Of Love and Strfe

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0 height="100%"><tr> <td valign="top" width=200 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div>  <A NAME="jooooo"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A><B> </B><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Of Love and Strfe"><B>HOME</B></A><B> </B></div> <div> <B>“Speak a new language</B></div> <div> <B>so that the world</B></div> <div> <B>will be a new world.” </B></div> <div>                       <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Calibri" >  - Rumi</FONT></div> <div> <B>________________</B></div> <div> PUBLIC BENEFIT  PRESS</div> <div>  <A NAME="__1"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A></div> <div> <B>Distinctive Human-Transcendent Books for Our Conscious Transformation</B></div> <div> __________________</div> <div> [BOOK CATALOG]</div> <div> COMPLETE </div> <div> HUMAN-TRANSCENDENT COMPLEMENTARY BOOKS (PDF/paperback)</div> <div> Written, Compiled, and edited by </div> <div> Joseph</div> <div> with Sharon</div> <div> <A HREF="id42_tttt.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="_"><B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700dc00000000.png" HEIGHT="15" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">The Conscious Transformation Culture</B></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id10_18.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="_"><B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700dc00000000.png" HEIGHT="15" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">The Public Benefit</B></A></div> <div> <A HREF="transconsciousness_transconsciousness_10.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="TRANSCONSCIOUSNESS"><B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700c800000000.png" HEIGHT="13" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">Transconsciousness</B></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id2_tes_1.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Spell"><B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700dc00000000.png" HEIGHT="15" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">The Erotic Spell</B></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id47_len_1.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="LM"><B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700dc00000000.png" HEIGHT="15" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">Of Love and the Man: John Lennon</B></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id48_rev_beats.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="_"><B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700dc00000000.png" HEIGHT="15" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">Revolution and the Beatle</B></A><B>s</B></div> <div> <A HREF="beatles_spirit_beatles_spir.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="_"><B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700dc00000000.png" HEIGHT="15" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">Beatles Spirit: Visionaries of Love</B></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id49_ar.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="_"><B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700dc00000000.png" HEIGHT="15" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">The Ascendent Revolution</B></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id46_ckw.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="_"><B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700dc00000000.png" HEIGHT="15" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">The Christ: Our Kingdom-Within</B></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id56_www_ofpathicsandevil_net.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="OF PATHICS"><B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700dc00000000.png" HEIGHT="15" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">Of Pathics and Evil:</B></A></div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <A HREF="id56_www_ofpathicsandevil_net.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="OF PATHICS"><B>A Philosophy against Malice</B></A></div> <div> <B>[I-UNiverse Publication]</B></div> <div> <A HREF="trump_manifested_trump_manifested.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="_"><B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700dc00000000.png" HEIGHT="15" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">Trump Manifested</B></A></div> <div> <B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700dc00000000.png" HEIGHT="15" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">Studies in Meaning:</B></div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>A Critical-Creative Thinking </B><B>Education</B></div> <div> <A HREF="http://www.studiesinmeaning.com" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.studiesinmeaning.com"><B>www.studiesinmeaning.com</B></A></div> <bR> <div> <TABLE BORDER="2" CELLPADDING="2" CELLSPACING="1" WIDTH="150" BORDERCOLORLIGHT="#C0C0C0" BORDERCOLORDARK="#808080" FRAME="BOX" RULES="ALL" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" > <tR> <tD VALIGN=TOP HEIGHT= 20 ><NOBR><div> BOOKS IN PROGRESS</div> </NOBR></tD> </tR> </TABLE></div> <div> <A HREF="id50_09.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="IBP"><B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700dc00000000.png" HEIGHT="15" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">In Beauty and Passion</B></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id51_ntbn_1.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="_"><B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700dc00000000.png" HEIGHT="15" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">The Need to Be Needed</B></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id53_hs_1.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="_"><B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700dc00000000.png" HEIGHT="15" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">Hard and Soft Natures</B></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id21_15.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="_"><B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700dc00000000.png" HEIGHT="15" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">Catharsis: A Moral Downfall  </B></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id19_16.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="NOTES ON ETHICS/MORALS"><B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700dc00000000.png" HEIGHT="15" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">Notes on Ethics / Morals </B></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id28_19.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="_"><B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700dc00000000.png" HEIGHT="15" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">Rock / Pop Lyrics</B></A><B> </B></div> <div> <A HREF="id60_wisdom_enquiries_1_1.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="WISDOM ENQUIRIES"><B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700dc00000000.png" HEIGHT="15" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">Wisdom Enquiries</B></A></div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <TABLE BORDER="2" CELLPADDING="2" CELLSPACING="1" WIDTH="137" BORDERCOLORLIGHT="#C0C0C0" BORDERCOLORDARK="#808080" FRAME="BOX" RULES="ALL" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" > <tR> <tD VALIGN=TOP HEIGHT= 74 ><NOBR><div> <B>PUBLISHED</B></div> <div> <B>CLASSIC </B></div> <div> <B>NOVELS & PLAYS</B></div> <div> <B>(Summaries)</B></div> </NOBR></tD> </tR> </TABLE></div> <div> <B>Human-Transcendent </B><A HREF="id67_45.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="_"><B>Novels</B></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id67_54.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="_"><B>Plays</B></A></div> <bR> <div> <TABLE BORDER="2" CELLPADDING="2" CELLSPACING="1" WIDTH="138" BORDERCOLORLIGHT="#C0C0C0" BORDERCOLORDARK="#808080" FRAME="BOX" RULES="ALL" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" > <tR> <tD VALIGN=TOP HEIGHT= 36 WIDTH="126"><div> <B>CONTRIBUTORS' ADDITIONS</B></div> </tD> </tR> </TABLE></div> <div> <B>   </B></div> <bR> </td> <td valign="top" width="100%" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <B> </B><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Of Love and Strfe"><B>HOME</B></A><B>  </B><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#993300" FACE="Arial" ><B> |</B></FONT><FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#0000BF" FACE="Arial" ><B> </B></FONT><B> </B><A HREF="id38_jjjjjjj.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE=" BOOK PURCHASING / DONATIONS"><B>Book Purchasing / Donations</B></A><B>  </B><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" ><B> </B></FONT><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#993300" FACE="Arial" ><B>|</B></FONT><B>  </B> <A HREF="id29_background.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="_"><B>Author</B></A><B>  </B><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" ><B> </B></FONT><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#993300" FACE="Arial" ><B>|</B></FONT><B>   </B><A HREF="id35_contact_joseph_or_sharon_at.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="contact"><B>Contact</B></A><B>   </B></div> <div> <A HREF="index_l.htm#htb_1" TARGET="TRLX_Left" TITLE="Of Love and Strfe"><B>Human-Transcendent BOOKS</B></A><B> </B><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" ><B> </B></FONT><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#993300" FACE="Arial" ><B>|</B></FONT><B>  </B><A HREF="id65_supp_1.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="part"><B>Participants</B></A><B>  </B><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#993300" FACE="Arial" ><B>|</B></FONT><FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#0000BF" FACE="Arial" ><B> </B></FONT><B> </B><A HREF="id64_555.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="_"><B>Music / E-Magazine / Humor</B></A><B> </B><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" ><B> </B></FONT></div> <bR> <div> <TABLE BORDER="2" CELLPADDING="2" CELLSPACING="1" WIDTH="537" BORDERCOLORLIGHT="#C0C0C0" BORDERCOLORDARK="#808080" FRAME="BOX" RULES="ALL" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" > <tR> <tD VALIGN=TOP HEIGHT= 43242 WIDTH="525"><div>  <A NAME="1000_1_1"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A></div> <div>     <IMG SRC="2d824230.jpg" border=0 width="36" height="35" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <div>   <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#330000" FACE="Arial Narrow" ><I><B>Meaning</B></I></FONT></div> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <I>  <IMG SRC="2f78ad10.jpg" border=0 width="138" height="209" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"><IMG SRC="27a17d10.jpg" border=0 width="279" height="209" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></I></div> <div> <B>                     JUSTICE</B><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" ><I>                                    </I></FONT><B>WISDOM</B><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" ><I>                      </I></FONT></div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> THE PUBLIC BENEFIT PRESS</div> <div> For the Ascendancy of Justice and Wisdom </div> <div> over Injustice and Ignorance</div> <div> We are surely in the midst of a conscious transformation, as shown in the first book of our human-transcendent book series, <I>The Conscious Transforma- tion Culture </I>at the sidebar.<I> </I></div> <div> These books, though titled by the author, include extensive passages by eminent  and perceptive persons from all times and places in support of the ideas and ideals of this conscious transformation <I>culture </I>– as centered in this website. </div> <div> These books consolidate<I> </I>the various human-transcendent ideas and ideals that otherwise appear randomly disconnected. </div> <div> These books, though each thematically different, are nonetheless collectively of one underlying purpose, which is:  to free out minds effectively so that justice and wisdom will gradually take the ascendency over injustice and ignorance, both personally and socially.  </div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> __________________________________________________________</div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> THE FEATURED BOOK</div> <bR> <bR> <div> <IMG SRC="2fa3d3a0.png" border=0 width="317" height="314" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <bR> <div> THE PUBLIC BENEFIT ASSOCIATION</div> <div> A Concept of Mutuality</div> <bR> <div> By</div> <div> Joseph</div> <div> with Sharon</div> <bR> <div> __________________________________________________________</div> <bR> <bR> <div> Contents</div> <bR> <div> 1. <A HREF="#the_public_benefit_association" TITLE="Of Love and Strfe">The Public Benefit Association</A></div> <div> <IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700f000000000.png" HEIGHT="16" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">The Idealistic Perspective</div> <div> <IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700f000000000.png" HEIGHT="16" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">The Realistic Perspective</div> <div> 2.  <A HREF="#ct_1" TITLE="Of Love and Strfe">Our Conscious Transformation</A></div> <div> 3.  <A HREF="#selections_from_the_aquarian_conspiracy" TITLE="Of Love and Strfe">Selections from </A><A HREF="#selections_from_the_aquarian_conspiracy" TITLE="Of Love and Strfe"><I>The Aquarian Conspiracy</I></A><I>: Personal and Social Transformation</I></div> <div> 4.  Transconsciousness: Our Love-Within Persona<U>l</U><U>r</U>eligion <I>Transconsciousness: A Love-Within Personalreligion</I></div> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> _________________________________</div> <div>  <A NAME="the_public_benefit_association"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A></div> <bR> <div> <TABLE BORDER="2" CELLPADDING="2" CELLSPACING="1" WIDTH="105" BORDERCOLORLIGHT="#C0C0C0" BORDERCOLORDARK="#808080" FRAME="BOX" RULES="ALL" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" > <tR> <tD VALIGN=TOP HEIGHT= 24 ><NOBR><div> <B>PART ONE</B></div> </NOBR></tD> </tR> </TABLE></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B> <A NAME="the_idealistic_perspective"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A></B><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Calibri" ><B>The Idealistic Perspective</B></FONT></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>PREAMBLE</B></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <I><B>The Call</B></I></div> <bR> <bR> <div> 1      Our time is here to take it now.</div> <div> 2      Let us come together in justice and in wisdom.</div> <div> 3      Let us work for the good of the one and for the many.</div> <div> 4      Let us be here, there, and everywhere.</div> <div> 5      Let us give everyone good a chance, a second chance, an ...<I>nth</I> chance.</div> <div> 6      Let us lessen human suffering, both physical and mental.                </div> <div> 7      We have now to serve ourselves for the first time in history.</div> <div> 7:1   What our society cannot, or will not, do for us, we will do for ourselves.</div> <div> 8       Let us infiltrate injustice and ignorance – turn the tables on them – take the </div> <div>          upper hand.</div> <div> 8:1    Where there is a need, there we strike.</div> <div>          Where there is an injustice, there, too, we strike</div> <div>          Where there is ignorance, there, as well, we strike.</div> <div> 8:2    To Arms! Wisdom is to be our weaponry.</div> <div>          Contributions our munitions.</div> <div>          Injustice and ignorance our enemy.</div> <div>          Consolidation our good fight.</div> <div>          Mutual benefits our victory.</div> <div> 9       What we want is a <I>public benefit </I>– for those who want, or need, and</div> <div>          deserve benefits.     </div> <div> 9:1    Whoever receives a benefit, earns that benefit.</div> <div> 9:2    Everyone contributes to the public benefit either by giving or by</div> <div>          receiving.</div> <div> 9:3    Insofar as recipients deserve a benefit they are contributors.     </div> <div> 9:4    Such a public benefit is a concept: a concept of mutuality.</div> <div> 9:5    Such a public benefit is public in two senses: <I>for </I>the public, and </div> <div>          <I>made </I>public – nothing to hide; no secrets.</div> <div> 9:6    Integrity, grace, and cheer are the earmarks of such a public benefit.</div> <div> 9:7   The public benefit's motto: For <I>each </I>his own, for <I>all </I>the whole.</div> <div> 9:8    No leaders, no authority figures, no politics, no bureaucracy, no</div> <div>          capital, no "ism," no possessions, no boundaries, no legalities – Only</div> <div>          people <I>for </I>people with their exemplars and heroes for inspiration.</div> <div> 9:9    Individuality within a collective framework is an ideal for which to aim.</div> <div> 9:10  Freedom is the heart and blood, of the public benefit – freedom from</div> <div>          fear, from poverty, from isolation, from despair, from malice, from</div> <div>          ridicule, from intimidation, from rejection, from the Man – or the Woman.                 </div> <div> 9:11  The good will of the public benefit belongs to everyone. There will no</div> <div>           longer be any reason to be forced to demean or compromise oneself.</div> <div> 9:12   It is not only a personal freedom we want, but a <I>self-</I>freedom as well.</div> <div> 10      Let's take the best of what we have now and integrate it all into a unity    </div> <div>           of purpose and action.