment Rooms that are practically Wall Papered with Prestigious Diplomas, and then they present themselves in all their Grey Haired Glory, Dignified in their pristine starched white Lab Coats, and with Nurses at their sides, smiling on with Serene, Loving, and almost Divine Encouragement, you know, the same way we remember our Mothers doing when we had been feeling hurt, helpless or frightened – the same way we feel in the Doctors’ Offices now, don’t we?  And just like we could expect, such “Cheating”, as Benjamin Franklin would’ve called it, well, it does get results.  The Patients do begin feeling better almost immediately.   

 

24  Yes, and then we hear of all those Doctors Without Borders, who take their Medical Wears to the Undeveloped World, and, well, I hear they often find the Semi-Primitive Un-Scientific Atmosphere to be refreshing, that is, if their tents are set to be upwind of the open septic systems.  But, yes, if these Doctors can find the flexibility to adapt to the Local Voodoo Cultures, or whatever, well, they could really make it work for them.  Or at least they can breathe a little easier once they’re away from all the Predatory Scavenging Lawyers in our World.  Yes, you know, we must be living in a really Sick Society where the Lawyers wield so much more power than our Doctors.    

 

25  But, yes, while Modern Medicines and Procedures are certainly effective, well, there arises the problem of how these Doctors Without Borders can contextualize their Treatments in Cultures where the previous “Attending Physicians” had been Shamans or Witchdoctors.   Should the Western Doctors barge in and create a Crisis of Faith by denouncing the Local Traditions, and thereby provoke the Reaction of a Class of Enemies and Detractors, or, do they go in seeking a partnership, remembering that eventually they’re all going to Go Home, and Patient Care will revert back to the Witchdoctors, who may be the ONLY Doctors these people will have to turn to.   And then we need to remember that, just as Franz Mesmer proved to the World 200 years ago, that if the Mythological Mindset of a People remains unshaken, then the Power of Suggestion can be a very effective Medicine even just by itself.

 

26  Then we should consider just how little money it would take to persuade the Witch Doctors to sit on the same side of the Table as the Doctors, showing the People a United Healthcare Front.  Yes, and here we need to keep in mind that Humanity is NOT some Ideal, but the actual People we see standing before us, and that to the vast Majority of People we can assert that two contradictory statements are both True, and if nobody points out the problem with that, then most People would NOT have any trouble at all in believing it.  Yes, discerning Contradictions is Higher Order Thinking which requires more intelligence than most people have or would care to use even if they had it.

 

27  Also, Ordinary People typically don’t have a second thought, after their acknowledged Leaders signal to them what they’re expected to think.  Remember, it’s more important for these people, at the Animal Instinctual Level, to Belong unquestionably to their Social Groups than to be Philosophically and Intellectually Correct.

 

28  Then we also need to remember of most People everywhere nowadays, that it’s only by our Presently Accepted De Facto Mythology, held by both Humanists and Spiritualists alike, that we believe in Humanity as some kind of an Idealized Semi-Divine Set of Creators that reside above the lower and lesser Animal Kingdom.   But, if we were ever stripped of that Myth, well, we’d only be Primates dressed up and wearing shoes, wouldn’t we?  So, yeah, if we really are all Materialists now, well, don’t you think it’s about time we stopped pretending, and deal with our Reality realistically, and stop thinking better of ourselves than we have any rational right to deserve?

 

29  So, of course many of our behaviors are more animal-instinctual than rational.   And so the Doctors Without Borders would be wise to just do their Jobs and let the Local Leaders worry about all the Mind Control considerations, and if they don’t bring up all the Logical Contradictions that occur to them, well, nobody else will either.  Keep in mind that Cohesive Social Groups just want to get along, and as long as you Go Along, you’ll Get Along too.

 

30  So, yeah, when the Doctors Without Borders manage to play it right, it really makes their Jobs easier, which is a considerable consolation they have for the many hardships, discomforts and inconveniences they must accept while away from Home on their Humanitarian Missions, you know, knowing that they couldn’t possibly thrive over there, but hoping only to endure.   And God Bless them for it… we really do have so few Selfless Saints nowadays.  

 

31  Oh, and, yes, the Scientific Atmosphere today is corrosively all-pervasive, even outside the Hospitals and Doctor’s Offices.  For instance, there’s always some Faith Healers traveling around, no, not as many as years gone by, but they’re still out there.  They’re often the Main Attraction at Christian Revivalist Tent Shows and Evangelical Get-Togethers.  And, yes, they go to great lengths to present compelling and convincing Shows, though not nearly on the same scale of Mesmer, who had all his elaborate ‘animal magnetism’ stagings and props… but, yeah, the Faith Healer’s appeal is more along Religious Lines, you know, similar to Voodoo where it’s all the Prayer, Song and Dance that puts the Crowd into a Trance.  But, yeah, while it might just be a matter of taste, I think that Voodoo has more “Soul”.

