Cooperation and Doubt
(adapted by Beezone – The original essay and book are available in the Beezone Library)
Scientific Proof of the Existence of God Will Soon Be Announced by the White House!
Prophetic Wisdom about the Myths and Idols of mass culture and popular religious cultism, the new priesthood of scientific and political materialism, and the secrets of Enlightenment hidden in the body of Man.
By Da Free John (Adi Da Samraj). Only edition: 10/80.
Available on Beezone Library
Chapter Two
Cooperation and Doubt
The world is suffering from a wrong understanding of human freedom and human politics.
Those who value the notion of human freedom tend to think… of freedom basically as separation from parentlike demands, so that the “free man or women” is conceived of as someone who can do whatever he or she likes, whenever they like.
But such freedom…is a false, childish, and ultimately antisocial point of view. It is the viewpoint of private self-indulgence and ceaseless self-meditation. It is the very principle that destroys relationships, love, and the higher processes of personal, social, and spiritual growth.
Yet, this childish point of view is the popular notion that underlies the exercise of freedom in present-day democracies. It characterizes the present popular version of the “American spirit” and the present state of the “spirit” of democratic and capitalistic free enterprise everywhere in the world. It is the root of private and public irresponsibility and vulgar exploitation of sub-human possibilities everywhere in the modern technological world of social media and computer generated (IT) cultures.
Human freedom is not in principle about the ability to randomly fulfill random desires. The true principle of human freedom is a higher cultural concept of the status of superior individuals, not childish masses of vulgar sub-human freedom. Human freedom is a mature realization of the status of individual existence in relationship with all other human beings and all aspects of the shared world. Human freedom is a political or relational estate, rather than a separately personal one. It is the disposition in which the higher or evolutionary conditions of one’s superior adaptation are chosen, and in which full moral responsibility is accepted for one’s social and intimate relationships.
If a State is organized as a democracy, it cannot function as a true democracy unless the people are typically and personally mature in this disposition of human freedom. A true democracy is founded on such freedom, or moral responsibility, on the part of the population as a whole.
“democracies are in a critical moment. The next moment will determine whether the democracies will survive, or whether they will necessarily be replaced by authoritarian and utterly centralized forms of political rule.”
But if the people do not mature, if the people do not learn the higher Way of Life and become fitted to personal patterns of self-restraint and moral patterns of responsibility and service in relation to all others, then democracy will inevitably fail. Indeed, it is already fundamentally in a state of failure—or a stalemate in its development—in America and in democratic societies all over the world.
Therefore, democracies are in a critical moment. The next moment will determine whether the democracies will survive, or whether they will necessarily be replaced by authoritarian and utterly centralized forms of political rule.
We can already see that democratic institutions are eroding, and that the populations of the democracies are becoming more and more lawless, chaotic, and childish. And to the degree the people have become irresponsible, the State inevitably moves to create order by law, authority, and force.
I am suggesting that the democracies are in serious danger at the present time. And there are very few forces at work to turn the tide away from the centralized ordering of mass culture that typifies the present-day non-democratic States. Indeed, the principal influences in American society and other democratic societies are themselves actively, if somewhat unconsciously, working against the development of higher cultural and individual maturity in the populations of mankind.
The principal influences that are currently at work in the world belong to the modern movement of scientific and political materialism. Every great modern State is intimately in league with this movement, as ancient States were with official Cults of religion. And the products of that marriage are all of the technological and manipulative influences that more and more pervade and control the daily lives of people.
The popular social media, the press, and the publishing industry, as well as the scientifically indoctrinated intellectualism of the universities, are all working for a common cause, which is the ultimate and exclusive triumph of scientific and political materialism. Such is the character of all of the dominant influences in contemporary technological societies. All contrary or superior voices tend to be excluded, negatively manipulated, or otherwise overwhelmed and minimized in their effects by all of this machinery of popular culture. Certain traditional voices continue to be heard, particularly in the less sophisticated areas of the mass culture, but the traditional voices have already had their day, and the archaic mind that supported the old ways and the old days is gradually dissolving into a condition that is not distinguishable from the dominant voice of scientific and political materialism.