</div> <div> 10:1    Let this unity of purpose and action advance a high civilization of cul-</div> <div>            ture, services, and security.</div> <div> 10:2    What kind of culture? A goodwill culture interlaced with wisdom and   </div> <div>             justice. What kind of services? Those which mutually benefit those who </div> <div>             serve and those who are served. What kind of security? The fundamental</div> <div>            securities: financial, psychological, philosophical, spiritual – and the</div> <div>            most elusive security of all: the wisdom of <I>in</I>security.</div> <div> 10:3    Let this unity of purpose and action be linked by a common goal and</div> <div>            philosophy.</div> <div> 10:4    Let this link accrue by the public benefit's publication, which will</div> <div>            express and convey its common goal and philosophy.</div> <div> 10:5    Let the credo of this common goal and philosophy be simply: <I>good will</I></div> <div> <I>           toward those of like mind</I> – and <I>caution </I>toward all others.</div> <div> 11       For those of ill-will toward us, let us take the offensive instead of</div> <div>            tarrying always on the <I>de</I>fensive.</div> <div> 11:1    The "ill-will" we're to take the offensive against is the injustice and</div> <div>             ignorance not only of others, but of that in ourselves as well.</div> <div> 11:2    What offensive are we to take against these two ogres, injustice and</div> <div>            ignorance? Obviously, one would think, their contraries: justice and</div> <div>            knowledge. It's not that simple, though. Knowledge is power, true –</div> <div>            yet is especially true in the minds and actions of the <I>un</I>just; and, as for    </div> <div>            justice, who can be more seemingly just (self-righteous) than the unjust      </div> <div>            in their schemes. So where are we? As always, darkened by ignorance</div> <div>            and controlled by injustice.</div> <div> 12      Something more than knowledge is needed to insure the ascendancy of</div> <div>            justice. And that "something more" is <I>wisdom </I>– a new wisdom for our</div> <div>            times: a <I>human-transcendent </I>wisdom.</div> <div> 12:1    Let us, in  wisdom of a new perspective, reverse this time-worn pattern</div> <div>            of human encumbrance. Let us begin the long, tortuous climb to control</div> <div>            of our lives. Let us change the direction of history. It is our time! Let us</div> <div>            seize it, shape it, and live it. It is the summit we are reaching for. We</div> <div>            will never  reach  it, but we will draw closer  to it. It's like the infinity of</div> <div>            numbers: the count increases limitlessly; yet each higher number </div> <div>            increases the potential for complexity and diversity.</div> <div> 12:2    Come, let us not forever be limited by  injustice and ignorance, our</div> <div>            own as well as of others. They have had their day for far <I>too </I>many</div> <div>            days. Nothing is happening. We're mired in the rut of monotony, and</div> <div>            we're going nowhere. All the potential in  our minds and character</div> <div>            must inspire us to break out, break through, to the bracing strength of</div> <div>            freedom – freedom in the mind through wisdom and justice.</div> <div> 13       We're losing control of our lives. We can't put our finger on it; but we</div> <div>            know something is amiss – somewhere, somehow. The computer-internet-</div> <div>            smartphone age is here; and we're under surveillance. We'd better get </div> <div>            hold of our lives before someone else does.</div> <div> 13:1    Let us take the ascendancy! And now!</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>THE PLAN</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>THE PUBLIC BENEFIT</B></div> <div> [In General]</div> <bR> <div> <B>  ITS PURPOSE</B></div> <div> 1     Our Public Benefit acts as an invisible thread holding together the          </div> <div>         visible links of its variable social and inter-personal relations, ideas, </div> <div>         and undertakings.</div> <div> 2     Our Public Benefit  recognizes no boundaries of effect. To be everywhere  </div> <div>         is its ongoing perspective.</div> <bR> <div> <B>ITS  DESCRIPTION</B></div> <div> 1     Our public benefit's centralization is twofold: its philosophy  and its</div> <div>         treasury.</div> <div> a. Its philosophy is disseminated through its publications, and   </div> <div>     educational programs and functions.</div> <div> b. Its treasury is the resource of funds provided and disbursed by its   </div> <div>     contributors, for mutual benefits.</div> <div> 2     Our Public Benefit is a concept not a bureaucracy – a concept of mutuality.</div> <div> 3     Nothing is owned by our Public Benefit, only by its contributors.</div> <div> 4     There are no members of our Public Benefit, only its contributors and </div> <div>        safekeepers.</div> <div> 5     The Public Benefit is the safekeeping of trust by its safekeepers through</div> <div>        the just and wise function of its treasury.</div> <bR> <div> <B>I: THE TREASURY</B></div> <div> 1      The treasury is the public depository of whose responsibility belongs to </div> <div>          all the contributors of the Public Benefit.</div> <div> 1:1   The treasury is the safekeeping of funds provided by our contributors.</div> <div> 2      Contributors provide the funds for the treasury.</div> <div> 2:1   Safekeepers safekeep the treasury's funds.</div> <div> 2:2   A contributor can be a safekeeper; or a safekeeper can be a contributor.</div> <div>  3     Contributions are voluntary  and open.</div> <div> 3:1   All  funds received  for our public benefit are to be used for its general </div> <div>         purposes, or for its particular undertakings.</div> <div> 3:2   A strict account of all  funds, receipts and expenditures, is to be kept on  </div> <div>         record by the safekeepers of the treasury for both the treasury and its </div> <div>          disbursement undertakings.</div> <div> 3:3   All contributors and safekeepers have access to an accounting of the</div> <div>         amount and disbursements of the treasury's funds in  all or specified  </div> <div>         transactions.</div> <div> 4      Procedure of an undertaking –: A person, or association, has an idea for </div> <div>         a project. The treasury's  safekeepers review it. If approved, necessary     </div> <div>         steps are planned for its undertaking and achievement.</div> <div> 4:1   Contributors can form associations for the establishment and organiza-  </div> <div>         tion, for the policies and procedures, for the management and monetary  </div> <div>         distribution, of a mutually beneficial undertaking.</div> <div> 4:2   The treasury will consist of various checking accounts for each associa-  </div> <div>         tion's undertakings, or for the individual's undertakings. For instance, a </div> <div>         contributor can contribute funds for education in general: as a contribu- </div> <div>         tion to each association involved in educational benefits; or can contri- </div> <div>         bute funds to one particular association established for a particular </div> <div>         undertaking; or can contribute funds for both.</div> <div> 4:3   There is to be no accumulation of monies in the treasury other than the </div> <div>         budgets for designated disbursements. For instance, an enterprise is </div> <div>         advanced, its purpose and format established, and its funds determined </div> <div>         and canvassed for its realization.</div> <div> 4:4    Funds contributed to the treasury are received for an undertaking </div> <div>          determined by the fixed and ongoing needs of the undertaking.</div> <div> 4:5    All proceedings for an undertaking are to be recorded and preserved. </div> <div> 4:6    Receipts are issued to contributors for each and every contribution made </div> <div>          to our Public Benefit.</div> <div> 4:7    A financial statement issued by the treasury is sent periodically to each      </div> <div>          individual person and/or association regarding its budget assessment.</div> <div> 4:8    Each association or person is accountable to the treasury for its means </div> <div>          of expenditures.</div> <div> 5      The treasury's jurisdiction  is determined equally  by the principles of the </div> <div>         Public Benefit document, by its safekeepers and by its contributors.</div> <div> 5:1   Representatives for our contributors choose safekeepers to monitor the </div> <div>         best interests of our Public Benefit.                </div> <div> 5:2   Safekeepers for the Public Benefit  safekeep either (1) a particular</div> <div>         undertaking, (2) the treasury, or (3) the philosophy.</div> <div> 5:3   Safekeepers consist of  1. treasurerers  2. originators  3. developers   </div> <div>         4. coordinators   5. specialists    6. observers</div> <div> 6     The treasury is under its own jurisdiction; and so accordingly is not </div> <div>         affiliated with any existing banking organization other than for legal </div> <div>         transactions.</div> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>II: THE PHILOSOPHY</B></div> <bR> <div> 1     Philosophy, proper, means "love of wisdom." – [Gk-<I>philos </I>. loving  + Gk </div> <div> <I>       sophia</I>. wisdom].</div> <div> 2     Wisdom means  the "quality or state of being wise; knowledge of what is </div> <div>         true and right coupled with  just judgment as to action." It means "sagacity, </div> <div>         discernment, or insight."</div> <div> 2:1   Wisdom is both practical and contemplative: practical in living, and </div> <div>         contemplative in thinking.</div> <div> 2:2   Sound judgment characterizes practical wisdom; intuitive insight, </div> <div>         characterizes contemplative wisdom.</div> <div> 2:3   Coupled with sound judgment is right action; coupled with intuitive </div> <div>         insight is effective expression. </div> <div> 3      For the Public Benefit to succeed in its immense task, wisdom, foremost, </div> <div>         must accompany it in all its undertakings.</div> <div> 3:1   For wisdom to succeed in the Public Benefit enterprise, it has to be </div> <div>         open, eclectic, and practical – "open," in that it is accessible to as many    </div> <div>         people as possible; "eclectic," in that it must consist of the best of all </div> <div>         wisdoms; "practical" in that it must be founded on a well-rounded human </div> <div>         psychology.</div> <div> 4     Philosophy, as the love of wisdom, is the love of (attraction to) right action </div> <div>        and intuitive insight. Love integrates a sensitive state of mind with a </div> <div>        dynamic activity. </div> <div> 4:1  Philosophy integrates the sensitive dynamics of love with wisdom. </div> <div>        Accordingly,  philosophy is both a state of wisdom and a study of wisdom   </div> <div>        – the "study" of wisdom being the integrating love with wisdom.</div> <div> 4:2  Philosophy is both a sensitive state of mind and a dynamic activity –: the </div> <div>        state of loving wisdom; and the activity of living wisdom.</div> <div> 4:3  It is the task of philosophy proper to inspire in an individual the love of </div> <div>        wisdom.</div> <div> 5     Philosophy is an enquiry into the meaning of life, human life, and of the world.</div> <div> 5:1  Philosophy asks the life-eternal question: Why? – and attempts to answer </div> <div>        that Why.</div> <div> 5:2   Philosophy  concerns itself with  such universal, eternal queries as:  What </div> <div>         is life? What is time? What is the mind? What is the meaning of life? Why </div> <div>         are we here?  Where are we going? What is the right way to live? What is </div> <div>         justice? What is Love?</div> <div> 5:3  The answers to these questions make up the body of wisdom that one </div> <div>         lives.</div> <div> 6      Wisdom is our grace-of-being. </div> <div> 6:1   Our grace-of-being is Love.</div> <div> 6:2   Love is Transcendence.</div> <div> 6:3   Transcendence is the consciousness of  grace-of-being.</div> <div> 6:4   Consciousness of grace of being is our transconsciousness.</div> <div> 6:5   Transconsciousness is the state of mind evoked by the will to act and </div> <div>         think in Love.</div> <div> 7      Love is the will to unity – the unity of everything. Or otherwise stated: </div> <div>         Love wills unity.</div> <div> 7:1   Love attracts and binds unity; or otherwise stated: Love is <I>the bond of unity</I>.</div> <div> 8      Love is the concern for everything - from good to evil, beyond good and </div> <div>         evil.</div> <div> 8:1   Good and evil are within the scope of Love and beyond the scope of Love.</div> <div> 9      It is the unity between any two persons, or more, that evokes sentiment.</div> <div> 9:1   Human love evokes, a passionate-affectionate sentiment.</div> <div> 9:2   Human love is not a sentiment; but the power of sentiment.</div> <div> 9:3   There is willing, and there is the power-to-will – not as separate realities </div> <div>          but within the same one Reality.</div> <div> 9:4   The power of sentiment – Love – is, otherwise stated: the will to unity. </div> <div>          Accordingly, Love is the power-to-will unity; or simply the power to will.</div> <div> 10     Inward to the power to will is the Meaning  of that power.</div> <div> 10:1  Part of the Meaning of that power is its will to love– : Love as  the </div> <div>          attraction to, and unity (bond) of, one entity or mind to another entity or </div> <div>          mind. </div> <div> 10:2   As to the ultimate Meaning of Love – why there is love – or of anything for </div> <div>           that matter, remains forever unknown to us in life: the ultimate mysterium. </div> <div>           We may have intimations of the ultimate of things, but that is all for our </div> <div>           state of mind as it is now in its present development.</div> <div> 11      Love is the intimation, or image, of Meaning. The closer we are to living </div> <div>           and  understanding Love, the closer we are to its Meaning.</div> <div> 11:1   Living in wisdom is living in the intimation, or image, of Meaning.</div> <div> 12      Philosophy teaches us,  leads us, to wisdom.</div> <div> 12:1   The wisdom unto Meaning is twofold: psychological and transcendent – </div> <div>           psychologically bound to our ego-self; transcendently free from the ego    </div> <div>           of self.</div> <div> 13      Our human makeup is both psychological and transcendent, relative to </div> <div>           the particular individual.     </div> <div> 13:1   In the most general terms, Psychologically we are motivated by pleasure </div> <div>           and pain, needs and wants, and self (the "I" in all its human aspects). </div> <div>           Transcendently, we are motivated by truth, right, understanding, grace </div> <div>           and being (selflessness) – These are the qualities that help balance the </div> <div>           psychological part of us, and make us receptive to Meaning.</div> <div> 13:2   In both cases our psychology and our transcendence – the wisdom we </div> <div>           are concerned with is humanly grounded. Accordingly, it is a human-</div> <div>           transcendent wisdom that we seek and strive to live by.</div> <div> 14     The philosophy of our Public Benefit is the study and advancement of </div> <div>          (love of) a human-transcendent wisdom.</div> <div> 14:1  This philosophy is a philosophy of Love in both its human and </div> <div>           transcendent aspects.</div> <div> 15     This philosophy is taught to adults, youth, and children through an education </div> <div>           in understanding.</div> <div> 15:1  This education in understanding is both academic and psychological.</div> <div> 15:2  As academic, it is a <I>critical-creative thinking</I> education – <I>contextual</I> </div> <div>          understanding; as psychological, it is a <I>human-transcendent</I> education – </div> <div>          <I>integrated </I>understanding.</div> <div> 15:3   Understanding can be considered as the other side of love; for through </div> <div>           understanding comes the sentiment of unity – which is human love.</div> <div> 16     Understanding evokes love.</div> <div> 16:1  Love can be experienced narrowly  or broadly. To love narrowly is to love </div> <div>          only one aspect of reality; for example: the good, or beauty, or pleasure. </div> <div>          This is to love humanly, and is natural. To love broadly, is to love not only </div> <div>          good, but evil, not only beauty, but the ugly, not only pleasure but pain, </div> <div>          and so forth. This is to love transcendently, and is supranatural.</div> <div> 17    Our philosophy is to be a study and a living of a human-transcendent </div> <div>          wisdom – a realistic idealism .</div> <div> 17:1  This realistic-idealism philosophy is to be the cornerstone of the Public </div> <div>           Benefit's treasury and all its enterprises and undertakings.</div> <div> 18     This realistic-idealism philosophy will be presented in the Public Benefit's </div> <div>           bi-monthly publication.</div> <div> 18:1  The purpose of our publication is to disseminate and promote the </div> <div>           philosophy and treasury of the Public Benefit. </div> <div> 18:2  The contents of the publication will consist of (1) brief capsulation of </div> <div>          major social, political, cultural, and scientific news stories; (2) literary </div> <div>          passages on all significant topics by great and by noted minds of all </div> <div>          countries, of all times; (3 contributions of writings, art, etc. from </div> <div>          contributors and safekeepers; (4) services information; (5) the Public </div> <div>          Benefit's financial update; and (6) calendar of events.