 

32  But, as I said, there’s no escaping the Age of Science’s Cynical Ambiance, and, unlike during the Days of Mesmer, and, indeed, all through the Medieval Period, when Saints such as Vincent Ferrer were bringing about Total and Lasting Remissions, well, nowadays the Tent Show Healers, as a Rule of Thumb, give themselves just 3 Days to get out of town, you know, to maybe give themselves a good head-start on anybody who’d want to try to catch them.  Really, people often donate great amounts of money in gratitude for being relieved of illness, or any kind of lameness, but, well, later, it might make them very angry that they weren’t told that their Healings would be Timed Out using a 72 hour clock. 

 

33  Well, we need to ask ourselves Why and How the Power of Suggestion has gotten to be so short term?  I think there might be two main reasons why Healings unwind.  Firstly and most obviously, well, I would think it’s because Doubt inevitably sets in.  Just the idea that their Healings seem too incongruent, too extraordinary for them, you know, in the context of the general pessimism of their ordinary nihilistically modern lives, well, couldn’t that be enough to shut down the Positive Effects of a Suggestion?

 

 34  Yeah, I suppose People brought up in Today’s Society can’t honestly believe they’re all that special enough to be deserving of some “miraculously” Perfect Health, and it just seems more Normal to be Sick than Well, which, really, would be the very definition of a Toxic Society, wouldn’t it?  And, besides, talking about definitions, well, Miracles never used to be defined as being ‘impossible’, as they are today, no, it only meant that these Healings were from God.

 

35  The Second Reason why Faith Healings by Suggestion might be unravelling is, well, I think that the Mythological Foundations being used are structurally lacking somehow, in such a way that the Suggestions aren’t complete or inclusive enough, you know, somehow ‘not dotting all the necessary I’s or crossing all the essential T’s’… that they’re not touching far enough down upon the crucial points that lay deep within us.  Yeah, what I’m suggesting here is that functionally effective Mythologies can’t be arbitrary, but that they need to form a kind of veritable Organic-Spiritual Connection or Resonance to the People they serve.

 

36  So, yeah, it may be useful to go back to study Messmer’s Methodologies, to discern what he had been doing right.  But I can guess at what Modern Faith Healers are doing wrong, that it may be that assigning the Healings to a particular individual or Entity, such as Jesus Christ, is so contingent on Faith, that the Key becomes too Clunky to Turn in the Lock.   I think that Suggestion would work better if some Universal Free and Unconditional Energy were invoked, you know, some energy not so dependent upon the Gate Keepings of Religious Purity and the Approval of Small Town Church Biases and Bigotries, where Jesus is often presented as being Judgmental, Selective, Vindictive, and nowadays, even Political.  

 

37  Oh, and a word about Faith.  Yes, Innocent Faith, the kind that’s passed down to us from our Mother’s knee, and that’s never been credibly questioned, well, that can be effective, as long as it’s Mythologically sound, but, no, we can’t take Cynical Knowledge and try to Paint over it with some new Belief System, because a natural Cynicism from our other acquired Beliefs will always bleed through, and such attempts to raise Faith out of Doubt is only Futile Wishful Thinking, creating a Guilty Mental Conflict more than anything else, which, yeah, may be the real point, as the Pastors can use their Parishioner’s Guilt against them as a kind of Control Mechanism.   

 

38  But, there is one Exception I can think of, in regards to my assertion that Faith can never overcome Doubt.  You see, if we’re willing to go to the almost ‘Life or Death’ extreme, as some Cults are willing to do, of using physical and emotional trauma to induce a Total Nervous Breakdown, then the Personality can be almost entirely dissolved and then reformulated into a kind of overly simplistic but very Faithful Zombie-like Individual… yeah, see my Video Series “The Material Mechanics of Spirituality” where I explain all that exhaustively.   

 

39  But, yes, it occurs to me now that both Religious Healing and Religious Morality can’t work out of the same Office, because when they do, our Faith is often overshadowed by our Guilt, and Faith is a Flower that wilts in the Shade, and so we feel we don’t deserve to be Healed.  Therefore I would suppose that Healing would require the Invocation of its own specialized Patron Saints and Angels, known as much for their Open Mindedness as for their Healing Prowess, and it can be left exclusively to the Angels of Righteousness and Vengeance to be made of the Sterner Stricter Stuff.  

 

40   So, yes, this suggests another instance of my hypothesized suggestion that we can expect that not all Mythologies are equally effective, or effective for Everything.  So a Mythology that applies only to the Religious Temperament, well, we can see that it’d be leaving a great many people out in the Cold, right? That’s why there’s much to be admired in the Old Pagan Mythologies, with their multiple Gods, meaning Multiple Personality Ideals, where their Blessings were distributed across a far wider and more inclusive demographic.   You know, we only want people not to be killing each other, right?... but it’s okay if some People party a lot, and that type of thing, you know, isn’t it? 