“Mankind is not permitted to learn the higher purpose of humanity, but is continually indoctrinated into a superficial state of mind that is merely observing and reacting to objective events and struggling with mortal psychological states.”
Apart from the popular media of communication, the social order in general daily manifests more and more critical signs of deterioration. Mankind is not permitted to learn the higher purpose of humanity, but is continually indoctrinated into a superficial state of mind that is merely observing and reacting to objective events and struggling with mortal psychological states. Human beings are currently learning little more than how to desire elemental bodily fulfillment and how to achieve the goals of material self-glorification. All the rest of what humanity can be is kept in a state of perpetual doubt by the propaganda of scientific and political materialism.
We have come to a moment in time when democracy as we know it is beginning to look like a passing romantic adventure. Indeed, it was originally the creation of superior and somewhat romantic idealists who belonged to the old traditional order, but who also maintained an enthusiastic interest in the newly awakening possibilities of a scientifically fabricated culture. Democracy, as we have conceived of it in modern times, was essentially created in response to the new scientific and political possibilities that were beginning to emerge in the eighteenth century. Such democracy not only recognized the new possibilities for the personal and political relief of the burdens of “Everyman,” but it also maintained an idealistic hold on the intellectual and religious culture of the old world, in which “Man” was viewed as an ultimately superior and perfectible being.
The problem is that the religious basis for the traditional idealism that was the original foundation of democracy has gradually and steadily been propagandized out of existence by the emerging cultural, technological, and political forces of scientific materialism. As a result, the people no longer generally or seriously presume the idealism that is the necessary support of democracy as we conceive it. The superior Man and Woman and the true cultural, spiritual, and political leadership of superior individuals has ceased to be popular, and the mood of people is no longer idealistic in the higher cultural sense, but it is materialistic in the sense of sub-human and self-possessed desiring.
DOUBT
Science is properly and originally a method, but it has become the source of the popular worldview. And just as science is a method of self-isolation for the sake of objective observation of events, the mood or strategy of “Everyman” has become the one of separative self-consciousness and the inability to surrender the self and make it responsible to the totality or total pattern of existence.
The popular mood that the scientific method tends to produce is the intellectual or verbal-mental mood of doubt. The way of science is to question or inquire without ceasing, just as the ancient cultural way was to pray without ceasing.
Therefore, science is not about the end of questioning. It is not about finding a final answer. It is about always questioning, and, by this means, increasing the knowledge we have about things. And thus true scientific inquiry is based on the constant and tacit recognition that the present state of knowledge about things is neither permanent nor absolute. (Actually, if scientific and intellectual leaders would fully understand this principle of the tentativeness of all knowledge acquired by the scientific method, the destructive propagandizing against religious, spiritual, intuitive, and higher cultural movements, or persuasions gotten by other means than the scientific method, would be significantly decreased—to the general benefit of mankind.)
“Only…questions are forever. Thus, the conventional mood established by…an exclusively scientific culture is the mood of doubt.”
Since the scientific method does not admit of a final or perfect answer to any question, the mood or strategy of scientific inquiry remains that of the question itself. Only the questions are forever. Thus, the conventional mood established by the popularization of an exclusively scientific culture is the mood of doubt. And, therefore, the psyche of “Everyman” has become more and more characterized by doubt, or questions without answers. As a result, the only certainties that can be propagandized are questions, doubts, anxieties, objective phenomena, and elemental states of body and mind.
For this reason, the cultural scientism of our day is perpetually, and wrongly (since it has no direct knowledge or understanding of what it is criticizing), propagandizing against whatever it has not yet proved by its own method. Whatever is not yet proved by the scientific method is still in doubt (or still existing in the form of a question, from the scientific point of view), but the popularizers of the viewpoint of scientific and political materialism (which is the cultural extension of the scientific method and the current summation of proved knowledge) tend always to speak dogmatically. They either imply or directly propose that what is not yet proved by the scientific method is also simply false.