</div> <div> 19     The elusive specter of deceit is all about us. Let us be wary! </div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <TABLE BORDER="2" CELLPADDING="2" CELLSPACING="1" WIDTH="112" BORDERCOLORLIGHT="#C0C0C0" BORDERCOLORDARK="#808080" FRAME="BOX" RULES="ALL" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" > <tR> <tD VALIGN=TOP HEIGHT= 24 ><NOBR><div> <B>PART TWO</B></div> </NOBR></tD> </tR> </TABLE></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B><IMG SRC="27c85210.jpg" border=0 width="389" height="289" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></div> <div> Colwell</div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> <B> <A NAME="the_realistic_perspective"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A></B><FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Calibri" ><B>The Realistic Perspective</B></FONT></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>1</B></div> <div>   </div> <div> Assume there could be a society within, complementary to,  a governmental society whose members were affiliated by a common objective; namely, an independent community of interests. And assume further that these interests were beneficial to each and every member at his-her own behest in matters of education, culture, wisdom, recreation, entertainment, information, and services. And still further, assume that a periodical magazine served as the tangible link in which each and every member of this independent-beneficial  society  believed themselves a viable part of its function, whether or not they took part in it, whether or not they felt themselves a part of it.</div> <div> On the basis of these three assumptions, could such an independent-beneficial society suc- ceed, not just temporarily, but perennially; not just locally, but nationally – perhaps in the distant future, globally? What fundamental concept would assure its success? That concept would have to encompass the reality of human nature in an ideal situation: hence a psycho- logical realism within a philosophical idealism  a realism that is stark and common, and an idealism that is approximate and workable.</div> <div> And what is this reality of human nature? What is this ideal situation? </div> <div> The <B>reality </B>is that human nature is both of good and of evil; and so, both constructive and destructive, both loving and hating, both selfish and selfless, both rational and irrational; has complex needs and wants, both normal and abnormal; has driving energy, yet in good part is subject to inertia; has its price: which are security, success, and power at the expense of right and truth, and understanding; is governed largely by sex, self, and stimulation; is sub ject to fluctuating moods, fatigue, fear, ignorance, misunderstandings, hatreds, anger, social and familial conditioning, expectation of others, one's own individual nature ... and on and on, with both weaknesses and strengths, with the best and worst intentions – of which the best frequently do not materialize. Concerning this reality of human nature, one dictum says it all, and must be kept in mind at all times: "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." Simple as that.</div> <div> Concerning the <B>ideal</B> situation: this reflects the transcendent factor in, to, us which projects situations, both personal and interpersonal, both spiritual and social, beyond the limitations of our failing human nature: our all-too-human selves. This transcendent, or ideal, in us is as much a part of us – in some people more than in others – as the human: the psychological. It seeks always the situation of least resistance with maximum results: for good or for ill; for ideals are modes of perfection: the perfect act, whether it be an act of justice or an act of theft; the perfect society, whether it be a utopian society or a totalitarian society; the perfect state of being, whether it be a state of grace or of chaos.</div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>2</B></div> <div> What is obviously emerging from these preliminary remarks so far is a series of dualities: the real and the ideal, the human (all-too-human) and the transcendent (more-than-human), justice and injustice good and evil, to the point. Life, and human life, as any reflective person knows, are a commingling of dualities – more often than not contradictory and conflicting dualities that separate, estrange, alienate individuals personally and inter-personally from a comparatively consistent harmony and goodwill – or as some would say: from complacency; which is just as well lest we become as contented, grazing cattle.</div> <div> The obvious conclusion here is that are no absolutes regarding human affairs; and there need be no defense for this truth any longer in our age of relativity and uncertainty.</div> <div> Yet there does remain embedded in the human psyche ideals to quest for regardless of the unattainability of their absolute realization. The next best thing, so long as ideals will ever continue to  "plague" a certain large segment of humankind, is to seek and work toward a relative, or an approximate, idealism: an idealism that works in, not only a human, realistic framework, but in a transcendent framework as well – since ideals are transcendent of the merely human element to us: our ego-sensual selves.</div> <div> Let me term this form of idealism a <B>realistic-idealism </B>– the balance between the reality of our humanness and the ideality of our transcendence . This realistic-idealism is first and foremost an individual, personal, matter, and only secondarily a social matter; since as we all know by now, from Plato's time to ours, it is the individually, singly and collectively, that ultimately determines the social structure of any given civilization. The great evil that hap -pens to man is when this individual-to-society process reverts upon itself as a society-to-individual process. hence the authoritarian state. And an authoritarian state is not simply the obvious fascist dictatorship or communist regime, but can be covertly, insidiously, sublim- inally, instilled in a so-called people's government, such as  in a democracy, a republic, a socialist state. and this state of affairs prevails when a people's or citizen's government has lost its organic, vital lifeline to its citizens. Yes, they have the vote, and through their collective efforts, can add or delete a constitutional amendment here and there. And this is good. We can effect our government toward progress and the betterment of the citizen politic and ethic. </div> <div> This is the mighty and cherished freedom that a people's government proffers its citizens. Yet something gargantuan gradually seeps into the system in the course of events and human nature, and that is a vast bureaucratic machinery of power and politics that lands in the lap of the privileged few -- the democratic "nobility," "aristocracy."  This elite political class, with high finance behind them, while professing to be executing the people's will, in fact separ- ates, and consequently alienates,the people's concerns from the government's concern – in the name of the people's concerns! and how do they do this in general? By distancing the debate of an issue from its execution so far apart, and through such a nexus of resistance, that only the few can persevere with very few issues unless these individuals can mobilize hundreds of thousands in their support. Only then will the government heed the people's voice and sentiments.</div> <div> And still what always remains in a classless society, is a division of the elite political-economic class from the populace: an moral and humanitarian division.</div> <div> Pinpointing this division between government and populace is by no means lodged as a criticism against a people's government; for such a government makes possible a mostly free, mobile, society; and compared to world governments historically, such a government will always remain a sacred gift of life. But even so, the tenor of our times demands not only social and personal freedom, but a self-freedom, as well; and this level of freedom far trans- cends both the capabilities and interests of a populace government. It solely is mostly an individual matter, and collectively. The governing body is concerned with the populace as a whole within a framework of vested, private and corporate interests. Their main concern is to maintain the status quo in matters of national and inter national interests. And this status quo is largely determined by a collective moral-social-political-economical-religious con -sciousness that is handed down generation after generation mostly intact even though the seams of the tradition are slowly coming apart. Very few are acutely aware that these seams are coming apart, and still very few can do anything about it within or without the political caucus. And why can hardly a thing be done? Because there is essentially no plan or schemata effective enough to make even a dent in the gigantic bureaucratic scheme of things. Surely there are beneficial changes enough in matters of social equality  and justice once the people collectively clamor loudly and threateningly enough. Yet it is always such a major struggle to wake the government up to the injustices, inequities, negligences, inaccur- acies either it or the private sector of the wealthy perpetrate upon the people. Its eyes are closed so long as the people's eyes are closed; and it makes sure that their eyes remain closed, if not violently as in authoritarian states, then subliminally in matters of social and personal benefits, of pleasant media diversions.</div> <div> And yet it is not only a free government that subliminally exploits, misleads, and oppresses its people, but the people themselves do so even more than the government. The private sector of the wealthy and not-so wealthy can be the worst exploiters of the people; they are the ones who influence and determine mainly in their own interests not only political and economic policies, but attitudes, styles, trends, values, beliefs, mannerisms – all of which are designed to enhance and secure their status as the "beautiful people." Yes, they do give to charities and institutions, but no more than would even come near to jeopardizing their financial or social status. </div> <div> This is the Great White Lie; which says, in effect, that profit, power, and pleasure are what rule the world of men and women; and if you enter our ranks – and believe me we will not make it easy for you – you too will be an exceptional person who is admired and who can rule your own little world; and perhaps society if you go into politics. Those of the wealthy who are not so highly ambitious for the office of affairs, then they can be content with the prom- ise that all their desires will be granted – The Great White Lie.  And why is it the Great White Lie? Because wealth and power, and certainly not least of all, pleasure – the three "pillars of society" – do not make the exceptional person, do not satisfy one's every desire, do not make one "beautiful, except at cocktail parties and premiers and lecture circuits; and every sensible, experienced person, whether rich or poor, knows the truth of this without need of demonstration.</div> <div> Then why are they so powerful an influence over almost everyone and everything? Because money buys, power controls, and pleasure delights.  Little more need be said in their defense and for their reason for existence. The more money, obviously the more you can buy; the more power, obviously the more you can control; and the more one has, possessions and control the more pleasure one experiences.</div> <div> Little wonder then why almost everyone if given an opportunity  will strive first and foremost for this tripartite of human endeavors regardless of the personal and interpersonal price it exacts from its disciples; despite the negative tags attached to this  tripartite: that power corrupts, that power dehumanizes, that pleasure degrades – each in their extreme, of course.</div> <div> Let's not take the extremes of high positions of power, high finance, magnified pleasures, and rather look at the everyday man and woman with their little corner of power, profit, and pleasure. Are these the unfortunate of the world, since they in effect never "made it big?" They may have their little shops, their little jobs, their little families and friends – unassum- ing, all of it. Are they the good people, the exploited people, the "salt of the earth?" Let us not delude ourselves. Given half the chance, many of these "little" people would be no less corrupt or possessive of their high position in society than those who have it already. They just didn't have "what it takes," or the opportunity, to make it in a big way. It is not that they are any the more noble, or just, or humanitarian than those who "made" it.</div> <div> My point is that regardless of social class, the same personal differences and similarities in people can be found in any class, in any society. There are the basically moral minded, or the basically amoral-minded, or the basically immoral-minded in whatever class. It just so hap- pens that the amoral and the immoral form a larger segment of a given population than the moral. And no judgment is made here; only a fact. And to give a clearer picture of these three types in the briefest fashion: in matters of justice and sympathy, the moral minded are very concerned; the amoral-minded are hardly concerned; and the immoral-minded are not at all concerned. And seeing that our tripartite of power, profit, and pleasure, far outweigh moral considerations when in conflict, the obvious conclusion confronts one with hardly a doubt.</div> <div> Yet it is matters of justice and sympathy (or humanity) that in a free society balances and checks injustice and apathy, rampant as they are. and it is issues of justice and sympathy that advance the culture of a free society so that the intellect, reason, does not predominate abstractly, remotely, from human affiliation.</div> <div> The lower classes in general (and I speak always in general), though not possessed, nor obsessed, with power, profit, and high pleasure, are nonetheless predominantly controlled  by a lesser trio of compulsions, which are: sex, self, and stimulation. While the elite classes are involved with all six psychic outlets,  but with power, pleasure, and profit in the extreme; the lower classes are involved with the six oppositely, that is, with hardly any power or profit, and many fewer pleasures than the elite classes.</div> <div> The main point – not judgment – being made from these comments is that man in general, is not a too admirable biped, that we are mainly a race of voluptuaries; and in a phrase: not to expect too much good to come out of him. There will always be certain definite patterns he will follow that are more self-serving than altruistic or loving, due to his basic ego-sensual nature. And this is true of most men and women (not "in general"). After all, is it not a natur -al truism that one must take care of his own interests (family and other loved ones included) before those of others. Yet, this truism is wrought with so many complications that one must trust his or her own moral, sympathetic, judgment when these complications arise. For this, a far-reaching wisdom is necessary; and is there such a wisdom? I would say, yes, but scat- tered all over the place, that one does not know where to turn. </div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>3</B></div> <div> And yet there is a saving grace: that transcendent part of us that displays itself in ways and works of love: in sympathetic understanding; in acts of justice, generosity, courage, consid- eration, and all the other moral virtues; in shows of affection, care and concern. It is the saving grace that strives to transcend one's sensual-ego nature for one's own benefit as well as others. It is the grace that refuses to submit to human frailty altogether, that continues the heroic struggle for self-freedom  which is a relatively strong freedom from the limited confines of the ego sensual nature. It is a grace that is an expression of the eternal in us ("God has put eternity in man's mind") struggling to make itself conscious mainly through the morally, sympathetic minded individuals. and it is these individuals in the bulk who are misled into thinking that all or most people are inwardly, however camouflaged it may be, seeking the good of this eternal element dwelling in all men and women. What they fail to understand, or to be able to deal with, is that approximately two-thirds of mankind have not the slightest inkling or interest in such an eternal element, however implanted in them it is. They want life here and now enshrouded, enshrined even, in the misty illusion-delusion of the paramount self that means life and everything to them. Self is what they know and what they want more and more of. Self is their identity, not some otherworldly eternal element, call it soul, if you will. It has no value for them here and now; if it did, then they would consider it – but from the vantage point of their dear self. </div> <div> And so if it's a choice between self and soul, let us assume that two-thirds of the human race would choose...you know what. and there is hardly any contending this brute fact of reality. And if it is true, as the philosopher Leibnitz once said, that this is the best of all possible worlds, then moral idealists have to eventually acknowledge that this present empirical reality depends more on the promotion of self than on soul.