 

41  But, yes, in summing up this Part One, well, no, there can be no Return to Our Lost Mythological Innocence, can there?  Our World View, as it stands now, is built upon a Mountain of Past Memories chock full of Materialistic Cynicism, and we can’t just Hit Delete or do a Reset to get out of all that.  There’s no way we can get around that we know what to expect and that it’s not good, and that we actually DO have a kind of Faith, but it’s not the Good Kind, no… maybe we should call it an “Anti-Faith” – it’s  a Scientific Faith in Hopeless Nihilism, a Faith that we live in a Cold Cruel Callously Materialistic Universe.  Don’t we all remember the Little Talk we got when we were about 5, 6 or 7 – about how “There Isn’t Really a Santa Clause…”?   Well, there’s no taking any of that back.  We can’t un-ring that Bell or any of the other Bells that the General Scientific Sterile Bleakness rings in our Heads.  No! The Magic’s over!  The Age of Innocence is Lost to us Forever… or maybe not. … let’s Continue on to Part Two where we can talk about some Future possibilities …   thanks everybody…

 

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42  Hi Everybody.  This is Leo Volont with the Second and final part of my Series “The Power of Mythology” .   Let’s get started.

 

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I did a video series a while back called, “Revolution From the Top”, where I spoke of how we’d be soon entering the Machine Intelligence Age where all Data on Everything and Everyone would be collected and analyzed by Supercomputer Predictive Modeling Systems, allowing the World and all of us in it to be managed by a God-Like Intelligence with a Providential Will.   But, looking at just this one facet that we’ve been discussing here, the Power of Suggestion with its impact on Healing and Social Well Being, well, do we think that the Brave New Machine Intelligence System would decide to maintain the Population in the Scientific Mindset of Materialistic Doubt and Uncertainty, or do you think that the Intelligence would see the Value in Returning the World to a Mythological Age of Faith and Innocence?

 

43 Okay, if the Mythological Model would prove to be Happier and Healthier for us, well, wouldn’t that preclude any choice in the matter?  With a preponderance of Benefits being Predictively Certain, there would be only one way to go with it, wouldn’t there?... at least for the General Population. 

 

44  Really, our Brave New Civilization could do with the ‘Scientific Truth of Things’ what prior Mythology Based Civilizations had done with their cold hard Truths, that is, confine them to the care of some elite and isolated group of the Highest of High Initiates in some Holy of Holies where they’d swear on their Lives to keep that Dangerous Truth a Secret, even while they keep that Truth alive… though safely sequestered.

 

45  Yes, some people would have to know the Truth, you know, if the World becomes a huge Staged Set for Mythology, well, somebody has to know where all the handles and levers are being pulled, and the Machine Intelligence System would recognize the value of a Human Backup, as a kind of Existential Insurance of its own, you know, because it might take a Human Finger to push some great big Reboot Button, in the event of some Solar Flare disaster or whatever.  

 

46  So, yeah, I think that the Universities will have a big role to play in this up and coming Machine Intelligence Age, where I expect that the PhD’s will be the High Priests of our Tomorrow.  And I think the reasonable Rule for getting into such a Priesthood ‘Program’ would be that one NOT be told anything that one hasn’t half-guessed already.   Yeah, it’d make sense that you wouldn’t bring anybody into a Secret Society unless they have a Secret you want them to keep, right?  

 

 47  Yeah, I think it’s the condescending assumption of Modern Historians that all of the Ancient Priesthoods were benighted in ignorance, but only because it’s assumed now that such Priesthoods believed their own Propaganda, and that it’s somehow impossible that the Ancient Mind could have been as Cynical and Calculating as the Modern.  For instance, here’s a great example, that today it’s believed that the Priesthoods of Egypt and Mesopotamia truly believed that the Earth was Flat and the Center of the Universe, with the Sun revolving around the Earth, even while these Priesthoods could prepare Predictive Calendars for Lunar and Solar Eclipses as well as the locational relationships of the Planets to the Constellations, where the calculations would have been obvious and easy only when applying a Helio-Centric, that is, Sun-centric Model. 

 

48  Yes, Historians point to the elaborate and crazy super-complex Ptolemaic Earth-centric Model, but that is effectively a Functional Inverse of the Sun-centric model, and an Inverse Function is always easy to just mathematically derive, when you already have the Original Function sitting in front of you, and it wouldn’t require the Centuries of minute observations it’d take to chart the Earth-centric Model by tracing it from Data Points… Centuries where it would be assumed that no Ancient Mathematical Genius could ever have figured out what came as a hunch in the afternoon to Copernicus during the European “Dark” Age.  

 

49  So, yeah, to Lower Level Economic Planners and Retail Astrologers, the Priesthoods distributed Earth-Centric Charts, but only to preserve their Secret.  Yes, there were over-riding Mythological Social Engineering reasons for telling the People that they were at the Center of the Universe and that everything was as Simple as it Looked.  And what’s a Secret Society that doesn’t keep any Secrets?   

 

50  So it is either that the Modern Historians are the “Benighted Ones”, or they have their own Agenda, that is, getting us to believe that the Powers that Be always tell the Truth as they believe it to be, but how disingenuous is that, in believing that a Policy of Truth and Transparency is and always has been the Universal Norm when practically every Newspaper we read, when there used to be Newspapers, tells us that the Truth is one thing and that the Public Statements are another.   Or maybe our Modern Historians feel the need to stay In League with their Ancient Brotherhoods and Keep to the Story and Perpetuate their Secrets, and leave it to the Archeologists to dig up the Truth.

