THE FOG – The Nature of Ignorance
We have all heard the old adage “Ignorance is no excuse”. In today’s political climate we are constantly hearing projections of what has been coined alternate truth or fake news. The promotion of this type of distorted thinking can only foster confusion and ignorance. And for many these alternate truths are swallowed hook line and sinker. But are these alternative views something new. In truth these kinds of deliberate strategic deceptions are very old and can be traced back to our earliest creation stories.
Some of us older souls will vaguely remember a time when politicians and revolutionaries came from a different stock than what we see today. For example Thomas Paine was a man of integrity and supporter of the French Revolution. He applied what he learned to champion the American Revolution. He perceived the tyranny of the inherited succession of the aristocracy as well as the inherited succession of the church through apostolic succession as a tactic to dominate and instill ignorance in the people. In his book, The Rights of Man, Thomas Paine states the following.
“It is impossible to make wisdom hereditary, and on the other hand, that cannot be a wise contrivance, which in its operation may commit the government of a nation to the wisdom of an idiot.”
Well said Thomas! If you study the word idiot you will find the village idiot was a person who was not necessarily stupid. It was a person who did not have the wisdom to support the community. Therefore they became a detriment to the common good. And this is exactly what we see roaming the halls of the great corridors of power. Whether it be in government, the United Nations or a Mega Corporation or Church, when a leader devoted to a wrong cause navigates by some polar truth or principle they will surely become lost. Then all who support and follow them will also become lost. If humanity listens intently, it can still hear the still quiet wisdom of Thomas calling to each and every one of us beyond the rhetoric of the seemingly inherited wisdom of the village idiot. If each human can look responsibly within themselves they will find a dynasty of loving compassion at rest within the soul. To avoid defilement we only need to once again ponder the wisdom of Thomas Paine.
“Ignorance is a peculiar thing, once dispelled, it is impossible to reestablish. It is not originally a thing of itself, but is only the absence of knowledge, and through man may be kept ignorant, he cannot be made ignorant. The mind, in discovering truth, acts in the same manner as it acts through the eye of discovering objects. When once the object has been seen, it is impossible to put the mind back to the same condition it was before it saw it.”
Unfortunately like any true voice of change Thomas Paine’s obituary notice from the New York Evening Post reads “He had lived long, did some good, and much harm.” Only six mourners came to his funeral, two of whom were black, most likely freedmen. Many years later the writer and orator Robert G. Ingersoll wrote:
“Thomas Paine had passed the legendary limit of life. One by one most of his old friends and acquaintances had deserted him. Maligned on every side, execrated, shunned and abhorred his virtues denounced as vices, his services forgotten, his character blackened, he preserved the poise and balance of his soul. He was a victim of the people, but his convictions remained unshaken. He was still a soldier in the army of freedom, and still tried to enlighten and civilize those who were impatiently waiting for his death. Even those who loved their enemies hated him, their friend, the friend of the whole world, with all their hearts. On the 8th of June 1809, death came. Death, almost his only friend. At his funeral no pomp, no pageantry, no civic procession, no military display. In a carriage, a woman and her son who had lived on the bounty of the dead, on horseback, a Quaker, the humanity of whose heart dominated the creed of his head, and, following on foot, two negroes filled with gratitude, constituted the funeral cortege of Thomas Paine”. Today we can remember this man of gnosis by reflecting on one of his most famous inspirational quotes.
“The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion”.
As the social fabric of society evolves so do alternative realities. We can begin this discussion at any point in human history because humanity has been on a trajectory which has been very telling. So where shall we pick up the discussion. How about at one of great tipping points of our shared human history? Let’s look at the sacking of the great center of learning at Alexandria. This destruction has been blamed on different groups. From Julius Caesar’s fire during his civil war in 48 BC; to the attack of Aurelian in AD 270–275 to the decree of Coptic Christian pope Theophilus of Alexandria in AD 391 to the Muslim conquest of Egypt around AD 642. Whoever gets the blame the cause is always the same. The lack of gnosis and a fixation on the external God of fanaticism. As a result those who were the seekers of inner knowledge were forced to bow before the altar of mediocracy which has unfortunately become a constant theme in world affairs.