</div> <div> And this fact of reality is why so many philosophies and moralities, and utopian ideals fail, and always will fail. This includes religion as well; because however most people may pay deference, and biases, to organized religion, the fact of the matter is that very few so-called religious people are actually truly religious in their daily lives. Everyone knows this, and everyone can spot religious cant or pretense if they are not blinded by some psychological dysfunction, and in need of a surrogate bond that they cannot get from another human being or from life in general.</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>4</B></div> <div> What then is to be concluded from this basic premise, or assumption, that two-thirds (more or less) of the human race are ruled by self – overtly or covertly – and the other third (more or less) are ruled by soul? Simply this: most people, however they may profess to the con-trary, are more selfish than selfless. No great revelation in this truth; yet a truth that is so dis- guised, so misunderstood, that a great many of the selfless ones suffer irreparable psychic harm. They are the ones that find it almost impossible to feign selfishness because of their almost single-minded devotion to truth and right and grace; whereas the great majority of the selfish have no prob- lem whatsoever in feigning selflessness to attain their ends. And the selfless ones are almost invariably seduced into the web of their pretense, or out and out guile.</div> <div> We have an idea, now, that as to the dictates of human nature, there is not much improving the race in matters of love, peace, and virtue (or morality); for overall, Self predominates over soul; and the bulk of those who are amoral and immoral far outweigh the moral-minded. Schopenhauer put this state of affairs in the last century in a similar fashion when he placed people into one of three categories: that of egoism, malice, and loving-kindness. In my scheme, egoists are the amoral persons, the malicious ones are the immoral persons, and the loving-kind individuals are the moral persons.</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>5</B></div> <div> So much, then, for human nature. Why then the unending struggle to improve its lot, when two thirds of the people are either not worth it or don't want it? Well, there is the other third of whom the majority are either lost, confused, isolated, disoriented, searching, and/or are enmeshed in the value-belief system of the other two-thirds. And one-third of, let us say, 10 million people is three and one-third million, which is quite a number of people, who, on the whole, are more concerned for people and human relationships than for money and all its trappings. Not that they turn their backs on, or their noses up, at money and success (many do, of course), but that they will not compromise their personal values or relationships for them. Not to say that this type of person is not vain nor acquisitive, nor sensual, nor unpleas- ant, lustful, nor aggressive, nor has not a share of  all the negative human traits that human flesh is "heir to." The difference is that these traits do not predominate in their nature overall; and if they do, such individuals are emotionally and psychologically disoriented, fragmented, and they suffer. The moral individual is continuously striving, struggling for self-realization in both the psychological and transcendent sense of the word. Their ultimate concern for themselves is a kind of heroism: the day-to-day struggle to gain the inner strength to bear the "vicissitudes of outrageous fortune" – which in good part, more or less, is the process of being alive, living and interacting with others; and their ultimate concern for others is to promote as far as he or she can their happiness: the alleviation of physical,and emotional, and soul pain. Now these others are not only those who are of the good and worthy, but are for <I>anyone </I>who is in need or is suffering. And it is this trait,which in particu- lar, which make the do-gooders lose the proper perceptive in discriminating between those who are worthy, and those who are not – those who will bite the hand that feeds them. </div> <div> Certainly there is no problem overall in helping and caring for those who are worthy; there is a problem in helping and caring for those who are unworthy, and that problem requires careful discrimination and judgment in the help and care given to such people. Not that they are not to help even the unworthy at times and in the right circumstances – since the unworthy might very well be one's own relatives or associates, fellow workers, and the like; it is just that one must keep ever vigilant to such persons, realize that they can be nothing but unworthy, and most importantly, that one is helping and caring because of the type of person one is, whose main concern is for humanity, good or bad, worthy or unworthy. As for those who will naturally bite your hand for your help, well, your efforts with such people would be as dangerous to your well-being as attempting to embrace a shark. So if you want the very likelihood that your help and concern will turn against you at your own detriment, then by all means do such a rash, blind act of goodness.</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>6</B></div> <div> So we see that human interaction in a beneficial, progressive way is not a futility, or meaningful only to the very few. One third of a given population is not the very few. And surely if there is benefit and progress for a majority of the one-third populace, then surely that benefit and progress will spill over to the other one-third of those who are mainly indifferent to and fearful of matters other than what concerns them personally (the amoral type). And as for the remaining third (the immoral), they will be the ones who will oppose all such benefit and progress, and will struggle with all their might to discourage and strangle any that is made. </div> <div> The amoral are capable of siding with either the immoral or moral. It is the task of the moral-minded to not only keep themselves and their own intact, but to win over as many as they can  of the amoral to the side of union and harmony; whereas it is as much the task of the immoral-minded to keep everyone, their own class included, as separated and fragmented as possible. They thrive on disorder just as surely as the moral-minded thrive on order. So this is the true fight between good and evil for the moral-minded: to protect and promote not only one's own identity – whether predominantly good or predominantly evil – but to enlist as many as possible of the amoral (or indifferent, overall) class on one's side. There is no way that the immoral will ever be reformed or transformed into moral, just agents; just as it is impossible for the moral ones to ever change into immoral, unjust agents. It is the amoral class: those for whom self predominates, that can be molded into one or the other class according to their own advantage, and not from conviction or sentiment.  They can be just as stirred to commit crimes as they can to commit acts of benevolence if they are motivated from fear or duty or greed or lust, or profit. Whatever extreme act they may commit, it is not done primarily from loving-kindness nor from malice, but from egoism – self-interest.: "What am I to get out of it: what control or profit or vanity will I accrue by doing this act? What will enhance my love of self? what will make others love, admire, fear, need me?" And if they do not commit the worst deeds, it is mainly from fear, of self-vanity, of being needed, that curbs them, not justice nor love. And if they do commit the worst deeds, then they do so free from this fear, and in promise of self-aggrandizement. In either case, they are neither basically good nor basically evil, but basically self-directed; and according to the particular physical and psychological makeup of the individual, he or she will be more inclined to immoral or moral acts. In the end, what is right for them is the preservation and promotion of their self; just as what is right for the moral-minded is the preservation and promotion of justice and love, and for the immoral-minded the preservation and promotion of injustice and hatred.</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>7</B></div> <div> This threefold schemata of human nature is a viewpoint safe to assume in the main. It is simplified, I admit – over-simplified many perhaps will think; but one that, after long years of observation, study, and reflection, on human nature has led me to believe its truth; and one that people themselves in my own experience, other's experience, documented experience, bear out the truth of it. The immense difficulty, of course, is the actual labeling of people as belonging to one or the other class. Human camouflage is such a subtle nexus and labyrinth of conditioning that often to attempt to sift out, or unravel one's true self is as immensely complicated as splitting the atom. One must have to understand oneself and others acutely before a safe judgment can be made; and this often takes years of attentive self-observation and psychological knowledge. </div> <div> Of course not all people are that difficult to define as belonging to one or the other class if we simply added up the facts; yet our own needs, our own insecurity, our own loneliness, often blinds us to the most obvious conclusions about people. Frequently they are either stupidly or naively obvious whatever the mask or front they might assume. But the moral-minded want or expect everyone to be good; they feel that whatever bad that issues from people, is the result of only unfortunate conditioning or unfortunate situations. These individuals  are just as mistaken as the immoral-minded who believe that everyone is basically immoral as they are; and it is just a matter of what price or fear any individual is willing make in order to compromise or corrupt one's so called goodness or self-directedness. This same way of thinking applies to the amoral who believe that everyone basically is selfish; that it all comes down to "me-first" in the final analysis.</div> <div> My concern in this essay, is however, not to prove my case as regards any theory of human nature, but to consider a fairly representative and realistic approach to human nature as regards the probability of establishing a viably functioning society-within-a-society: a society of benefits, of independents. And I believe that the proposition that people are either predominantly – and this is the key word – moral, amoral, or immoral is sound. that they are equally distributed: one-third, one-third, one-third is perhaps less tenable and provable; it could be more or less from each class. I don't think that precise statistics has much relevance in the matter; what is important is an approximate division of figures. The important, or I should say, essential point is that there are these three types of individuals, and that perceiving and understanding this division, as well as determining who is what, is what has to be learned in the generations to come. And besides scientific and moral inquiries into this matter, what else is needed is of human interaction a rich field from which to collect data for processing and theorizing toward this understanding of human nature and interaction. and this rich field I am bold to say can come into effective reality not only in a free society but in a free human interaction between people. and for this free human interaction to develop, human beings have to be relatively free from unnecessary fears: psychological fears, economic fears, religious fears, personal pain and fears. John Lennon sums it up lyrically in his song "Instant Karma:"</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <I>Why in the world are we here?</I></div> <div> <I>surely not to live in pain and fear. </I></div> <bR> <div> <B>8</B>                </div> <div> And this free human interaction I venture to say can develop in an inner, apolitical, non-denominational society of mutual interests, benefits, and services; a society in which each member not only belongs as a remote member, but personally participates as he or she wills to maintain and promote the welfare of its members. You might say that the political society of which they belong is their vocation, whereas the beneficial society of which they belong is their avocation.</div> <bR> <div> The first stage, then for such a beneficial society to come into being is to set forth in print its philosophy,  plan and purpose. The second stage is simply to begin it on the basis of that plan and purpose. With this in mind, let us begin the first stage of our enterprise.</div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B><IMG SRC="27e61080.jpg" border=0 width="353" height="264" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></div> <div>   Delacroix</div> <bR> <div> <B>The  Publication</B></div> <bR> <div> What is it that will interlock each separate part of our invisible, amorphous, edifice to the whole structure, as though each part invisibly connected to every other part however remote in space, or cyberspace, it lies? And since this edifice is to be a vital, vibrant, living society of human interaction, this interlocking must be a network of ideas and ideals consolidated into a visible format that is the meeting place, so to speak, of all participants. This format will be the public benefit's publication, titled <I><B>Transition</B></I>.</div> <div> Transition is to be a social and cultural periodical divided into five main sections: (1) brief capsulations of major social, personal, cultural, and scientific news stories; (2) passages on all significant topics by both contemporary and classical sources; (3) services' information; (4) a calendar of events within and without the society; and (5) contributions of writings, art, etc. by the society's members.</div> <div> NOTE: At this writing, and on this site, <I>Transition </I>consists of only section (2), as stated above.  </div> <div> Beyond this website, each member of our inner society will receive a copy of <I>Transition </I>free of charge at each periodical release. This is the vital artery linking each member conceptually to each other member and, to the inner society as a whole. It is not a partisan publication, but one inviting all views not only for the society, but against it as well. All channels will be open so that all views can be considered – short of out-and-out degradation or de- <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Calibri" >prav</FONT>ity, or anarchy, or any ideology or philosophy or psychology that endorses the abuse of human dignity. Diversity of content within a framework of unity is to be the tone and coloration of its purpose. And this framework of unity is a just perspective of human nature in all its diversity within an atti tude of tolerance, acceptance, and understanding – in this order of development if necessary.</div> <div> As an intellectual publication, its function is to disseminate all ideas that will directly or indirectly promote the gaining of understanding that will lead to a growing balance between the all too-human in us and the more-than-human in us; in other words, an understanding that will lead to a human transcend- ence. All views that oppose this state of being, will be considered fairly so long as they are not destructive of the wisdom that holds people together, individually and collectively within our society. Closed minds, authoritarian personalities, fundamentalist distorters, malice bearers, backbiters, name-callers, and all the rest will be free to express their views in Transition in keeping with our principle of being open to all types and diversities of lifestyles, beliefs, and values. The rub, however, is that the admitting of such destructive elements will serve more as a bracing tonic to the fundamental tenets wisdom of human-transcendence than as an influence. Those views will contribute to our further understanding of human nature, its ways and wiles; will strengthen us against their adverse intentions. And what are their "adverse intentions", in short? To paralyze the human spirit into the calcification of dogma and institutionalization, into interpreting the world in their terms only and thereby disregarding, even condemning, all beliefs and values that do not agree or accord with their own. In one manner of speaking, I am making a judgment on all such crystallized views as being detrimental to the progress of human consciousness. </div> <div> And yet, in another manner of speaking I am not making such a judgment, but rather attempting to apply my own philosophy of openness to the diversity of life and human life, however contrary to my views. And this attempt is to see others who are opposed to an open, eclectic way of seeing and living life – as those who live by an ancient biblical code of morals and religion – as suited for such a value-belief system. In other words, there are minds which naturally gravitate toward a one-dimensional philosophy or religion of life; one which requires neither thought nor responsibility. These individuals have no other choice but to follow blindly, like sheep what their leading proponent of ideas propound, whether he is an ancient sage, A Christ or a Buddha, or other charismatic leader of ancient or modern, or contemporary times. There are more than enough of these leaders in every age, and certainly in ours. </div> <div> Such leaders or charismatics have no religious or philosophical system of their own, so they speak in the name of Jesus or Buddha, or the I Ching,or whoever else of ancient times. They believe themselves to be messengers of these God-men, and so their power of personality perpetrate not the essential message of these mystics of God, but their ritual, their ethical dogma, the catechism of a rigid, orthodox religious institution. These one-dimensional class of people, who neither think for themselves, nor take moral responsibility for their actions require such leaders to tell them how to live, to threaten them with hell fire, to promise them heaven. They are not capable of grasping the essentiality of all world religions; namely that God is at the core and quick of all of us, and so can be realized, not on one's knees but on one's own; not in a church but in one's mind; not only in the hereafter but here and now. </div> <div> Accordingly, they cling to the creed, the dogma, the ritual, the catechism, of a religion. And if they find their salvation and/or consolation in an institutionalized church or a sect, the do-gooders obviously will want to spread the word to save and console all others without distinction. So with their leaders, evangelists, they spread the word of blind faith, conformity, and obedience, of sin. The same pattern of doctrinization, of leader-followers, applies in the secular world of politics, with the exception that the autocrats themselves demand strict adherence and obedience to the State, and to its leaders as the preservers of this secular deity.