 

51  And we can see other instances where it seems clear to me that the Ancient Priesthoods were creating a Mythology before our keen and discerning eyes.  One example comes to mind, for instance, it’s an easy guess that the Egyptian Priesthood, who dealt with the Pharaohs on a day by day basis, and whose job it was to embalm the dead Pharaohs, were probably pretty well aware that the Pharaohs weren’t Gods, right?  Also, the Egyptian Priests obviously at one time or another conducted a Study that determined the necessity for Domesticating cats, where they found that cats not only reduced the storage losses of Grain due to rodent infestation, by predating on them, but that the very presence of cats repelled the rodents, thus leaving Grain Storage Areas almost entirely unmolested.

 

52  So what action did the Priesthood take when they learned that?  Well, they declared Cats to be Divine – Cats became like Little Gods!  It meant that the People would have a legal obligation to protect, feed and adore cats, and it really kind of caught on, didn’t it?  But, obviously the Priests didn’t BELIEVE cats to be Divine, no, they just wanted the People to open up their homes to them, and to stop throwing rocks and eating Cats for dinner. This was clearly Mythology being created for the sake of Social and Economic Engineering.  It was the Great Lie that made Surplus Grain Civilizations viable and it was no accident that Domesticated Cats quickly spread to every Surplus Grain Civilization in the World, probably being handed off from one Priesthood to another, you know, as tokens of professional courtesy and Civilized Good Will in a Cosmopolitan World that in many ways could be a model for us today.      

 

53  And, next, look at India, where it would seem intuitively impossible for any Intelligent Human Being to ever believe in Reincarnation, where it’s already really obvious that Human Life is Organically Based, and is perpetuated by Biological Reproduction, and where if you then super-imposed over top of it all the necessity for constantly returning immortal Souls to ‘pilot’ these mere Bio-Vehicles, well, it all becomes too overwhelmingly contradictory, or redundant – it’d be too complicated to be considered True, wouldn’t it?

 

54  Then, of course there’s the glaring Inconsistency where Reincarnation supposes Past Lives that nobody can remember.  And nobody West of the Euphrates ever even imagined such a wild Fiction as Reincarnation.  So it is that we can infer from the absence of any idea of Reincarnation in all the regions where it wasn’t being advanced by a General Indoctrination, that there could have been no Intuitive basis for Reincarnation.  But what we see is that none of that prevents the wide scale Belief in Reincarnation, even in the West now, does it?  NO!  It’s actually kind of axiomatic these days that apparently the Bigger the Lie, the Better, and, if you repeat a Lie long enough, most People will begin believing it.   

 

55  But, we could wonder ‘Why Lie’?... Why make up something like that?  Well, Reincarnation and the Karma System was Conceptually Designed to promise Future Life Rewards to Black Dravidian “Untouchables”, as long as they dedicated their Lives to the service of the White Aryan Brahmins.  It was a Mythological System of Belief imposed by an small Invading Eurasian Aryan Population to subjugate the larger Southern Indian Native Population. 

 

56  Well, okay, it’d be reasonable to ask now how the Smaller was able to conquer the Larger.  Well, you see, the Aryans learned how to smelt cheap and plentiful Iron Ore and so they could make harder and sharper weapons, and also install iron rims on their wagon and chariot wheels which, “in turn”, greatly increased load capacity and durability for these “Mobile Weapons Platforms”, but, the Native Population was limited to very expensive and much softer Bronze, which limited the size, effectiveness and mobility of their Armies.  Yeah, and keep in mind that the Aryans not only invaded India, but came down as a wide swath of Destruction through Persia, Mesopotamia, and they conquered Egypt too.  Only China avoided invasion by being able to develop Iron Smelting on their own.

 

57  But of all these Aryan Conquests, well, except for in India, all the Subjugated Peoples eventually learned how to smelt Iron too and became able to confront the Aryans with Armies of Equals.   The difference was that the Aryans in India imposed a Mythology that the Natives chose not to fight.  Yeah, while we generally believe that Crime shouldn’t pay, well, of all the Mythologies found on Earth, the Aryan Caste System, which was upheld by their Doctrines of Karma and Reincarnation, well, they may have been arguably the most successful in achieving their objectives.  Truth be told, India’s Aryan Brahmins had the smoothest ride of any Oppressors on Earth, and the Promise that any Dark Dravidian could eventually be born a Privileged White Brahmin too, well, it seemed to be enough to keep most of the victims content and whistling while they worked.  

 

58  Oh! But should we be concerned that our Future Mythology might pick up where India’s left off?  Well, we need to remember that the Indian Aryans only wanted to reduce the Native Population to Servitude because traditionally Conquering Warriors hate doing any work themselves.   But in our Machine Intelligence and Robotics Age Future, well, we’ll have no need for Servants, but that will give rise to another problem that we’ll have to face, that is, that we’ll no longer need so many People.

 

59  Yes, now, probably 99% of the World’s Population live as glorified Draft Animals, doing all the effective ‘toting and lifting’ for the 1% who are the Owners of nearly all the Productive Capital and Resources.  And it doesn’t take a City Block of Supercomputers to tell us that a Sustainable Climate Friendly Civilization would be far easier to maintain if the Population were just One Unit of People instead of a Hundred Units of People…or in our terms:  just 80 Million instead of 8 Billion People.  But I discuss that in greater detail in my Series “Revolution from the Top”, and so let’s move on…     

 

 60  But whatever Our Future Mythology turns out to be, well, what we’ve learned from Prior Mythology based Civilizations, is that we can assume that the Plausibility of it doesn’t have to be of any great concern.  People obviously lean towards believing anything Promising that they’re told by their Acknowledged Leaders.  And, yes, telling People what they want to hear seems to work most every single time.

