Can’t be bothered to read this article…? You might find it interesting...
Well, if not then you can just go straight to socialgnosis.org (where you’ll find free copies of the books that this is mostly about and some more articles by various authors)
By the way, I know you don't like copy-paste here but this article took some time to write and so I hope it's ok to share it here as well as other places...
FREEDOM
“It is stupid, terribly stupid, to choose intellectual demons so that, sitting in the chair of power, they can have the luxury of governing us.
It is the height of absurdity to give someone the knife to cut our throat; and that, precisely that, is what we are doing.
Unfortunately we have been really stupid to have been taken in by the beautiful speeches and the pretty promises of the deceptive and cunning politicians.
We ourselves have raised our bad governments, each individual is guilty of electing the tyrants.
The day will come when governments will no longer be needed, but now they are needed because we still do not know how to govern ourselves individually. When each individual is a government, when each one of us knows how to govern himself, we will no longer need anyone to govern us, then we will be free.” (SAMAEL AUN WEOR)
(VERY) BASIC ORIENTATION
There is no doubt that at the present moment in humanity’s history true democracy does not exist. Of course there are those who claim to represent the will of the people, we are even given a vote in order that we continue believing in the charade. It is true that we don’t (yet) live in total tyranny, in the West there is generally still a degree of freedom, we aren’t (yet) being herded off to internment camps for questioning the wisdom of those who govern us. There’s a lot of social stigma attached to holding non-mainstream beliefs, to questioning the ideals of the brainwashed masses (and we are all part of the masses, and all of us are to some extent brainwashed ourselves) but still there is some semblance of freedom of speech.
What though is freedom of speech without freedom of belief? Do we believe what we want to believe, or what we are told to believe (overtly or with subtlety)? Unfortunately we have to face the sad reality that we are being brainwashed, that for the most part we see the things they want us to see. Anyone with any sense knows that the mainstream media is a joke, whether it’s supposedly left wing or right wing it follows and serves the agenda of the powerful. The alternative media? Perhaps it tends to comes closer to the truth, but if there’s useful knowledge in it, there’s also a lot of useless noise. Really until we free ourselves, spiritually and mentally, we are not free and nor will we be able to discriminate between fact and fiction. Until then we will be stuck in the vicious circle of our own Dualistic thinking, which can never really resolve problems.
For a very basic example of this Dualism, the Americans have the choice between Republicans and Democrats, what kind of choice is this? On one side the cruelty of economic injustice and tax breaks for the corporations, on the other licentiousness and abortion. This is not a genuine choice, true democracy…
TRUE DEMOCRACY
“Democracy cannot be framed within a rigid mold. DEMOCRACY cannot be bottled. Democracy must flow freely with the gentle flow of Thought.
We must point out that until now in Latin America, democracy is only a yearning, a hope, an ideal and nothing else.”
Bringing about “authentic and legitimate democracy” is the goal of the spiritual teacher SAMAEL AUN WEOR in his two books “THE SOCIAL CHRIST” and “THE SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION OF HUMANITY”. These books were written in 1964 and 1965 respectively, some time ago, so of course they are not completely current in all respects. Nonetheless they are filled with illuminating insights equally applicable to the present global situation as to the times in which they were written. Despite the majority of Samael’s work having been translated into English some time ago, these books were not until very recently. Unfortunately those practising the teachings of Samael seem to consider them spurious, useless or even harmful, and so they were ignored.
‘SPIRITUALLY AWAKENED’ PEOPLE
Samael founded a political party called POSCLA (“Christian Socialist Party Of Latin America”) and these books contain references to this political party. He later disbanded this party, which leads some to believe that he was not in favour of political action. But in fact, in the last year of his life, he reaffirmed his support for the principles laid out in the books. As the popular saying goes, don’t “throw the baby out with the bath water”.
We should not really be surprised. People who claim to be ‘spiritually awakened’ are often adverse to political truths, they prefer only to attain states of bliss in meditation, a state of comfortable apathy, not to experience the discomfort of facing up to the harsh realities of life for so many of the people of this planet. Harsh realities for all of us, in fact, because even if we are rich our lives are more joyless and grey than they would be in a less tyrannical world.
Some ‘spiritually awakened’ people even work for the very Corporations which Samael, with vehemence, labels as instruments of the powers of darkness. Of course anyone with political consciousness doesn’t need him to tell them that...