And since the scientific mind knows or presumes no other way to enter into relations with things than by objective scientific inquiry, no way is seriously suggested to the general and somewhat closed population of scientifically based cultures for entering into the mind and process of the higher and spiritual way of Persons.
“intellectuals who comment on religious and spiritual matters have no way to view or recommend religious practice. They ultimately recommend nothing more than questions and doubts”
Even those intellectuals who comment on religious and spiritual matters have no way to view or recommend religious practice. They ultimately recommend nothing more than questions and doubts, and the intention to “keep on studying the problem.” Intellectualism based on scientism ultimately remains in the exclusive mood of scientism. Therefore, it cannot find answers, but only questions, doubts, and so forth. This is because the method of science is not identical to the primary structural process in Persons that produces higher human participation in the world, including the moral force of love, the religious force of Divine Communion, and the evolutionary force of surrender into the Life-Power that is the Matrix of the Person body-mind and the world. And unless commentators of higher cultural phenomena will attain a wisdom superior to science, they will never understand the disposition that produces love, spirituality, and the superior Person.
The summation of the effects of the predominant intellectual and popular influences of modern societies is dogmatically anti-religious and fixed in the mood of doubting and inquiring, so that anything that looks like an “answer” is regarded as some kind of demonic absurdity. But the intellectual and popular leaders of the dominant mentality have simply failed to understand the true nature of Man and the primary form of the human relationship to other beings, to the events of moment-to-moment experience, and to the ultimate Reality or Condition of the totality of existence. For this reason, they have failed to allow for a process in Man that is senior to doubt and inquiry.
The childish religious mind proposes that “faith” (or non-rational belief) in “revealed” or preverbal “answers” to great questions is the alternative to the chronic doubt of the scientific, analytical, verbal mentality of modern society. But the viewpoint of “belief in answers” was created in the childhood days of “Man”, long before the era of scientific inquiry and the culture of scientific and political materialism. Since the era of scientism began, the traditional “answers” have gradually been found to be largely untenable. And there is no right reason for believing something, if it is clearly untrue, simply because belief feels better than doubt.
Thus, the childish and dependent religiosity of traditional societies has been confounded by the adolescent and separative intellectualism of modern scientific mind. But the culture offered by the rule of scientism is bereft of anything but doubt and materialistic enthusiasm. Therefore, we must be awakened to the maturity of Humanity, beyond childish religiosity and adolescent intellectualism.
The mature Person is a spiritually awakened being who has transcended both the method of conventional religion and the mood of conventional scientific intellectualism. He/She is established in the primary disposition of Humanity, which is the intuition of unity with the World-Process and the active disposition of heartfelt Communion with the Reality, Life-Power, or Transcendental Unity in which the entire realm of Nature is arising, changing, and passing away. This mature Person is possessed neither by questions nor answers. They transcends all knowledge and all experience in their fundamental Condition of existence. Therefore, they are able to participate in the higher and evolutionary acculturation of their own body-mind without resorting to archaic belief systems and childish salvation schemes, and also without succumbing to the self-divided and sub-human fixation of non-participatory doubt and intellectual impotence.
Only such a Person can provide the workable foundation for the creation and survival of future human cultures. He/She must become the new Person to which every individual commonly aspires, or else the adolescent era of scientific and political materialism will destroy not only the child in humans but also the mature Humanity.
“the failure of true human freedom, or higher human acculturation, will inevitably produce a false politics—and, indeed, is already so doing.”
I have, in this essay, continually linked scientific materialism with political materialism. This is because science, as a dominant worldview, inevitably creates or recreates the social and political order in the image or mood of science itself. And I began this essay by referring to the idea of human freedom. Now I would consider that the failure of true human freedom, or higher human acculturation, will inevitably produce a false politics—and, indeed, is already so doing.
As I have said, the concept of democracy was an idealistic and even romantic notion, founded in the ancient traditional mentality, and produced in the earliest stages of the transition to the era of scientific materialism. But as the era of scientific materialism progressed, a new political design was conceived that was founded in a new idealism, entirely conceived within the “realistic” (rather than “romantic”) framework of scientific materialism itself. That idealism is called “communism” and, somewhat more loosely, “socialism.”