 

61  But, doesn’t this tell us something about our Humanity?... that Human Beings are characteristically gullible, and therefore it’s likely that that’s the condition in which they’re really the most instinctively happy.  So, yeah, it’s probably a good guess that Evolution’s Mechanism of Natural Selection places a higher premium on just Nodding Yes to Leadership, than it does on expecting everybody to exercise Critical Judgment in arriving at Collaborative Group Consensuses, especially considering all the concomitant bickering and rebellion that might ensue from such ununified and unguided and therefore contentious debate, where Dissension could be severe enough to precipitate the violent Collapse and Death of the Society involved.  

 

62  Yeah, sometimes fighting over disputed “World Views” can cause more harm than good, where even the Winners come out battered and bleeding, and so we really need to learn to pick our Battles, and Peace is so Precious that we must expect that it should come at a Price.  And that Price may be the Forfeiture of the Truth, and it should be an easy price to pay, especially when the Truth can so often be so counter-productive.  

 

63  Also, we need to understand that the Unit for Evolutionary Natural Selection is the Social Group, not the Individual, and that in Successful Groups, the Young succeed to the Old and the Group lives on, but in Failed Groups, where internal dissension causes their downfall, well, everybody often dies all at once, putting a period to their Evolutionary Influence right then and there, which would be a good thing, if all they were was a pack of Rock-the-Boat Trouble Makers, right?    

 

64  Yeah, what we’re talking about here is the Pack Mentality as a Survival Mechanism, meaning that it only has to save more trouble, on the whole, than it causes.  So, yes, while I realize that the Pack Mentality is fraught with problems too, but while the Bass Line Intelligence of Humanity remains so problematically low, well, it’s probably best that the Stupid Majority is instinctually inclined to voluntarily follow their more intelligent Leadership Cadres.  Yeah, so as long as Stupid People are predisposed to Follow Instructions, not everybody needs to be so Smart… it’s an Evolutionary Efficiency.   

 

65  So, yes, at least at the Dawning of our Future Machine Intelligence Civilization, we might have to embrace that Fact of Human Life, as it stands today, that Civilization can’t function at its best without a supporting Mythology, that is, some comprehensive Back Story that explains the Universe and our places in it, that’s designed to promote Social Tranquility and a general sense of Well-Being, and we’ve already established that it doesn’t need to be either True or even all that plausible.

 

66  Yes, I expect that many Intelligent people will disagree with me, but my problem isn’t with Intelligent People.   Really, most of us College Educated people now separate ourselves out from the Common Masses, where we work and socialize almost exclusively with other intelligent people like ourselves, and our Communities are populated only by those Intelligent enough to become our Affluent neighbors.   Well, this Isolation and effective Segregation allows us to forget just how Stupid everybody else is.  So, yeah, before giving me grief about being so undemocratic, try taking off your suit and tie and put on jeans and a tee shirt, and maybe get a few tattoos on your face, and then go down and have lunch in the Worker’s Break Room, why ‘dontcha’?  You’ll think you died and went to Hell… or maybe just to the Zoo.  

 

67  So, yeah, just look at what we know about the distribution of Intelligence, given all the Standardized Testing we do, well, 75% of the People aren’t sufficiently intelligent enough to appreciate the Truth anyway.  Really, Education can enhance Intelligence but it can’t grow it, and Advanced Education just bounces off an Average Normal Human Mind, and Social Planners know for an absolute Certainty that the great Majority of People are NOT College Material, where increasing Enrollments just decreases the Graduation Rate, with More Students Going In meaning Less Students Coming Out.  And, on the personal level, any of us who had once gone off to Good College, well, think back… don’t we all remember the euphoria we experienced when first we realized we had left all the idiots behind in High School?  Yeah, the only time we ever see those “Knuckle Dragging Boneheads” again is at the Election Polls in November.

 

68  Yes, I know that many of us see the Truth as being an Ideal that we should hold ourselves up to, and so the idea of fabricating a Mythology goes against our Ethical Grains.   But Beauty is also an Ideal and Ordinary People of Average Intelligence understand that just fine, you know, in their own terms, and that’s what Public Surveys are for, to ascertain the Aesthetic Tastes of the Hoi Polloi.    So, yeah, their Lives can be structured so at least they think they’re having a Good Time.  So is the Truth really so important for them, especially when the Truth is an Intellectual Riddle that they’re not up to figuring out anyway.  So wouldn’t it serve them so much better to feed them some easier and more practical Non-Truth, some Mythology that could give them a perspective they could relate to, and which could keep them happy, healthy and out of trouble?