SPIRITUALITY AND POLITICS
Spirituality and Politics are two poles of the same thing, says Samael. One without the other is incomplete. Indeed he referred to his teaching as REVOLUTIONARY GNOSTICISM. A non-violent revolution, a spiritual revolution, but a revolution nonetheless.
Life, he says, is an integral whole, which must be understood in it’s wholeness rather than just from one side. Really this should be self-evident, for example a Buddhist can talk about Compassion, or a Christian about “following the Christ”, but if this doesn’t include freeing humanity from the suffering of oppression is this really Compassion or Christ-like love?
(At this moment it is worth pointing out that Samael drew no distinctions between “true” and “false” religions, he believed that all of them contained the same basic eternal principles, even if these principles are no longer practised by the “believers” today. He called his political party the “Christian Socialist Party of Latin America” but said it could just as well be called “Buddhist” or by the name of any other religion.)
PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS
Abandoned children on the streets of Latin American cities. People who can’t afford a stall at the market denied the right to sell their produce on the street. The legitimized banditry of customs duties. Religions building so many opulent temples when they could invest the money in providing shelter for the homeless. Latin America under the boot heel of the USA, the need for industrialization and self-sufficiency. Workers not being given a share of the profits of the company when by rights it belongs to all of them. Lands not being distributed to the people, unemployed wandering the streets of the cities when hands are needed to produce food. Workers failing to use the weapons of general strikes and slowdowns, not uniting to cast off oppression.
Solutions to such problems as these, and many others, are dealt with in the books.
THE INDIVIDUAL IS SOCIETY
“THE SOCIAL CHRIST” and “THE SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION OF HUMANITY” emphasize that we must deal with our own wickedness, our own ego(s), the demonic qualities in each of us. Society is a collection of individuals and hence, what the individual is, the society is. Samael gives the example of a country he visited which was ruled by a tyrannical dictator. He discovered that in the homes of the people of that country, men were dictators over their own families, over their wives and children.
Samael wrote about the necessity of individual change in all of his books, it is one of the key points of his teaching that one must overcome the ego(s). Nonetheless this does not exclude what the introduction to “THE SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION OF HUMANITY” calls “The revolution against the collective ego of the powerful”.
THE TWO MONSTERS
“LATIN AMERICA is a beautiful girl who walks the path of life, but two horrible MONSTERS lurk in the depth of the forest…, the names of those two Monsters are: CAPITALISM and COMMUNISM.”
Samael’s work truly strives towards what Buddha called “The Middle Way”. Neither Capitalism nor Communism (nor dictatorship) can resolve the human social problem. Private Capital is an injustice against the workers and State Capital is also injustice, we must avoid either extreme.
Only the spiritual person is truly revolutionary, and true economic and social Justice can only be attained by Spiritual Socialism.
CAPITALISM
“Money is like manure: it is not good unless it is spread. DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE can save America from falling into the Feline Claws of Communism.”
Of course it is much easier for many people to hear criticism of Communism than Capitalism, because Capitalism’s true face is invisible to the well-off of the Occident. The Western countries are very opulent and the suffering they create for the rest of the world with their “free market” (corporate monopolization), IMF, WTO etc., is not directly visible and thus easily ignored or rationalised. The people say: “it’s a shame, but Capitalism will eventually make it all better” or “equality is not a good thing” (often confusing Distributive Justice with the lack of any kind of hierarchy).
In truth, the workers should be owners of the means of production, not some distant capitalist. Small businesses should be aided and monopolies prohibited. The Corporations should not control governments through their economic might and lower the quality of life of Latin Americans just for the profit of shareholders. Nobody should own thousands of hectares of land, land should be distributed among those who are willing to work it. Samael says:
“There is lots of money, the problem is that it is badly distributed and on the doorstep of the rich unhappy people weep.
Today credit is only for the powerful and in this way the saying ‘To he that has a horse they give a horse and to he that does not have a horse they give a kick’ is fulfilled.”
(AND THE USA...)
We cannot discuss Capitalism without briefly discussing the major Capitalist-Plutocratic power, the USA…
These days it seems that people judge one to be a sort of heretic or heathen when one speaks about the flaws of the Neo-Liberal (“Free Market”, essentially) economic system, which has been imposed around the world, with or without bloodshed, by the economists of the United States. Nor is it easy to make people understand the many terrible things the Colossus of the North has done, bizarrely even people of other countries seem to be patriotic about the USA! An example of America’s crimes is given by Samael:
“However the doctrine of HITLER is not the Doctrine of the entire GERMAN PEOPLE. Really in Germany THERE IS a lot of COMPREHENSION and if they were cruel in the war, the NORTH AMERICANS OF THE UNITED STATES were worse.