</div> <div> And again, this same pattern applies on a much lower, but no less influential, level of Family, Tradition, Brotherhood, a Philosophy or Psychology of life.</div> <div> Yet it doesn't much matter what is deified; the point is that in slavishly paying obeisance to a closed system, these adherents close their minds to any merits of other possibilities. this belief value system is a closed, airtight vacuum that maintains their identity, their security, their solace; and so will permit nothing to threaten these. And understandably so, since they cannot think for themselves in such conceptual matters as God, son of God, eternity, State, Economics, the Unconscious, and so forth. And since people overall need a belief or faith in something beyond their limited selves, they must latch on to something solid, certain, of long-standing, such as Christianity, Buddhism, the State, the Family – anything or anyone but themselves. This is just the way it is with our humanity in good part in this suffering, enigmatic reality of life and dying. And if one's mind can neither plumb, nor accept, nor deal with, the unknowable, with uncertainty, with meaninglessness, on the one hand; and with the possibility of an eternal world of God as Truth, or Bliss, or Meaning, or Spirit, or Love, and Mind, and so forth, on the other hand, – then all the more must it cling to God as a Person: infinitely and eternal perfect, good, wise, and loving who rewards the good and punishes the wicked. This makes sense to the one-dimensional way of understanding anything beyond perceptual reality. They are the children of an all-embracing Deity who will care for them , if not in this life, then in the after-life.</div> <div> This simplistic religious – not spiritual – approach suits this type of individual, and it would be not only futile to dissuade such people from this way, but detrimental as well; since overall their minds cannot make the leap from organized religion to pure spirituality. They would be empty vessels were it taken away from them. There is this respect due to them. In their way, religion inspires them to love, to good works, to prayer, even though they may not be genuine or consistent, or live their lives in accord with the ethical and religious principles of their church.</div> <div> And of course, regarding those who give all obeisance to the State and ruler, or family, and whatever else,they will similarly be subject to the same patterns as the religious minded.</div> <div> In respect to our publication, this class of people will be free to air their views in keeping with our openness to diversity. And since not all members of our inner society open-minded, progressive individuals, this type of dogmatic mind will be addressing and influencing persons of their own persuasion. This is as it should be for our society. Yet, on the other hand, these dogmatic persons are to show the same respect for views foreign, and even threatening to their own. There is yet another class of individuals, who think, not one dimensionally, but we might say two-dimensionally. They will consider both the dogmatic way of thinking as well as the open-minded way of thinking – but predominantly for one purpose: to analyze and criticize. This is the skeptical type, who in his own way, is just as closed minded as the dogmatic type. This is the type of mind that questions rather than answers, who is more concerned with problems than with solutions. They consider their peculiar virtue as being the gadfly who criticizes and analyzes, to take apart and find fault; to take nothing at face value. These are the skeptics, the agnostics, the atheists, the iconoclasts, the nihilists, the cynical. For them, in the main, nothing is absolute only relative; nothing is true, only the facts, what is. They do not understanding or read. nor listen, nor speak, for enlightenment, but to question, deny, disprove.</div> <div> And  then there is a whole class of individuals who in Thoreau's words who live lives, more or less in "quiet desperation"; who overall are a confused mass of contradictions in matters of personal identity and self-realization. They all their lives seek one  form or another of wis- dom, whether in a religion, a philosophy, a moral code, or even a psychology. And perhaps for many of these unfortunates, everything helps a little, whatever they  may delve into for answers, but never ultimately. They might end up in a religion that earlier in their lives they had renounced for lack of anything more enlightening; or they come to believe that man (or the state, or the family, or whatever else human-devised) is the measure of all things. Or they might simply resign themselves to a life that has no more meaning than merely living and dying. Or they may have given up on all ways and creeds and means to finding any transcendent answers to their lives; and so become just as in different to metaphysical matters as they feel the world is to them, and everyone and everything else as well. Life-as-absurdity is their answer to the meaning of life.</div> <div> These three main classes of readership of Transition, and as members of our society, will voice their viewpoints in our periodical, and will appeal to mem- bers of their own persuasion. And within these types will be the moral, amor- al, and  immoral types as well.  In essence, there will be a little something in the periodical for everyone; and is as it is supposed to be.</div> <div> The key to the success of this eclectic approach is that our periodical is not to be simply an intellectual conveyer of ideas but a sympathetic flow of feelings and sentiments.</div> <div> And it is this sympathetic element, not only in the periodical, but in the society as well, that will be the great equalizer between its members; certainly not the intellectual element. If anything, the various intellectual factor will tend to separate individuals than to consolidate them. It is the sympathetic flow that will offset the clash between intellectual views, and keep the members together in consolidation, which is the ultimate end of this beneficial society.</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>The Centralization</B></div> <bR> <div> The Public Benefit will have no "central office," so to speak; it will be every- where and nowhere, so to speak, in all its endeavors. Its endeavors, however will be centralized in net-space on the internet, and in communities/neigh- borhoods everywhere as <B>Community Educultural Places</B>. </div> <div> The main purpose of these Community Educultural Places will be to provide an environment complementary to children's and youth's school and home – a place of their own – which promote an appreciation and enthusiasm for education, culture, play, and interaction. The philosophy of each community educultural center is the development of children's and youths' full poten- tials through contextual understanding and self-understanding. </div> <div> Regarding the <B>education </B>aspect of these community/neighborhood edu- educulural places in particular, it is a <U>critical-creative thinking</U> education which teach students to understand what they are reading <I>at the same time</I> as they read. They do not receive this training in their regular schooling. The name of this in-depth education is <I><B>Studies in Meaning</B></I>. </div> <bR> <div> <B>NOTE</B>: For a complete overview and samples of this education and its related Educultural Places, click on the URL below. </div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>Studies in Meaning:</B></div> <div> <B>A Critical-Creative Thinking Education</B></div> <div> <A HREF="http://www.studiesinmeaning.com" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.studiesinmeaning.com"><B>www.studiesinmeaning.com</B></A></div> <div> <B><IMG SRC="2807de40.jpg" border=0 width="381" height="228" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></div> <bR> <div> ____________________________________________________________</div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div>  <A NAME="ct_1"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A></div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B><IMG SRC="2f3b7280.jpg" border=0 width="183" height="296" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#993300" FACE="Calibri" ><B>    </B></FONT></div> <div> <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#993300" FACE="Toledo" ><I> </I></FONT>OUR CONSCIOUS TRANSFORMATION CULTURE</div> <div> Mainly For </div> <div> <I>The Ascendancy of Justice and Wisdom </I></div> <div> <I>over Injustice and Ignorance </I></div> <bR> <bR> <div> Written, Compiled, & Arranged</div> <div> By</div> <div> Joseph</div> <div> With Sharon</div> <bR> <bR> <div>    <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Calibri" > A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive </FONT></div> <div>     and move towards higher levels.</div> <div>     No Problem can be solved from the same level of conscious-</div> <div>     ness that create it. </div> <div>                  <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Calibri" > - Einstein</FONT></div> <bR> <div>  Tis not too late to seek a newer world. </div> <div>                                                            - Heraclitus </div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> ____________________________________________</div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>PERTINENT QUOTES ON CULTURE</B></div> <bR> <bR> <div> 1.  Culture makes people understand each other better. And if they under- stand each other better in their soul, it is easier to overcome the economic and political barriers. But first they have to understand that their neighbour is, in the end, just like them, with the same problems, the same questions.</div> <div>           - Paulo Coelho</div> <div> 2.  Preservation of one's own culture does not require contempt or disrespect for other cultures.</div> <div>         - Cesar Chavez</div> <div> 3.  Once you have an innovation culture, even those who are not scientists or engineers - poets, actors, journalists - they, as communities, embrace the meaning of what it is to be scientifically literate. They embrace the concept of an innovation culture. They vote in ways that promote it. They don't fight science and they don't fight technology.</div> <div>                                               - Neil deGrasse Tyson</div> <div> 4.  Sexual, racial, gender violence and other forms of discrimination and violence in a culture cannot be eliminated without changing culture.</div> <div>                                                                                             - Charlotte Bu</div> <div> 5.  All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.</div> <div>                                                                                            - Noam Chomsky</div> <div> 6.  Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.</div> <div> - Albert Camus</div> <div>     </div> <div> 7.  You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.</div> <div>   - Ray Bradbury    </div> <div> 8.  The first step - especially for young people with energy and drive and talent, but not money - the first step to controlling your world is to control your culture. To model and demonstrate the kind of world you demand to live in. To write the books. Make the mu- sic. Shoot the films. Paint the art. </div> <div>                                  - Chuck Palahniuk</div> <div> 9.  They stared at each other, wanting each other, drawn to each other, but their silent shout of love went unheard in the roar of misunderstanding, and the clatter of culturally ingrained beliefs." </div> <div>             - Jean M. Auel, The Mammoth Hunters</div> <div> 10.  The stronger a culture, the less it fears the radical fringe. The more paranoid and precarious a culture, the less tolerance it offers. </div> <div>                                                                   -Joel Salatin</div> <div> 11.  Our culture has filled our heads but emptied our hearts, stuffed our wallets but starved our wonder. It has fed our thirst for facts but not for meaning or mystery. It produces "nice" people, not heroes.</div> <div>                                             - Peter Kreeft</div> <div> 12.  The imagination is the goal of history. I see culture as an effort to literally realize our collective dreams. </div> <div>                  - Terence McKenna</div> <div> 13.  While much psychology emphasizes the familial causes of angst in humans, the cul- tural component carries as much weight, for culture is the family of the family. If the fam- ily of the family has various sicknesses, then all families within that culture will have to struggle with the same malaises. There is a saying <I>cultura cura</I>, culture cures. If the cul- ture is a healer, the families learn how to heal; they will struggle less, be more reparative, far less wounding, far more graceful and loving. In a culture where the pred- ator rules, all new life needing to be born, all old life needing to be gone, is unable to move and the soul-lives of its citizenry are frozen with both fear and spiritual famine. </div> <div>                                                                                                    - Clarissa Pinkola Estés</div> <div> 14.  One of the most effective ways to learn about oneself is by taking seriously the cul- tures of others. It forces you to pay attention to those details of life which differentiate them from you.</div> <div>            - Edward T. Hall</div> <div> 15.  No human culture is inaccessible to someone who makes the effort to understand, to learn, to inhabit another world. </div> <div>                           - Henry Louis Gates Jr.</div> <div> 16.  It must be recognized that in any culture the source of law is the god of that society. </div> <div>                                                                                                  - Rousas John Rushdoony</div> <div> 15.  When I was a child, when I was an adolescent, books saved me from despair: that convinced me that culture was the highest of values [...]." </div> <div>                                                              -  Simone de Beauvoir</div> <div> 16.  </div> <div> (1)  It sounds like a fairy-tale, but not only that; this story of what man by his science and practical inventions has achieved on this earth, where he first appeared as a weakly member of the animal kingdom, and on which each individual of his species must ever again appear as a helpless infant... is a direct fulfilment of all, or of most, of the dearest wishes in his fairy-tales. All these possessions he has acquired through culture. Long ago he formed an ideal conception of omnipotence and omni- science which he embod- ied in his gods. Whatever seemed unattainable to his desires - or forbidden to him - he attributed to these gods. One may say, therefore, that these gods were the ideals of his culture. Now he has himself approached very near to realizing this ideal, he has nearly become a god himself. But only, it is true, in the way that ideals are usually realized in the general experience of humanity. Not completely; in some respects not at all, in others only by halves. Man has become a god by means of artificial limbs, so to speak, quite magnificent when equipped with all his accessory organs; but they do not grow on him and they still give him trouble at times. ... Future ages will produce further great advances in this realm of culture, probably inconceiv- able now, and will increase man's likeness to a god stIl more. </div> <div> (ii)  It is my opinion that the main reason why we rebel against war is that we cannot help doing so. We are pacifists because we are obliged to be for organic reasons. And we then find no difficulty in producing arguments to justify our attitude.</div> <div>      No doubt this requires some explanation. My belief is this. For incalcula- ble ages mankind has been passing through a process of evolution of culture. (Some people, I know, prefer to use the term 'civilization'.) We owe to that process the best of what we have become, as well as a good part of what we suffer from. Though its causes and beginnings are obscure and its outcome uncertain, some of its characteristics are easy to perceive. It may perhaps be leading to the extinction of the human race, for in more than one way it impairs the sexual function; uncultivated races and backward strata of the population are already multiplying more rapidly than highly cultivated ones. The process is perhaps comparable to the domestication of certain species of animals and it is undoubtedly accompanied by physical alterations; but we are still unfamiliar with the notion that the evolution of civilization is an organic process of this kind. The psychical modifications that go along with the process of civilization are striking and unambiguous. They consist in a progressive displacement of instinctual aims and a restriction of instinctual impulses. Sensations which were pleasurable to our ancestors have become indifferent or even intolerable to ourselves; there are organic grounds for the changes in our ethical and aesthetic ideals. Of the psychological  characteristics of civilization two appear to be the most important: a strengthening of the intellect, which is begin- ning to govern instinctual life, and an internalization of the aggressive impulses, with all its consequent advantages and perils. Now war is in the crassest opposition to the psychical attitude imposed on us by the process of civilization, and for that reason we are bound to rebel against it; we simply cannot any longer put up with it. This is not merely an intellectual and emotional repudiation; we pacifists have a consti- tutional intolerance of war, an idiosyncrasy magnified, as it were, to the highest degree. It seems, indeed, as though the lowering of aesthetic standards in war plays a scarcely smaller part in our rebellion than do its cruelties.