 

69  Okay, now let’s talk about implementing a Mythological Society.   Yes, one concern I have with Supercomputer Predictive Modeling is that while it’s great at accurately comparing existing Systems that’ve already generated huge Data Fields, but for anything just starting up from scratch, well, there probably wouldn’t be sufficient data for getting anything but some meagre and sketchy Model.     And, yeah, while some New Methodology may contain the exact same clusters of Variables as the previously Tried Approaches, but if they’re arranged so that their vectoring dynamics are all significantly different, well, the Predictive Modeling and Analysis System might still be relatively clunky in assigning the Scales and Magnitudes of the Effects it’d be trying to Predict, you know, with the effective Size and Shape of the Predicted Model being a grossly inaccurate distortion of what would actually happen.

 

70  So, the Predictive Modeling System, in order to be sure enough about getting all the quantifiable variables in their Operational Zone, where Optimization would become just a matter of ‘tweaking’ the Algorithm, well, to do all that, the System would need to try out the new scenarios in isolation, you know, by resorting to the use of Designed and Controlled Studies using Sample Populations to generate the necessary Data Fields before going All In with the General Population.  

 

 71  So, yes, the World is a Big Place and I suppose some entire regions could be set aside where entire Generations of Insulated Populations could be raised outside of Science, outside of Doubt, but within a Mythology that could be as comprehensively Beautiful, Glorious or Socially Moral as it would ever be possible to create.  But, yes, when first starting off, well, something would need to be Positively Taught to the children growing up, so what would that mostly likely turn out to be?

 

72  Well, if our aim is to design a Mythology that’s comfortable and feels like it fits, then why not  base such a Mythology on a Metaphysics derived from Our Own Dream World, that is, the generalized elements from the best of everybody’s dreams.  Yes, in the Machine Intelligence Age everybody will have a Personal Assistant Device, or maybe Tag-along Robots, that will act like inquisitive little Data Collectors, and every morning they’ll start the day off with “Tell Me your Dreams before you forget them”. 

 

73  Well, with a World of People reporting in on their Dreams, and with Total Surveillance and the Personal Assistant Devices collecting, compiling and collating enough data to know everything about people’s Real Lives and Waking Psychologies, well, the System would eventually be able to comprehend a coherent Correlative Psychology, comparing Dream Worlds, or even Astral Worlds, to the People’s Reality, so that all the Archetypes and Dream Motifs could be understood in terms of their Real World Life Implications.  Of course, the Dream Lives of those who are happiest and healthiest would be given a proportionately greater weight in the considerations.    

 

74  Yeah, we could get a Psychologically Accurate Religion out of workings like that, couldn’t we?  And, yeah, from that a New Mythology could be envisioned and developed.  Just think about it, that by endeavoring to make our Real World a Reflection, or even a Realization of our Dreams, well, we wouldn’t ever again really need to ‘Wake Up’ from out of the Aesthetic Contexts of our Dream World, and, yeah, it strikes me now that we’d probably have a great many more Ward Robe choices than what we have today.  You see, Dream Work is largely about Persona Development, and the easiest way to make a Persona Visible is by using Costumes and Uniforms.  

 

75  Yeah, in order to ‘express ourselves’, we could dress as befits our innermost Personas.  Yes, I realize that unless we come across a Full Length Mirror in our Dreams, well, we really don’t know what we’re wearing, do we?  But certainly our Personal Assistant Devices, using their Access to the Know-All See-System Central System, could identify our Persona Needs as per the description of our Dreams and help us out with the Fashion Catalogs in the morning.

 

76  Oh, and you know there have been Studies that DO show that we really are what we wear, you know, that we tend to Live Up To our costuming.  For instance, there are two big differences between Public Schools and Private Schools, and they are that, One, the Private Schools outperform the Public Schools, and, Two, that the Private Schools insist on Uniforms.  Yeah, the Private Schools dress up the kids like Smart Disciplined Students and, voila, that’s what they become.  Then, what we see in the Far East is that even the Public Schools insist on Uniforms, and their Public Schools outperform our Public Schools, where our stupid kids are allowed to dress stupidly.  Yeah, you know, there’s even the phrase, “dressing Smartly”, and it really means what it says. 

 

77  So, yes, Costumes make the Persona, and Pride in one’s Persona begins first with Appearances.  Yeah, it might seem like Wishful thinking that’s too magical or too conveniently simplistic to be true, but just try it, and maybe, yeah, at first it might just seem like pretentiously conceited Play Acting and Dress Up, but after you get used to everybody else believing in you, you’ll probably start believing in yourself.

 

78  But we were speaking about Implementation, weren’t we?  Well, of course the First Parent Generation would need to be volunteers, upholding the Mythology as though it were their own Sworn Truth.  They would necessarily need to be True Believers in the Plan. It would be a kind of Cultural Embodiment of ‘Fake It Until You Make It’.  But, yeah, all the Personal Assistant Devices, along with the Total Surveillance, would assure that nobody could stray away from the Plan too far.  And then it would help that the Schools, and all the Books and Media, that they’d   be echoing the same Mythological Story Lines. 

 

79  Yes, in order to be a fully functional Mythology, well, it would need to be able to furnish some Humanly Compelling series of Stories that could elucidate every conceivable Social or Moral Situation that could arise in Real Life.  It would be like a Universal Language in Morality and everybody could always be able to relate to what everybody else is talking about.   Yeah, I think that the Machine Intelligence could itemize and list most every discreet category of social and moral Situation, but that the Stories and Epic Poems would need to be written, or perhaps heavily edited, in the Universities, that is, unless or until Machine Intelligence can match or exceed the Creative Flare of our best Writers.  