Terrible things were seen on the battlefields, when the North Americans understood that they were powerless against the GERMAN courage, they then dedicated themselves to bombarding defenceless cities and killing the elderly, women and children.
The German soldiers were demoralized many times when they understood that their wives and children were being murdered miserably while they were fighting with the enemy in the BATTLEFIELD.
There is no doubt that avoiding the battlefield to commit murder of women and children is cowardice of the worst kind.”
Though Samael doesn’t go into further detail, one would imagine that he is talking about events such as the bombings of Dresden and Hamburg. Nor does he go into the other atrocities, wars etc., of the USA, when in fact the North American power did similar things in Japan, firebombing the cities - Tokyo was the most lethal bombing raid in history, nuclear or conventional. It is even said that before Hiroshima and Nagasaki the Japanese had already offered to surrender, the Americans dropped the bombs just for the sake of experiment then accepted the same conditions of surrender that the Japanese had already offered. Not to mention the things which have happened in Vietnam, in Iraq and Afghanistan, wars the USA made for the sake of resources such as oil or to try to lord it over other parts of the world and assert it’s empire status. The civilian casualties in these conflicts number in the millions, and the USA often acted with great cruelty, such as burning the soil of agricultural lands to render them infertile.
Samael does mention the manipulations and puppet governments in Latin America, the Corporations robbing the people etc., these being of relevance in books which are fundamentally about LATIN AMERICA, about Latin American problems, not those of Europe or the East. As one of the books says: “The New Culture will be synthetic and Latin America, with its Christian Socialism which is essentially Latin American, will fulfil in the world a mission of synthesis”.
It will be hard for many of the United States’ people to face up to this, but when we look without prejudice we see that the American Capitalist superpower is truly oppressive and inhuman.
COMMUNISM
A well-known joke goes “Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man, Communism is its’ opposite”.
Communism in fact is worse because it takes away all religious freedom. It goes even further than Capitalism in indoctrinating the people and the youth and engages in all kinds of brutality.
Samael devotes a lot of space, particularly in “THE SOCIAL CHRIST”, to debunking Marxism-Leninism, the theory of Historical Materialism. He offers a philosophical critique of Marx, dealing with Marx’s ignorance of Metaphysics for example.
Communism is a thing to be dreaded, yet it’s cause is the cruelties of Capitalism and it can only be combatted by true Social Justice:
“...the masters of CAPITAL prepare the ground and fertilize it so that the ABOMINABLE FLOWER of COMMUNISM will germinate in it.”
“TO THE BATTLEFIELD”
These two books take up the challenge of demonstrating to people the injustices of the present system, what a Socially Just world might look like, and even how we might achieve it. Admittedly they are works from the past, times have changed since the 1960’s. Nonetheless they provide a solid political orientation, offering much insight into many problems.
Any sincere person reading this literature is bound to find useful and interesting ideas. The profound social consciousness of Samael, his comprehension of the dangers of this moment in human history, his original solutions to problems. He is not simply an intellectual intoxicated by a theory or doctrine, his solutions come from a wisdom beyond intellectualism, calling for “a new age in the august thunder of thought”.
We invite you to read the books, to explore for yourself these terrains of consciousness and ideas.
A FINAL NOTE
Though the books deal slightly more with criticising Communism than with other systems, we must recognise that now the Soviet Union is fallen. At present the Colossus of the North (the USA) is in most ways the country posing the greatest threat to humanity. The UN also has a sinister agenda, also leads us to tyranny. They use things like climate change and terrorism to justify the progressive creation of an all-powerful police state, with such subtlety that the masses, distracted by decadent popular culture and the simple business of surviving, don’t notice. Thus they lead humanity towards a New World Order, One World Government, a (Communist, Fascist, Capitalist-Plutocratic) society of total technological control of the population.
This is beyond the scope of this article, and furthermore an obsession with conspiracy theories, some of which are certainly untrue or exaggerated, can sometimes obscure more basic political facts. Some people love to talk about the Illuminati, but they don’t speak so much about Imperialism…
So we will finish by saying, it is important to seek the essential of what is written, not to consider the contextual as absolute or vice versa. These books will prove very valuable to you if you do so, if you meditate. As Samael says in “THE SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION OF HUMANITY”:
“THE TRUTH is not something still, STATIC, the TRUTH is the unknown from MOMENT to MOMENT.”
socialgnosis.org
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