</div> <div>      And how long shall we have to wait before the rest of mankind become pacifists too? There is no telling. But it may not be Utopian to hope that these two factors, the cultural attitude and the justified dread of the consequences of a future war, may result within a measurable time in puttingan end to the waging of war. By what paths or by what side-tracks this will come about we cannot guess. But one thing we can say: whatever fosters the growth of civilization works at the same time against war.</div> <div>                                                                                               - Freud</div> <div> 17.  Culture had worked in her own case, but during the last few weeks she had doubted whether it humanized the majority, so wide and so widening is the gulf that stretches between the natural and the philosophic man, so many the good chaps who are wrecked in trying to cross it.</div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div>                       - E.M. Forster</div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> <TABLE BORDER="2" CELLPADDING="2" CELLSPACING="1" WIDTH="450" BORDERCOLORLIGHT="#C0C0C0" BORDERCOLORDARK="#808080" FRAME="BOX" RULES="ALL" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" > <tR> <tD VALIGN=TOP HEIGHT= 16822 WIDTH="438"><bR> <div> <B> <A NAME="selections_from_the_aquarian_conspiracy"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A></B></div> <bR> <div> <FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Times New Roman" ><B> <A NAME="_selections_9_4"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A></B></FONT><B>Selections from </B><I><B>The Aquarian Conspiracy</B></I></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B><IMG SRC="2f6b3200.jpg" border=0 width="179" height="288" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></div> <bR> <div> The following passages are selections taken from Marilyn Ferguson's classic study, <I>The Aquarian Conspiracy</I>, of the personal and social transformation sweeping through Ameri- can culture.</div> <div> I've chosen this particular book and these particular selec- tions, because they eminently validate and pinpoint  the conscious transformation underlying this website's purpose and contents. </div> <div> My perspectives of our "conscious transformation" not only parallel Marilyn Ferguson's aquarian conspirators concep- tion of personal and social transformation, but complements it by giving it direction, structure, content, place, and a se- mantics.</div> <div> Since this conscious transformation movement is more a gradual, gathering momentum, unlike an explosion of a revolution, it matters not that Miss Ferguson's book was written 37 years ago. Its stands as a snapshot of a specific time in the history of the movement; and now in our gener- ation, we take the movement another step further <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Calibri" >historically. </FONT>ically.</div> <div> Following these passages from her book, I include passages from eminent persons that support as well the basis of this conscious transformation.</div> <div> <B>[NOTE</B>:<B>] </B>These passages, both from Marilyn Ferguson and others in her book introduce only a general overview of the transformation that has been taking place, notably, since the late 1960s. For a full grasp of this movement, her masterful journalistic work <I>The Aquarian Conspiracy: Personal and social transformation </I>is an excellent sourcebook.</div> <div> Lest the title of "Aquarian Conspiracy" be misinterpreted or misconstrued, let me quote Miss Ferguson's choice for the title of her book: </div> <div>     "At first I was reluctant to use the term ['conspiracy' or 'conspirator']. I didn't want to sensationalize what was happening , and the word <I>conspiracy </I>usually has negative associations. Then I came across a <I>book </I>of spiritual exer- cises in which the Greek novelist, Nikos Kazantzakis, said he wished to signal his comrades, 'like con- spirators,' that they might unite for the sake of the earth. The next day the <I>Los Angeles Times </I>carried an account of Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's speech to the United Nations Habitat Conference in Vancouver; Trudeau quoted from a passage in which the French scientist-priest Pierre TeiIhard de Chardin urged a 'conspiracy of love.'</div> <div>     "Conspire, in its literal sense, means 'to<I> </I>breathe togeth- er.' It is an intimate joining. To make clear the benevolent nature of this joining, I chose the word <I>Aquarian. </I>Although I am unacquainted with astrological lore, I was drawn to the symbolic power of the pervasive dream in our popular cul- ture: that after a dark, violent age, the Piscean, we are en- tering a millennium of love and light – in the words of the popular song, 'The Age of Aquarius,' the time of 'the mind's true liberation.'</div> <div>     "Whether or not it was written in the stars, a different age seems to be upon us; and Aquarius, the <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Calibri" >waterbearer</FONT> in the ancient zodiac, symbolizing flow and the quench- ing of an ancient thirst, is an appropriate symbol."</div> <bR> <div> 1. "A leaderless but powerful network is working to bring about radical change in the United States. Its members have broken with certain key elements of Western thought, and they may even have broken continuity with history."</div> <div> 2. "This network is the Aquarian Conspiracy. It is a conspiracy without a political doctrine. Without a manifesto. With conspirators who seek power only to disperse it, and whose strategies are pragmatic, even scientific, but whose perspective sounds so mystical that they hesitate to discuss it. Activists asking different kinds of questions, challenging the establishment from within."</div> <div> 3." Broader than reform, deeper than revolution, this benign conspiracy for a new human agenda has triggered the most rapid cultural realignment in history. The great shuddering, irrevocable shift overtaking us is not a new political, religious, or philosophical system. It is a new mind – the ascendance of a startling worldview that gathers into its framework breakthrough science and insights from earliest recorded thought."</div> <div> 4. "The Aquarian Conspirators range across all levels of income and education, from the humblest to the highest. There are schoolteachers and office workers, famous scientists, government officials and lawmakers, artists and millionaires, taxi drivers and celebrities, leaders in medicine, education, law, psychology. Some are open in their advocacy, and their names may be familiar. Others are quiet about their involvement, believing they can be more effective if they are not identified with ideas that have all too often been misunderstood."</div> <div> 5. "There are legions of conspirators. They are in corporations, universities and hospitals, on the faculties of public schools, in factories and doctors' offices, in state and federal agen- cies, on city councils and the White House staff, in state legislatures, in volunteer organi- zations, in virtually all arenas of policy-making in the country."</div> <div> 6. "Whatever their station or sophistication, the conspirators are linked, made kindred by their inner discoveries and earthquakes. You can break through old limits, past inertia and fear, to levels of fulfillment that once seemed impossible . . . to richness of choice, free- dom, human closeness. You can be more productive, confident, comfortable with insecur- ity. Problems can be experienced as challenges, a chance for renewal, rather than stress. Habitual defensiveness and worry can fall away. <I>It can all be otherwise.</I>"</div> <div> 7. " In the beginning, certainly, most did not set <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Calibri" >out to change</FONT> society. In that sense, it is an unlikely kind of conspiracy. But they found that their <I>lives </I>had become revolutions. Once a personal change began in earnest, they found themselves rethinking everything, examining old assumptions, looking anew at their work and relationships, health, political power and 'experts,' goals and values."</div> <div> <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Calibri" >8. "They have coalesced into small groups in every town and institution. They have formed what one called 'national non- organizations.' Some conspirators are keenly aware of the </FONT>na- <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Calibri" >tional, even international, scope of the movement and are active in linking others. They are at once antennae </FONT>and trans- <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Calibri" >mitters, both listening and communicating. They amplify the activities of the conspiracy by networking and pamphleteer- ing, articulating the new options through books, lectures, school curricula, even Congressional </FONT>hearings and the nation- <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Calibri" >al media."</FONT></div> <div> <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Calibri" >9. "Others have centered their activity within their specialty, forming groups within existing organizations and</FONT> <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Calibri" >institutions</FONT>,<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Calibri" > exposing their co-workers to new ideas, often calling on the larger network for support, feedback, back-up information."</FONT></div> <div> 10. "And there are millions of others who have never thought of themselves as part of a conspiracy but sense that their experi- ences and their struggle are part of something bigger, a larger social transformation that is increasingly visible if you know where to look. They are works and their influence only one or two kindred hood, or circle of friends. Yet even in small groups – twos and threes, eights and tens – they are having their im- pact."</div> <div> 11. "You will look in vain for affiliations in traditional forms: political parties, ideological groups, clubs, or fraternal organ- izations. You find instead little clusters and loose networks. There are tens of thousands of entry points to this <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Calibri" >conspiracy.</FONT> Wherever people share experiences, they connect sooner or later with each other and eventually with larger circles. Each day their number grows<B>."</B></div> <div> <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Calibri" >12." However bold and romantic this movement may seem, we shall see that it has evolved from a sequence of </FONT>historical<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Calibri" > events that could hardly have led </FONT>elsewhere . . . and it expres- <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Calibri" >ses deep principles of nature that are only now being de- scribed and con- firmed by science. In its</FONT> assessment of what <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Calibri" >is possible, it is rigorously rational."</FONT></div> <div> 13. "The crises of our time, it becomes increasingly clear, are the necessary impetus for the revolution now under way. And once we understand nature's transformative powers, we see that it is our powerful ally, not a force to be feared or sub- dued. <I>Our pathology is our opportunity."</I></div> <div> 14. "The Aquarian Conspiracy represents the Now What. We have to move into the unknown: The known has failed us too completely."</div> <div> 15. "Taking a broader view of history and a deeper measure of nature, the Aquarian Con- spiracy is a different kind of revolution, with different revolutionaries. It looks to the turn- about in consciousness of a critical number of individuals, enough to bring about a renewal of society."</div> <div> 16. "The paradigm of the Aquarian Conspiracy sees human- kind embedded in nature. It promotes the autonomous indi- vidual in a decentralized society. It sees us as stewards of all our resources, inner and outer. It says that we are <I>not </I>vic- tims, not pawns, not limited by conditions or conditioning. Heirs to evolutionary riches, we are capable of imagination tion, invention, and experiences we have only glimpsed."</div> <div> 17. "Human nature is neither good nor bad but open to con- tinuous transformation and transcendence. It has only to dis- cover itself. The new perspective respects the ecology of everything: birth, death, learning, health, family, work, sci- ence, spirituality, the arts, the community, relationships, politics."</div> <div> 18. "The Aquarian Conspirators are drawn together by their parallel discoveries, by paradigm shifts that convinced them they had been leading needlessly circumscribed lives."</div> <div> 19. "So great, <I>so </I>splendid, is this experience, that it may be said that all minor questions and doubts fall away in the face <I>of </I>it; and certain it is that in thousands and thousands <I>of </I>cases, the fact <I>of </I>its having <I>come </I>even once <I>to </I>an individual has com- pletely revolutionized his subsequent life and outlook on the world."</div> <div> 20. "We live at a peculiar moment in history. If we look at the reality of the world from the viewpoint of the industrial era, it is clear that there is no hope. . . . But there is another way to look at our situation. We can discover the large number of people who have decided to change. If we do this, it seems equally impossible that we shall fail to solve our problems."</div> <div> 21. "In this century we have seen into the heart of the atom. We transformed it – and history – forever. But we have also seen into the heart of the heart. We know the necessary condi- tions for the changing of minds. Now that we see the deep pathology of our past, we can make new patterns, new para- digms. </div> <div> "Transformation is no longer lightning but electricity. We have captured a force more powerful than the atom, a worthy keeper of all our other powers."  </div> <div> 22. "We find our individual freedom, by choosing not a destina- tion but a direction. You do not choose the transformative jour- ney because you know where it will take you but because it is the only journey that makes sense."   </div> <div> 23. "The experience of greater <I>connectedness, </I>of unity with others, generates new ways of thinking about problems: job- lessness, forced retirement, poverty, fixed incomes, make- work, welfare cheating, exploitation. A policy analyst said, 'If we think we are a large fam- ily, rather than a large factory, we will deal with these problems differently.'"</div> <div> 24. "One of our objectives is to demonstrate that it is pos- sible for a group of ordinary human beings to come together and to create a 'new-age' community. New-age communi- ties are not going to be built by big governments or by big corporations, and it probably wouldn't be a good idea for that to happen anyhow. We think it is desirable for people to take charge of their own lives, to become self-reliant (as groups) We want to show that life can be lived more simply, in harmony with nature, within the constraints of nature, co- operatively, creatively, humanly. We hope to see a network </div> <div> of New Age communities, sharing, working, helping each other."</div> <div> 25. "'We cannot wait for the world to turn,' said <B>philosopher</B>, <B>Beatrice Bruteau</B>, 'for times to change that we might change with them, for the revolution to come and carry us around in its new course. We ourselves <I>are </I>the future. We <I>are </I>the revolu- tion.'"</div> <div> 26. "A <B>1979 symposium on the future of humanity</B> said in its announcement: 'Our first great challenge is to create a con- sensus that fundamental change is possible – to create a clim- ate, a framework, which can integrally organize and coordinate the forces which are today striving for growth along seemingly separate paths. We will create an irresistibly vibrant vision, a new paradigm for constructive humanistic action. . . . Until we have created that master context, all talk of strategy is meaningless.' "</div> <div> 27." 'No analogy, even that of metamorphosis, could quite capture the suddenness or radicalness of the transformation ahead, according to <B>John Platt, a physicist</B> at the University of Michigan. Only dreamers like Wells and Teilhard had seen 'the enormous sweep and restructuring and unity and future of it. It is a quantam jump, a new state of matter'.</div> <div> And this transformation would come within a generation or two, Platt said. 'We may now be in the time of the most rapid change in the whole evolution of the human race. . . . a kind of cultural shock front.' </div> <div> 28.<B> </B>"<B>Psychologist Abraham Maslow</B> described an innate human drive beyond basic survival and emotional needs – a hunger for meaning and transcendence. This concept of "self-actualization" rapidly gained adherents.