Simply stated, the communistic and socialistic ideal is associated with a collectivist (rather than an individualistic) social structure. However, the basic foundation of a communistic or socialistic State is not collectivism but the authoritarian role of the Parental State, which enforces collectivism. There are many positive things that may be said for forms of collective (or cooperative) social order and activity themselves. Indeed, it is the failure of the cooperative mentality and the practical politics of cooperation that is the principal sign of disintegration in a democracy. When Person beings become obsessed with the motives of exclusive privacy and uninhibited personal exploitation of conventional desires, they become more and more self-indulgent, uncooperative, and antisocial. Then the intimate world of community disintegrates, followed by the disintegration of family structures.
The mass of individuals must awaken to the Truth of the Human Condition and to the higher evolutionary culture of the truly Divine Transformation of the individual and the society as a whole. This means that the mood of both non-rational belief (which produces only the consolation rather than the transformation of Man) and rational doubt (which produces objective knowledge but allows for no fundamental transformation of the knower in the process) must both be transcended in the mood of intelligent self-knowing and self-transcending participation in the spiritual Reality that confronts us directly in our intuitive experience of the conditions of existence.
“if such a response and such responsibility do not begin to characterize the quality of “Everyman,” then future societies will more and more consist of authoritarian and materialistic States engaged in great centralized efforts to manipulate and control irresponsible populations of disturbed people.”
If the massive populations of Human beings will begin to respond to this consideration, and if benign leaders will begin to create a culture that has outgrown childish religion and that transcends science while also making right use of scientific methods and discoveries, then it should be possible for true human freedom to persist as the fundamental characteristic of future societies. However, if such a response and such responsibility do not begin to characterize the quality of “Everyman,” then future societies will more and more consist of authoritarian and materialistic States engaged in great centralized efforts to manipulate and control irresponsible populations of disturbed people. We can already see how the democracies (as is naturally the case with large collectivist societies) are moving more and more toward the political structures of a centralized State that must support and control a large, fragmented population of disturbed and demanding people. The effects of the popular social influences in America, for example, not only tend to destroy or prevent the higher cultural development of the populace, but they actually create and exploit the subhuman and hopeless motivations that ultimately produce social fragmentation and chaos.
The false concept of Human freedom produces a mass population that is fragmented into a chaotic and reactive collection of mere individuals. In that case, communities and families dissolve or become weak, and only the State remains as the source of order, help, and security. The next step is the deliberate and total centralization of power in the mechanisms of the State, and the reduction of the population to an orderly machine of production.
But what if the fragmented masses awakened to the truly responsible mood of Person freedom and destiny! Then the spell would be broken, and a new possibility for the future would emerge.
COOPERATION
And what are the political characteristics of such free and superior beings! The primary urge of the free human being, who is responsible for himself or herself and his or her relationships, is to enter into cooperative relationships with others. Therefore, if the masses of mankind will awaken to the process of higher and truly human acculturation, they will transcend childish and adolescent attitudes, they will make right use of scientific and technological means of knowing and improving the common conditions of human existence, and they will naturally enter into cooperative or relational forms of social order.
It is natural for free or responsible men and women to live in forms of cooperative commitment to one another. Therefore, truly free men and women are not separative and self-indulgent in their actions, but they are fundamentally cooperative and self-transcending in their actions. This means that responsible people create families and intimate communities, and they maintain right and responsible agreements with their intimates as well as with members of other families and communities.
But the current trends in so-called democratic societies are toward self-indulgent fulfillment of individual and lower desires (even through technological means such as NFT’s) and away from cooperative commitments, including marriages, families, and intimate communities. The popular mood expressed in the current media of our mass culture demonstrates a general fear and disdain relative to intimate religious or secular communities, and the average citizen lives in a private castle of self-illusions, comforted by computer visions and the degenerative habits of his or her choice.
“The only defense individuals have against the centralizing tendencies of the State is to break the spell of dependence on the parentlike powers of State and enter into intimate cooperative relationships with one another.”