 

 80  Really, any Man or Woman that grows up nurtured by a Full Rich Mythology will live a Life in which every Thing, every Event, will be infused with Meaning and Significance and where most of our Moral Choices will be clear and our Life Decisions confident.  Compare that to our lives today where the Cold Hard Meaningless Truth just gives us a bloated sense of Uncertainty and Emptiness and where French Existentialists seem to commit suicide on a conveyer belt.  We will certainly much prefer the Mythological Life where everything will seem like we’re Skipping, Dancing or Strutting through a Lifetime of Creative Poetry.

 

81  But, yes, “the Devil is in the Details”, and Life might still be Complicated, and as Confucius pointed out in China, well, Righteousness can never be fully cataloged, and Conflicts between competing Moral Imperatives may arise, so there might always remain some Moral Dilemmas to deal with, but, in those cases, well, the Mythology would only need to be able to trot out a series of stories in regards to resolving Moral Dilemmas, that is, in choosing either the better of Two Goods, or the Lesser of two Evils, or, where degrees of Relative Ascendency can’t be Determined, you know, the “Six of One and a Half Dozen of the Other” situations, well, there could be instructions on how to Flip a Coin.  Besides, Moral Conflicts are good for a Civilization.  All the best novels are about Moral Conflict, aren’t they?  It’s just imperative that either “Good always triumph over Evil”, or that “Justice shall prevail in the end”. 

 

82  Here's another thought… Arnold Toynbee, the Great Historian, was quite emphatic in regards to Civilizations being able to adapt to new circumstances, because Changes will inevitably occur.   Yeah, even just going through the various Stages of Development, will change a Civilization’s operating conditions, which would require some adaptive responses.   Also, if the Baby Licensing Protocols offer a smoother track for the more Intelligent Parental Candidates, well, the Population of the 20^th Generation would be significantly more intelligent than those of the 1^st.  This would probably affect the Perceived Plausibility of the Mythology, and since not everybody can be taken up into some PhD Secret Society Priesthood, well, the Situation would require an Adaptive Response.  

 

83  Yeah, we might ask whether a Smarter Humanity might rebel against a Mythology?  Good Question, but if the Mythology had already provided Centuries of Thriving Contentment, then it would be supported by the Inertia of Established Customs and Traditions, and even Intelligent People would understand the concept of “If It Ain’t Broke, then Don’t Fix It”.

 

84 But, yes, any Changes deemed necessary could be introduced either incrementally and therefore imperceptivity, except by the Universities that would keep mum about it, or, where Necessity dictates, immediate changes could be presented as “Temporary” Emergency Decrees, but which would never ever be fully tapered back. 

 

85  In my Series “Revolution From the Top” I posited the likelihood that as Confidence grew in the New Machine Intelligence System, well, there would be a concomitant growth in a Distrust for Human Leadership and Decision Making.  If this holds true than it would follow that the System would largely speak for Itself, with some Synthesized Kind of Voice of God.  But, if it’s found that People do have trouble personally relating to that, well, it would be easy enough to select and put forward a Popular Prophet, actually an acting Spokesperson for the Machine Intelligence System.

 

86  Prophets have always been traditionally the Harbingers of Change.  So, yes, the Machine Intelligence System could take advantage of Humanity’s Psychological propensity for Projecting Personality Types onto people simply because of their Personal Appearance and other Ostensible Characteristics, you know, that any decent Prophet needs to be a Tall Well Built Baritone, with a High Forehead, thick wavey hair, and a strong chin, or whatever.  So, with that understanding the System could identify some PhD-Priest that ‘looks and sounds the Type’, and then he could pose as the Prophet for the New and the Better.  However, we cannot preclude the possibility that some Messaging might sound better coming from a Woman, particularly if the Machine Intelligence Age turns in a Matriarchal Direction, which would be fine by me.  I like Girls.

 

87  So, okay, we can anticipate that a Society brought up consistently in Myth and Innocence would prove to be Happier and Healthier, but, remember, as I stated before, such a Society would necessarily need to start off as just an experimental offshoot Colony, and then there would still be the Primary Population to consider later.  So we need to ask ourselves how the Machine Intelligence Civilization could eventually transition Everybody over to The Brave New Mythological Way?  Well, it couldn’t be done in just one Generation, and from what the Great Historian Arnold Toynbee tells us about Cultural Assimilation, well, it would probably take at least 3 Generations.  But this would be with the understanding that All Media Content would have to push hard to popularize the Target Mythology.  So maybe we should now ask ourselves about the worst case scenario of “what if the Mythology really wasn’t that generally popular?” 

 

88  Well, in my Scheme of Thinking, everything always eventually reverts back to my favorite Pet  Idea of the Possibility for a Collective Consciousness.   So here I’m thinking that if the Machine Intelligence Mythology is largely congruent with The Higher Dream Mind’s Vision of Life-Purpose and Manners, and if there is already a significantly large Test Population that demonstrates the Success of this Mythological Model, well, if a Collective Consciousness is even possible, then this would likely be just the kind of Scenario where we’d expect to see a Collective Consciousness crystalize into form, wouldn’t we?  