</div> <div> 'It is increasingly dear,' Maslow wrote, 'that a philosophi- cal revolution is under way. A comprehensive system is swift- ly developing, like a tree beginning to bear fruit on every branch at the same time.' He described a group he thought of as Transcenders, 'advance scouts for the race,' individuals who far exceeded the traditional criteria for psychological health. He compiled a list of around three hundred creative, intelligent individuals and groups of individuals whose lives were marked by frequent 'peak experiences' (a term he coined). This was his Eupsychean Network-literally, 'of good soul.' Transcenders were irresistibly drawn to each other, he said; two or three such people would find each other in a roomful of a hundred, and they were as likely to be business- men, engineers, and politicians as poets and priests."</div> <div> 29. "In England <B>Colin Wilson</B>, in a 1967 postscript to his famous study of alienation, <I>The Outsider, </I>called attention to a critical issue being addressed quietly in the United States by Maslow and others: the possibility of human metamorphosis – the vision of a world hospitable to creativity and mystical experi- ence."</div> <div> 30. "In 1967 <B>Barbara Marx Hubbard, a futurist</B> moved by Teilhard's vision of evolving human consciousness, invited a thousand people around the world, including Maslow's network, to form a 'human front' of those who shared a belief in the possibility of transcendent consciousness. Hundreds responded, including Lewis Mumford and Thomas Merton. Out of this grew a newsletter and later a loose-knit organization, the Committee for the Future."</div> <div> 31. <B>Psychiatrist, Erich Fromm</B>, in <I>Revolution of Hope </I>(1968), foresaw a 'new front,' a movement that would combine the wish for profound social change with a new spiritual <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Calibri" >perspec-</FONT> tive; its aim would be the humanization of a technological world.     </div> <div> Such a movement, which could happen within twenty years, would be nonviolent. Its constituency would be Ameri- cans already eager for new direction, including old and young, conservatives and radicals, all social classes. 'The middle class has begun to listen and to be moved,' Fromm said. Neither state nor political parties nor organized religion could provide either an intellectual or spiritual home for this thrust. Institutions were too bureaucratic, too impersonal.</div> <div> The key to the success of the movement would be its em- bodiment in the lives of its most committed members, who would work in small groups toward personal transfoma- tion, nourishing each other, 'showing the world the strength and joy of people who have deep convictions without being fana- tical, who are loving without being sentimental... imaginative without being unrealistic. . . disciplined without submission.'</div> <div> They would build their own world amid the alienation of the contemporary social milieu. They would probably engage in meditation and other reflective states of con- sciousness to become more open, less egocentric, more responsible. And they would replace narrow loyalties with a wide, loving, critical concern. Their style of consumption would 'serve the needs of life, not the needs of producers.' "</div> <div> 32. "<B>Educator John Holt</B> called for 'a radically new kind of human being'." </div> <div> 33. "<B>Philosopher Lancelot Law Whyte</B> stressed the urgency of a network: 'We who already share intimations of this emergent attitude must become aware of one another. . . . collect allies by timely signals.'"</div> <div> 34. "The only possibility for our time, said <B>Joseph Campbell, the mythologist</B>, in 1968, is the free association of men and women of like spirit...not a handful but a thousand heroes, ten thousand heroes, who will create a future image of what hu- mankind can be."</div> <div> 35. "In <I>The Transformation </I>(1972), <B>George Leonard</B> described the current period as 'unique in history,' the beginning of the most thoroughgoing change in the quality of human existence since the birth of civilized states. 'It does not entail throwing over our civilized values and practices but subsuming them under a higher order.'</div> <div>      Something is struggling to be born here. 'The West Coast,' he said, was not paralyzed by the European bias that dominated the cynical East Coast intellectual establishment: the divorce of the human mind from the rest of the cosmos. 'Without wishing to sound darkly mysterious, I would have to say that there broods over this state a strong sense of greater universal for- ces.'</div> <div> 36. "<B>Harman was one of the group of scholars and policy analysts</B> who helped write <I>The Changing Image of Man, </I>a landmark study prepared for the Charles Kettering Foundation by the Stanford Research Institute in 1974. This remarkable document laid the groundwork for a paradigm shift in under- standing how individual and social transformation might be accomplished. 'The emergence of a new image and/or a new paradigm can be hastened or slowed by deliberate choice,' the study noted, adding that crisis can be stimulated.</div> <div>      'Despite growing scientific evidence for vast human poten- tial, the study said, communicating the new image is difficult. <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Calibri" >Reality is richer and more multidimensional than any</FONT> <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Calibri" >metaphor.</FONT> But perhaps it is possible to lead people toward 'the direct experiencing of what language can only incompletely and inadequately express. ...There does indeed appear to be a path, through a profound transformation of society. . . to a situation where our dilemmas are resolvable.' "</div> <div> 37." <B>Michael Lerner, co-founder of a California health network, </B><I><B>Commonweal</B></I>, reporting on efforts to call attention to environmental stress, said, 'We could not sustain this <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Calibri" >dark exca- </FONT>vation if we did not sense that our work is another tiny part of a global movement. Perhaps others will recognize the two polar- ities in the collective experience of our time: the stress caused by what we have created and called down on life, and the true grace of our spirit and courage as we seek a new way.' "</div> <div> 38. Announcing its 1978 convention in Toronto, <B>the Association for Humanistic Psychology</B> referred to 'this period of extraor- dinary evolutionary significance. . . . <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Calibri" >The very chaos of contemp- </FONT>orary existence provides the material for transformation. We will search new myths and world visions.' "</div> <div> 39. "<B>Marshall McLuhan</B> described the coming world as a 'global village,' unified by communications technology and rapid dissemination of information. This electrified world, with its instant linkage, would bear no resemblance to the preceding thousands of years of history.</div> <div> In this age we have become conscious of the unconscious, McLuhan pointed out. Although most of us still continue to think in the old fragmented patterns of the slow days, our electronic linkage brings us together 'mythically and <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Calibri" >integral-</FONT> ly.' McLuhan saw coming change: Increasing numbers were aspiring to wholeness, empathy, deeper awareness, revolting against imposed patterns, wanting people to be open.</div> <div> And we would be remade, he said, by the flood of new knowledge.</div> <div> The immediate prospect for fragmented Western man en- countering the electric implosion within his own culture is his steady and rapid transformation into a complex person. . . emotionally aware of his total interdependence with the rest of human society. . . .</div> <div> Might not the current translation of our entire lives into the spiritual form of information make of the entire globe, and of the human family, a single consciousness?</div> <div> 40. " Introducing 'World Perspectives,' a series of books published by Harper & Row beginning in the 1960s, <B>Ruth Ananda Ashen</B> wrote of a 'new consciousness' that might lift humankind beyond fear and isolation. 'We are now con- tending with a fundamental change since we now under- stand evolution itself. There is now abroad 'a counter force to the sterility of mass culture. . . a new, if sometimes imper- ceptible, spiritual sense of convergence toward human and world unity.' "</div> <div> 41. "In her book, <I>The Crossing Point </I>(1973), <B>M. C. Richards, artisan and poet</B>, said: One of the truths of our time is this hunger deep in people all over the planet for coming into relationship with each other.</div> <div> Human consciousness is crossing a threshold as mighty as the one from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. People are hungering and thirsting after experience that feels true to them on the inside, after so much hard work mapping the outer spaces of the physical world. They are gaining courage to ask for what they need: living interconnections, a sense of individual worth, shared opportunities. . . .</div> <div> Our relationship to past symbols of authority is changing because we are awakening to ourselves as individual beings with an inner rulership. Property and credentials and sta- tus are not as intimidating any more. . . . New symbols are <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Calibri" >rising:</FONT> pictures of wholeness. Freedom sings within us as well as outside us. . . . Sages and seers have foretold this second coming. People don't want to feel stuck, they want to be able to change. </div> <div>   42. "<B>Art historian Jose Arguelles</B> described 'a strange dis-    </div> <div>   quietude that permeates the psychic atmosphere, an unsta- </div> <div>   ble 'Pax Americana.' The revolution of the 1960s had plan- </div> <div>   ted the seeds of apocalypse; the psychedelic drugs, however </div> <div>   abused, had given a vision- ary experience of self-transcend- </div> <div>   ence to a sufficient number of individuals, so that they might </div> <div>   well determine the future of human development – 'not a </div> <div>   Utopia, but a collectively altered state of consciousness.'"</div> <div>       43. "We are living at a time when history is holding its breath,"</div> <div>       said <B>Arthur Clarke, author </B><B>of </B><I><B>Childhood's End </B></I><B>and </B><I><B>2001</B></I><I>, </I>"and</div> <div>       the present is detaching itself from the past like an iceberg that</div> <div>       has broken away from its moorings to sail across the boundless</div> <div>       ocean."</div> <div>       44. <B>Carl Rogers</B>, who in privately circulated papers predicted the emergence of a new kind of autonomous human being, acclaimed the 1976 launching by California citizens and legi slators of a network called Self Determination. Even if it didn't spread to other states, he said, 'it's a strong indication that the emerging individuals do, in fact, exist and are becMing aware of like-minded others' ."</div> <div>       45."But it wasn't just <B>California. Human Systems Manage- ment, an international coalition of management </B><FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Calibri" ><B>scientists</B>, l</FONT>aunched a network from Columbia University in New York City: 'A search is on for special people, and they are not on any list which can be bought. We must seek each other out, find each other, link up with each other. It's not known how many we are, where we are. . . ..</div> <div>       46. "And by 1976 <B>Theodore Roszak</B> was saying that soon no politics could survive unless it did justice to the spiritual <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Calibri" >sub-</FONT> versives, 'the new society within the shell of the old.' The grassroots, do-it-yourself revolution of Erich Fromm's predic- tion was happening ten years early."</div> <div> 47." <B>Erich Fromm's</B> blueprint for social transformation empha- sized the need for mutual support, especially in small groups of friends: 'Human solidarity is the necessary condition for the unfolding of anyone individual' 'No transformation, no super- mind, without such friends,' said the narrator of Michael Mur- phy's novel, <I>Jacob Atabet, </I>based in part on the experiments and explorations of Murphy and his friends. 'We are midwives to each other.'" </div> <div> 48. " 'We are at a very exciting moment in history, perhaps a turning point,' said <B>Ilya Prigogine, who won the 1977 Nobel prize for a theory that describes transformations</B>, not only in the physical sciences but also in society – the role of stress and 'perturbations' that can thrust us into a new, higher order. Sci- ence, he said, is proving the reality of a 'deep cultural vision.' The poets and philosophers were right in their intimations of an open, creative universe. Transformation, innovation, evolution – these are the natural responses to crisis."</div> <div> 49. " In every age, said <B>scientist-philosopher Pierre </B><FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Calibri" ><B>Teilhard</B></FONT><B> de Chardin</B>, man has proclaimed himself at a turning point in history. 'And to a certain extent, as he is advancing on a<FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Calibri" >rising</FONT> spiral, he has not been wrong. But there are moments when this impression of transformation becomes accentuated and is thus particularly justified.' "</div> <div> 50." 'What bars our way?' asked <B>writer Gabriel Saul Heilig</B>. 'We still tremble before the Self like children before the fall- ing dark. Yet once we have dared to make our passage inside the heart, we will find that we have entered into a world in <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Calibri" >which depth leads on to light, and there is no end to entrance."</FONT> </div> <div> 51. "Each man, said <B>Blake</B>, is haunted until his humanity awakes. " 'If the doors of perception were cleansed, we <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Calibri" >would </FONT>'See the world as it is, infinite.' And the <B>Koran </B>warns, 'Men are asleep. Must they die before they awake?'"</div> <div> 52. "At bottom, <B>Theodore Roszak</B> observed, most of us are 'sick with guilt at having lived below our authentic level.' "</div> <div> 53. "<B>Victor Hugo</B> prophesied that in the twentieth century war would die, frontier boundaries would die, dogma would die – and man would live. 'He will possess something higher than these – a great country, the whole earth . . . and a great hope, the whole heaven.'</div> <div> Today there are millions of residents of that 'great country, the whole earth.' In their hearts and minds, war and bound- aries and dogma have indeed already died. And they possess that large hope of which Hugo wrote."</div> <div> 54. " 'A new science of politics is indispensable to a new world,' <B>Tocqueville</B> said. The Aquarian Conspiracy assumes that the reverse is also true. A new world – a new perspective on reality – is indispensable to a new politics. 'A turning of the mind,' <B>Huxley </B>called it. The very sense of reality must be trans- formed, Theodore Roszak said. It has variously been called a new metaphysic, 'the politics of consciousness,' 'New Age politics,' 'the politics of transformation.' "</div> <div> 55. " 'The new person creates the new collectivity,' said <B>poli- tical scientist Melvin Gurtov</B>, 'and the new collectivity creates –  is the new politics.'</div> <div> 56. "As <B>Theodore Roszak</B> said, the old revolutionary mass movements offered no more refuge to the person than did cap- italist societies. 'We need a class smaller than a proletariat. . . . The new politics will speak for the millions – one by one.'"</div> <div> 57. "<B>Jerry Rubin</B>, one of the Chicago Eight, who made head- lines as a <B>radical social activist</B> in the sixties, later said, 'It's the spiritual movement that's truly revolutionary. Without self-awareness, political activism only perpetuates cycles of anger.</div> <div> . . . I couldn't change anybody until I changed myself.' </div> <div> 58.<B> A woman</B>: 'I really wanted to help people, to change things for the better. One summer I was involved in a very constructive non-violent education program about the Vietnam war. Every- body who was working on it had selfless motives, but by the end of the summer the whole thing fell apart because we couldn't get along with each other. I had to face the fact that you cannot make the world nonviolent and loving unless you make yourself nonviolent and loving.'"</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <IMG SRC="273bce10.jpg" border=0 width="188" height="225" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B> <A NAME="selections_from_eminent_persons_9_4"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A></B><FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Calibri" ><B>Selections from Eminent Persons</B></FONT></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>From LITERARY AUTHORS</B></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>D.H. Lawrence</B></div> <div> 1.  You ask me about the message of <I>Rainbow</I>. I don't know myself what it is: except that the older world is done for, top- pling on top of us: and that's it's no use the men looking to the women for salvation, nor the women looking to sensuous sat- isfaction for their fulfillment. There must be a new world. </div> <div> <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Calibri" >2.  One's got to put a new ripple in the ether. And one can do it only by not caring about any of the old things, by going be- yond them all with amusement and a bit of jolliness</FONT>, and hav<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Calibri" >ing a bit of stark trust inside oneself. Stark trust in a Lord we have no name for, and also stark trust in one another. Instead of a recklessness of defiance and mistrust, a reck- lessness of trust, like a naked knife. </FONT></div> <div> 3.  