This is when the eclectic Christopagans began to seek safety and community underground. In 380 AD the oppression of archetypal Christianity climaxed under the Emperor Constantine who declared his Christianity as the official religion of the state. He then strictly enforced these alternate realities as the fake church laid the ground work for future inquisitions. From this point in history the internalistic wisdom of Alexandrian had been replaced with an institutional externalism. As a result the psychological spirituality of gnosis was usurped and declared heretical. Thus what emerged was an alternate reality which banished psychological or internalistic truth into the shadows. What followed was the birthing of the dark age of medieval superstition. A mature spirituality always compels something more than faith. This is why religion always creates dogma and the faithful remain children rather than becoming child-like. A mature spirituality demands inward knowledge rooted in experience, not faith. This is the wisdom of gnosis.
The spell of the dark ages was broken during the Renascence period. However the Renascence was brief and was eventually oppressed during the inquisitions of the Counter Reformation. But it had done a valuable service to humanity as it stimulated the great minds which would follow during the Enlightenment period of the 17th and 18th centuries.
Through all of the confusion a creative and diverse spirit has brought us to the 21st century. However the childish nature of corruption has not yet been cast off. We see this very clearly in the lying disposition of those we are expected to trust in the seats of earthly power. Many of our leaders have the character of spoiled children with the narcissistic temperaments of sociopaths.
To put it another way when people stop experiencing God they are forced to turn to faith which becomes a religious commodity. When Nietzsche stated, “God is dead” he was foreshadowing the prophetic wisdom of Karl Marx who stated that “religion is the opium of the people”. So when we are told in real time that society is in the midst of an opioid crisis it is a truth on many levels. This means that the soul of humanity is dying. That God is dying. And that we are responsible for it. We have become the angels of death! A death which is haunting because it could be prevented if we learn to face our fears and embrace gnosis. Karl Gustav Jung once commented.
“Western man’s soul has evidently become something of little worth. If much was in his soul he would speak of it with reverence. But since he does not do so we can conclude that there is nothing of value in it. Not that this is necessarily so always and everywhere, but only with people who put nothing into their souls and have all God outside”
In a legitimate revolutionary society the nestling of change is for the betterment of humankind. Its forbearance will justly be directed towards the common good and will be derived from an internalistic God of wisdom. However what we see today are dishonest organizations derived from the external God of religious fanaticism whose forbearance strives to justify the malevolent ideals of terror.
As a segment of society gravitates towards an external God the soul is becoming isolated and dying. As previously stated we see this manifestation in the physical world in the current opioid crisis. Our psyches are in pain due to its separation from the internalistic God of wisdom. As a result our psychic pain transcends the mind and inflicts physical pain. The ignorant dying soul turns to the false God of materiality and the opioid crisis gains momentum. It is not until we awaken from this state of ignorance that the soul will cease its suffering in the body.
If we do not awaken from the isolation of the opioid den, then what will follow this current crisis? What will be the next catastrophe? Maybe a superbug will infect the mind of a crack smoking head of state who will unleash a paranoid plethora of drones ravaging humanity as it deteriorates beyond even what an artificial intelligence can recognize.
What the early church father’s created was organized religion. And once you have organized religion you have to also create dogma and rules to support the creation of alternatives for truth. We have now come full circle. We have returned to another place to begin anew and reinterpret the deceptions of our old creation stories. Humanity has been given a final wake up call to get it right. If we fail then the planet will fail and we will fail with it.
Julius Robert Oppenheimer was another of our early fathers from the 20th century. He was a father of the atomic age. The Manhatten Project gave us the first atomic bomb and after its detonation he quoted from the Hindu sacred text the Bhagavad-Gita.
“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”.
We cannot turn back time and forget the tremendous devastation this energy released on Hiroshima and Nagasaki . But we can learn how to use such power for the advancement of humanity. To do this we must discover the force more powerful than any nuclear power. The untapped grace of Gnosis revealed by the one internalistic God of all life.
“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change”
Albert Einstein
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