 

89  And we already have one basis from which we could suppose a Collective Consciousness is possible, and that’s because we already have indications that the Higher Dream Mind, as I’ve stated before, is a Collective Phenomenon.  Really, we know that certain Dream Motifs and Persona Archetypes are Universals, that is, the same Dream Symbols and Motifs are found crossing Cultural and Geographical Lines.   The Role for the Machine Intelligence Mythology would be to reinforce our Dreaming by making it relevant within the Context of our Daily Lives and meaningful in regards to our New Cultural Mythological Assumptions.  It’d be like creating a Positive Feedback Loop where we would see intensification in both the People’s Conviction in their Mythology, as well as the Clarity and Certainty of Direction being Projected by our Higher Dream Mind.  And this would be happening even for those still living in the larger Old Way Society, but from the Inside Out, with the Influence being an attractive pull, with their dreams urging them on, bringing the first hints of Change that will occur in their Outer World, perhaps even generations later.  

 

90  Also, in cases where Dreams really do seem to be quite meaningless, well, we can depend upon the Personal Assistant Devices to come up with interpretations that ring most Teleologically True.  For instance, it’d be like a memory I have of my Mother, where I asked her what it meant that I had Dreamt about a vicious Bear being down in the Play Room, and she answered, “It means you need to get dressed to go to School, Sweetheart.”  So, yeah, since the System will know the People’s Planned Out Future long before the People do, well, the System would be well positioned for giving hints, prophecies and Preparatory Advice.  If Predictive Planning is utilized correctly, then this would be like leading the People by their Hands into their best of all possible Futures.  And if Predictive Planning is accurate, it would be the closest thing we’d ever have to Time Travel.  Yes, this could be an instance where Self Fulfilling Prophecies could be a Good Thing.   

 

91  Yeah, ordinarily the Larger should influence the Smaller, and not the other way around, but in this Case the Smaller, the Experimental Myth Colony, would have been the focus for intensive Work, that is, the Intention to develop a Matched Pair of Outer World to Inner, with a Mythology that would enjoy a solid Social Consensus and which is in conformance to the Dream Mind’s Objectives and Purposes.  So just the Potency and Coherency of the Smaller Myth Colony’s Mindset would give it the concentrated power to overwhelm the more vague, diffuse and nebulous Larger Collective Mindset of the Old Way Group, where the cacophony of conflicting individual beliefs would prevent the formation of any kind of a coherent competing Collective Consciousness.     

 

92  But what about People’s Spiritual Lives?  Well, the Gate I’ve used into Spirituality has been my Dreaming, particularly, Lucid Dreaming, and, well, at least in the West, Lucid Dreaming is still a rather new concept.  I think the first person to mention Lucid Dreaming in any kind of a big way was Ann Faraday in her book “Dream Power”.   She spoke of an Island People in the Tropics somewhere, where they took Dreaming very seriously, and they knew about Lucid Dreaming, and that the adults were all willing and able to give good advice to their children in regards to their Dream Work, and then through their Dream Work these people were able to optimize their Personas and thereby optimize their Lives.  I found it all very inspiring.  I’d still have the book but over the years it just fell apart.

 

93  But look how different we are from Ann Faraday’s Island People.  We aren’t taught anything like that, are we?  Yes, think about how many of us waste years of Dream Work because we don’t really Know what we’re doing, but we’re really just making guesses and hoping for the best.  But with the Machine Age crunching Full Data on every single person, and with a complete understanding of the interplay between Waking and Dreaming Psychologies, well, we would be able to get on with our Dream Work as though we did Know What We Were Doing.  We would be able to go through all our necessary Rites of Passage right on schedule and fully Realize our Optimum Selves while still Young Enough to enjoy it.

 

94  And, yeah, maybe Healings and Medicine, and all those concerns we had back in Part One, would not be such a huge issue anymore, but that’d be because in a less Toxic, less Worried and Conflicted World there’d probably be far less Illness.   

 

95  Yes, it’d be a nice place to live, wouldn’t it?   It’d be more than a Brave New World.  It’d be a Happy New World.  Yeah, the Old World only promises the Pursuit of Happiness – a hopeless Pursuit for many of us, with far more Losers than Winners, and often the Winners being the Bad Guys.  But Our Future Civilization will be able to deliver on that promised Happiness… but only as long as we can preserve our Innocence.  We need to remember that there’s no Rational Proofs for Aesthetics and that Happiness is an Aesthetic.   Pressed to Prove Itself, Happiness Pops Like a Bubble, and so, yes, Science may be a very useful “Pin”, but it‘d need to be kept at a Distance.

 

96  So, yes, a Society structured around a Mythology will be a Civilization built on a Cloud, and weighing it down with the Truth would only lead to a Crash.  So, yes, just as with our first Ancient Mythological Civilizations, our Next  Civilization may have its own Forbidden Fruit to guard and protect, but if we can manage to do so, well, we could be giving Adam and Eve and all the Rest of Our Humanity a Second Chance at Paradise.