I would say to my Cornishmen, "Don't let your house and home be a symbol of your manhood." Because it has been the symbol for so long, it has exhausted us, become a prison. So we fight, desperate and hopeless. "Don't let your nation be a symbol of your manhood" – because a symbol is something static, petrified, turning towards what has been, and crystal- lized against that which shall be. Don't look to the past for justification. The Peloponnesian war was the death agony of Greece, really, not her life struggle. I am just reading Thucyd- ides – when I can bear to – it is too horrible to see a people, adhering to traditions, fling itself down the abyss of the past, and disappear. </div> <div>      We must have the courage to cast off the old <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Calibri" >symbols, the </FONT>old traditions: at least, put them aside, like a plant in grow -ing surpasses its crowning leaves with higher leaves and buds. There is something beyond the past. The past is no justification. Unless from us the future takes place, we are death only. That is why I am not a conscientious objector. The great Christian tenet must be surpassed, there must be something new: neither the war, nor the turning the other cheek. </div> <div> <B>Nikos Kazanzakas</B></div> <div> 1. In order for a civilization to remain standing at a high level, it must succeed in attaining a harmony of mind and soul. This synthesis must be set as the supreme aim of our contempor-  ary human struggle. A difficult feat, but we shall achieve it. It suffices that we know clearly what we want and where we are going. But until we do achieve this, it is natural that anar- chy and chaos intervene for some time. Moral and spiritual chaos. The genuine, the only certain, reconstruction is the internal reconstruction of man. ... Only one way exists: to rally all the powers of light that exist within every man and every people.</div> <div>      At the present critical moment, there is no other salvation. We must mobilize all our resources and fight against deceit, hatred, poverty, injustice. We must bring Virtue back to this world. </div> <div>      Who are the human beings who will advance the moral re- sources of the universe? We cannot hope that this rallying cry – the most vital one of all – will come from temporal leaders – politicians, technical experts, economists. Only the spiritual chieftains of the world can and must accomplish this noble mission that is beyond all personal passions. In our own day, the responsibility of the man of the spirit is enormous, because passions are blind. Desires clash. The material forces placed in man's hands by the mind are tremendous. And the way they are used will determine the salvation or destruction of the human race. Let all of us who believe in the spirit unite. Let us clearly face the dangerous moment we are passing. And let us see what is the duty of the man of the spirit today. Beauty is no longer enough. Theoretical truth is not enough: nor is passive kindness. Nowadays, the duty of the man of the spirit is greater and more difficult. ... He must find the simple word that will once again reveal to human beings this simplest of facts: that we are all brothers. ... the forces of good must be organized and the people who serve the spirit must acknowledge each other without egoism. </div> <div> 2.  Fire and soil. <I>How </I>could I harmonize these two militant ancestors inside me? </div> <div>      I felt this was my duty, my sole duty: to reconcile the irreconcilables, to draw the thick ancestral darkness out of my loins and transform it, to the best of my ability, into light. </div> <div>     Is not God's method the same? Do not we have the duty to apply this method, following in His footsteps? Our lifetime is a brief flash, but sufficient. Without knowing it, the entire universe follows this method. Every living thing is a workshop where God, in hiding, processes and transubstantiates clay. This is why trees flower and fruit, why animals multiply, why the monkey managed to exceed its destiny and stand upright on its two feet. Now, for the first time since the world was made, man has been enabled to enter God's workshop and labor with Him. The more flesh he transubstantiates into love, valor, and freedom, the more truly he becomes Son of God. </div> <div>      It is an oppressive, insatiable duty. I fought throughout my life and am fighting still, but a sediment of darkness continues to remain in my heart, and the struggle continually recom- mences. The age-old paternal ancestors are thrust deep within me; they keep fluctuating, and it is very difficult for me to dis- cern their faces in the fathomless darkness. The more I proceed in my search for the first terrifying ancestor inside me, piercing through the heaped up layers of my soul – individual, nation- ality, human species – the more I am overcome by sacred hor- ror. At first the faces seem like a brother's or father's; then, as I proceed to the roots, out of my loins bounds a hairy, heavy-jawed ancestor who hungers, thirsts, bellows, and whose eyes are filled with blood. The ancestor is the bulky, unwrought beast given me to transubstantiate into man – and to raise even higher than man if I can manage in the time allotted me. What a fearful ascent from monkey to man, from man to God! </div> <div> <B>Hermann Hesse</B></div> <div> 1.   Man is not a permanent, unchanging creation (this was the ideal of antiquity despite the contradictory intimations of its philosophers); he is rather an experiment and transIation a narrow, dangerous bridge between nature and spirit. His innermost destiny drives him toward the spirit, toward God; his innermost yearning drives him to nature, back to the mo- ther: his life is a fearful wavering between these two.</div> <div> 2.   The dignity of man stands and falls with his ability to set himself goals in the realm of the unattainable, and his tragedy lies in the fact that he has the ways and practices of the world against him</div> <div> 3.   I don't know whether this world has ever been bettered; perhaps it has always been as good and as bad as it is. But this I do know: if ever the world has been bettered, if it has ever been made richer, more alive, happier, more dangerous, more amusing, this has not been the work of reformers, or betterers, but of true self-seekers who have no goal and no purposes, who are content to live and to be themselves.  </div> <div> 4.  Chaos demands to be recognized and experienced before letting itself be converted into a new order. </div> <div> 5.   True education, like true physical culture, is at once a ful- fillment and a spur; always at the goal and never stopping to rest, it is a journey in the infinite, a participation in the move- ment of the universe, a living in timelessness... </div> <div> <B>Anton Chekhov</B>, from <I>Three Sisters</I></div> <div> "In the old days the human race was always making war, its entire existence was taken up with campaigns, advances, re- treats, victories. But now all that's out of date, and in its place there's a huge vacuum, clamoring to be filled. Humanity is passionately seeking something to fill it with and, of course, it will find something someday. OH! If only it would happen soon! If only we could educate the industrious people and make the educated people industrious."</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>From PHILOSOPHERS</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Nietzsche</B></div> <div> 1.   Man belongs to a different integrate level from the beast, he is forever ascending the ladder of being – and if there is an ape in us there is also an angel seeking release from our brute- hood and our humanhood. The overman is not my private phan- tasy: he is a reality of our biologic and spiritual nature, and if I have led people to believe otherwise I cry aloud, <I>mia culpa! </I>[my fault] Humanity is bogged deep in bestiality: must I see my philosophy used to drive the Roman spirit deeper into the swamp? But I shall go stark mad and die before this tragedy takes place! If man is trapped in the static state of his beast-hood then all culture is a fraud, and I will shoot down the first man who mentions Goethe or Shakespeare. </div> <div> 2.   We are now entering a new era of gigantic conflicts [wit- ness only the two world wars, since Nietzsche's time] which shall usher in a new kind of reality, a <I>spiritual </I>reality based on the needs of people, not crackpot philosophers like Hegel who rationalize their Prussian bias into a world-system of emerging truth. </div> <div> 3.   [from <I>Thus Spake Zarathustra</I>:] Behold, I teach you the overman. The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman <I>shall </I> be the meaning of the earth! I be- seech you, my brothers, remain <I>faithful to the earth; </I>and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go. </div> <div> 4.  [from <I>Thus Spake Zarathustra</I>:]  Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman – a rope over an abyss. A dangerous across, a dangerous on-the-way, a dangerous looking-back, a danger- ous shuddering and stopping. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end: what can be loved in man is that he is an <I>overture </I>and a <I>going under. </I></div> <div> 5.  [from <I>Thus Spake Zarathustra</I>:] O my brothers, I dedicate and direct you to a new nobility: you shall become procreators and cultivators and sowers of the future – verily, not to a nobility that you might buy like shopkeepers and with shopkeepers' gold: for whatever has a price has little value. Not whence you come shall henceforth constitute your honor, but whither you are going! Your will and your foot which has a will to go over and beyond yourselves – that shall constitute your new honor. </div> <div> 6.  [from <I>Thus Spake Zarathustra</I>:] Life wants to build itself up into the heights with pillars and steps; it wants to look into vast distances and out toward stirring beauties: therefore it requires height. And because it requires height, it requires steps and contradictions among the steps and climbers. Life wants to climb and to overcome itself climbing. </div> <div> 7.  <I>In the horizon of the infinite</I>. – We have left the land and have embarked. We have burned our<U> </U>bridges behind us – in- deed, we have gone further and destroyed the land behind us. Now, little ship, look out! Beside you is the ocean: to be sure, it does not always roar, and at times it lies spread out like silk and gold and reveries of graciousness. But hours will come when you will realize that it is infinite and that there is nothing more awesome than infinity. Oh, the poor bird that felt free and now strikes the wall of his cage! Woe, when you feel homesick for the land as if it had offered more freedom – and there is no longer any "land." </div> <div> <B>Pierre de Chardin</B> / philosopher-scientist</div> <div> Evolution is gaining the psychic zones of the world... life, being and ascent of consciousness, could not continue to advance indefinitely along its line without transforming itself in depth. The being who is the object of his own reflection, in conse- quence, of that very doubling back upon himself becomes in a flash able to raise himself to a new sphere.</div> <div>     Our duty, as men and women, is to proceed as if limits to our ability did not exist. We are collaborators in creation.</div> <div>     We are one, after all, you and I. Together we suffer, together exist, and forever will recreate each other. </div> <div>     All the universe is corpuscular (granular), ... atoms, stars, man.  The inner reserve (functional capacity) of each corpuscle always increases as it complexifies.</div> <div>      Of all things the most difficult to contain is the expansion of an idea. It is enough for truth to appear just once, to a single mind. From that moment nothing can prevent its spreading until it lights up the world. For whatever is truer will come to light, and whatever is better will ultimately become reality.</div> <div>      Man only progresses by slowly elaborating from age to age the essence and the totality of a universe deposited within him.</div> <div> If there were no internal propensity to unite, even at a prodig- iously rudimentary level-indeed in the molecule itself – it would be physically impossible for love to appear higher up, with us, in "hominized'' form. . . . Driven by the forces of love, the frag- ments of the world seek each other so that the world may come into being.</div> <div>     Man must be convinced of the merit of work and its value.  The world is not given to man as is the wheel to the caged squirrel, just to keep him busy in a vacuum.</div> <div>     The phrase 'Sense of the Earth" should be understood to mean the passionate concern for our common destiny which draws the thinking part of life ever further onward. In principle there is no feeling which has a firm foundation in nature, or greater power. But in fact there is also no feeling which <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Calibri" >awakens </FONT>so belatedly, since it can become explicit only when our con- sciousness has expanded beyond the broadening, but still far too restricted, circles of family, country and race, and has finally discovered that the only truly natural and real human Unity is the Spirit of Earth.</div> <div> Human Energy presents itself to our view as the term of a vast process in which the whole mass of the universe is involved. In us, the evolution of the world towards the spirit becomes con- scious. From that moment, our perfection, our interest, our sal- vation as elements of creation can only be to press on with this evolution with all our strength. We cannot yet understand ex- actly where it will lead us, but it would be absurd for us to doubt that it will lead us towards some end of supreme value. From this there finally emerges in our twentieth century human consciousness, for the first time since the awakening of life on earth, the fundamental problem of Action. No longer, as in the past, for our small selves, for our small family, our small count- ry; but for the salvation and the success of the universe, how must we, modern men, organize around us for the best, the maintenance, distribution and progress of human energy?</div> <div> The future is more beautiful than all the pasts.</div> <div> <B>Sri Aurobindo</B> /  philosopher-seer</div> <div> Mind is the highest force in man. But mind in man is an ignor- ant, clouded and struggling power. And even when most lumin- ous it is possessed only of a thin, reflected and pallid life. A supermind free, master, expressive of divine glories will be the overman's central instrument.</div> <div> Who is the overman? He who can rise above this matter re- garding broken mental human unit and possess himself univers- alized and deified in a divine force, a divine love and joy and a divine knowledge. </div> <div> Evolution is not finished; reason is not the last word nor the reasoning animal the supreme figure of Nature. As man emerged out of the animal, so out of man the overman emer- ges.</div> <div> Man is not final. He is a middle term of the evolution, not its end, crown or consummating masterpiece. . . </div> <div> The animal is a laboratory in which Nature has worked out man; man may very well be a laboratory in which she wills to work out overman, to disclose the soul as a divine being, to evolve a divine nature.</div> <div> As man arose out of the animal, so out of man overman shall come.  </div> <div> The step from man to overman is the next approaching <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Calibri" >achieve- </FONT>ment in the earth's evolution. There lies our destiny and the liberating key to our aspiring, but troubled and limited human existence - inevitable because it is at once the intention of the inner Spirit and the logic of Nature's process.</div> <div> The appearance of a human possibility in a material and animal world was the first glint of a coming divine Light, – the first far-off intimation of a godhead to be born out of Matter. The ap- pearance of the overman in the human world will be the fulfill- ment of that distant shining promise.</div> <div> The difference between man and overman will be the differ- ence between mind and a consciousness as far beyond it as thinking mind is beyond the consciousness of plant and ani- mal; the differentiating essence of man is mind, the differentia- ting essence of overman will be supermind of a divine gnosis (spiritual knowledge).</div> <div> Man is a mind imprisoned, obscured and circumscribed in a precarious and imperfect living but imperfectly conscious body. The overman will be a supramental spirit which will envelop and freely use a conscious body, plastic to spiritual forces. His physical frame will be a firm support and adequate radiant instrument for the spirit's divine play and work in Matter.</div> </tD> </tR> </TABLE></div> <bR> <div> ________________________________________________________</div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> _________________________________________________________________________</div> <bR> <bR> <div> For more information, you can contact Joseph or Sharon at   </div> <div>                                   <A HREF="mailto:thepublicbenefit@gmail.com " TARGET="_top" TITLE="mailto:thepublicbenefit@gmail.com ">thepublicbenefit@gmail.com </A></div> <bR> <div> P.S. We welcome corrective suggestions and critical and creative comments so long as they are related to only the contents of this website. </div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> __________________________________________________________</div> <bR> <bR> <div> Good Regards,</div> <div> Joseph-Sharon </div> <bR> </tD> </tR> </TABLE></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>