Even so, Human societies must be founded on families and autonomous intimate communities, or else the State becomes the only autonomous political structure, and all culture is replaced by the salt-of-the-earth round of political subservience to State controls over every aspect of human existence. The only defense individuals have against the centralizing tendencies of the State is to break the spell of dependence on the parentlike powers of State and enter into intimate cooperative relationships with one another. Only in that case—when the social order is composed of autonomous, intimate, and higher culturally oriented communities of free and responsible men and women—can the overwhelming trend toward State control of populations by political means and also cultural means (via the official Cult of knowledge at any given time, be it the Catholic Church in the old days or the new “Church” of scientific materialism in the present day) be brought to a halt.
The practical ideal of communism, or socialism, is founded on “realistic” exploitation of the lowest needs of mankind, and it does not “romantically” depend on the higher qualities and superior aspirations of “Man”. Perhaps for this reason, many people presume that it is the political ideal most likely to achieve dominance in the future world of “Man” as now it seems, since the general population of mankind is not presently aligned to the processes of higher Human acculturation. And even the once “romantic” democracies are vulnerable to the tendencies of the Parental State as a response to the chaotic problems of contemporary societies.
“True communities must be the foundation of human societies, but true communities must be based on the higher and evolutionary cultural principles of spiritual Wisdom and self-transcending habits of action on the part of every individual.”
True communities must be the foundation of human societies, but true communities must be based on the higher and evolutionary cultural principles of spiritual Wisdom and self-transcending habits of action on the part of every individual. If such communities can begin to develop and achieve a primary voice in the media of daily understanding, then the present trend toward the politics of the Parental State can be overcome. But true communities must arise among the people as autonomous, free, and higher cultural entities. If they do not thus arise, but, rather, if the superficial communal aspect of human communities is enforced as a method of the State, then community simply becomes an instrument of the depressive powers of the Parental State machine.
The State cannot create true communities. The State cannot elicit higher cooperative motives in the people, nor should it be relied upon to do so. Nor can science or scientific materialism create a true culture of human societies, since the primary acculturation of peoples takes place as a process of self-transcending Communion with the Life-Principle and ecstatic Unity with the World-Process, and it involves the immediate and moment-to-moment evolutionary transformation of the individual—whereas the mood of scientific materialism is doubt, and the method of scientific inquiry excludes the process whereby the knower himself is transformed. Therefore, the Cult of scientific materialism is fundamentally a tool of the Parental State, and it only serves the establishment of a disturbed and dependent human community that must resort to the authoritarian propaganda and technological resources of the State and the scientific Cult of the State.
Science is only benign when it becomes the tool of free men, and the State is only benign when it must necessarily respond to the demands of the people. But the people do not represent a power superior to the State unless they become responsible and autonomous through the establishment of free cooperative communities, wherein individuals are obliged in their actions only by the higher culture of Wisdom served to them in intimate company, while they yet remain entirely free of the dictatorial limitations that a Parental State will always apply to their actions—even their most personal, private, and intimate actions. Likewise, the masses of people will not enter into true forms of cooperative and higher evolutionary community unless they begin to respond to the Wisdom-Teaching of living Adepts and overcome both their childish and dependent religiosity and their separative adolescent predisposition toward a self-indulgent, analytical, and dissociative view of the world and Man.
Cooperation and Doubt
(adapted)
“This book is itself a prophetic meditation on many of the partial views that pervade the popular and also the “se-cret” or esoteric domains of Person culture. The Wisdom-Revelation of the Living God is the Principle whereby these meditations or prophecies have been made. Therefore, let us also consider these ideas of Divine descent and Person as-cent in the same Light.”
Chapter Five, Divine Descent and Person Ascent
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Scientific Proof of the Existence of God Will Soon Be Announced by the White House!
Prophetic Wisdom about the Myths and Idols of mass culture and popular religious cultism, the new priesthood of scientific and political materialism, and the secrets of Enlightenment hidden in the body of Man.
By Da Free John (Adi Da Samraj). Only edition: 10/80.
Available on Beezone Library
***