CHAPTER NINETY FIVE. THE WALLS THAT DIVIDE US

This chapter is dedicated to Janet Bates, a canary in the coal mine that the world has become. In her sweet voice, she sings out the pain she feels for the inhumanity she sees in the world today. She refuses to close her eyes to the injustice and serves as a witness to our crimes against ourselves so that we may not deny the suffering our collective inaction allows. She dreams for a better world and inspires us to work for it through her brilliant and beautiful music.

The Buddha taught that all distinctions between ourselves, our fellow travelers in space and time, the physical universe and what lies beyond are arbitrary. It is a basic principle of reality that it can be perceived only a piece at a time because the central processing unit of the individual mind is only capable of focusing on one thing at a time and because the nature of reality is duality. Everything that is possible to imagine is possibly real as long as the reality we create in our minds is logically consistent with physical law. If it is not then we are living in a dream world that can become a nightmare if we are not ever vigilant in looking for the logical inconsistencies in the way that most of us view the world.

We must decide what to believe about its nature according to the principle of duality. Every aspect of the multiverse must be viewed with the recognition that while we may believe that a thing is true, we delude ourselves when we accept belief as established fact. We each possess a model of reality and collectively we determine what that possible world we create. Our scientists, poets, fiction authors, painters, screenplay writers and politicians would have little to do if we did not create new worlds in our minds and in the physical Universe through the free exercise of our imaginations. Imagine if there were no abstract art and our artists painted only what they saw with their eyes rather than what they envisioned in their minds.

The future is not ours to see with perfect clarity. The conceit that we can perceive how the world works and thus predict the future from the study of the past retards science, medicine, art, literature, economics and politics. If we are to ever become masters of our own destiny we must look beyond what we believe to be so and imagine a better world. While we may not individually or collectively be capable of creating a perfect world in our minds or in our world, we must by all means try. It is our moral duty to always endeavor to leave the world into which we are born better than we found it for the sake of our children and generations yet unborn.

The concept of nation is born of the concept of tribalism. Just as we are not as a People composed of races, so is our belief in nationalism an artificial distinction that prevents us from seeing the way to save us from the depredations of selfish individuals who view the game of Life as a game of Monopoly. Thus, we are forced to engage in a game of Risk in which wars are seen as inevitable. This fallacy distracts us from the vital task of saving the world from self-destruction by acting collectively to exercise our power to Stop the Madness that has enveloped human society and threatens the future of our children with endless war and the specters of mass famine, environmental devastation and pandemic.

If God is all of us and we are but the Avatars of our higher beings then we must listen to the Angels of our better nature and act now to stop the self-appointed Masters of the Universe from achieving their goal of worldwide domination and the subjugation of those less fortunate than they in the circumstances of birth. Life may not be currently fair, but it is our right and duty to make it so by cutting off the heads of the Hydra that is the cabal of international terrorist conspirators who are willing to rob our children of their inheritance in order to protect the spoils of the endless war that they have accumulated at the expense of the workers by whose sweat all wealth is created.

If there is a God in Heaven, the world will find a way to tear down the walls between nations that divide brother from brother and sister from sister. This is our right and duty to do so the children of God may live in peace and harmony for all eternity. Soon the collective consciousness of humans will evolve into one in which war is seen not as inevitable but unthinkable. Israel can by itself save us from Armageddon by seeing this in time to prevent the war that was foreseen two millennia ago. Those who listened to the Prophets who predicted that the End of Days would inevitably come if we did not come to collectively realize that the family of Man must resolve its differences if we are to survive as a species can save us from ourselves if they become Evangelists for the word of the One God who may still be speaking to those prepared to listen.

We cry out to the children of Yahweh to listen to the voice of the One God who weeps for them in their blind anger. Mr. Netanyahu, tear down that wall! The people of America can compel Israel to respond simply by cutting off the billions that sustain its war machine. Israel is sealing its fate and perhaps that of Mankind by its blind fear of change. In the mind of the average Israeli, safety is only possible by cruelly imposing the will of their nation on their brothers and sisters in Palestine. 

The collective reality of the lost tribes of Israel must become one in which there are no walls between us. Their immediate family is composed of all of the Semitic Peoples. To continue to poison the wells of their neighbors can only lead to their reluctant punishment by the loving God in whom they once trusted to protect them in the desert. God’s Chosen People have the moral responsibility to honor father Abraham by reuniting his family and sharing the milk and honey God granted them with the ones who once shared their lands freely with their Jewish and Christian neighbors as Mohammed taught them that Allah commanded.

It is also the moral duty of the United States to tear down the wall by which it has futilely attempted to staunch the flow of Mexico’s downtrodden masses who want only to feed their starving families. Clinton erred in giving away our right to determine our own economic fate to the one world government that the international corporate criminals who run the World Trade Organization want to impose on us. The People of the United States err in trying to protect their accumulated wealth at the expense of our neighbors to the South.

The People of the United States created the problems that beset them by allowing and encouraging our leaders to use the cheap labor that Mexico provided to keep the price of fruits and vegetables affordable for the workers in America whose jobs they sacrificed in the process. It is time that the United States own up to the mistakes of its chosen leaders and help both its struggling middle class and the poor and their suffering neighbors in Latin America. They must demand that Congress abrogate the treaties of NAFTA and CAFTA and withdraw from the WTO. We will not be able to bear the cost of bread if we do not, just as the People of Mexico can no longer afford the corn that they now struggle to grow for the benefit of the company store that is Archer Daniels Midland and the other selfish beneficiaries of the Senates largesse of the money it extorts from the taxpayer lavished upon them through agricultural subsidies intended to protect the small farmers of America.

America can put food on the tables of families in the United States and Latin America if it chooses. If it is truly a nation that respects the Christian values upon which the religious Right claims it was founded, it will live up to its moral responsibility to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless and provide comfort to those afflicted by the spiritual disease of greed that it has caused its own people to become infected. When the Peoples of all the Americas unite in the cause of justice they can and will share the gift of democracy with the Peoples of the planet we all inhabit. All the world can be free and wealthy if the People of the United States collectively will it to be so. The remnants of democracy survive in the nation whose Constitution was written by men who held the conviction that our Creator endowed all of the inhabitants of the Earth with the inalienable rights to liberty, equality and equal justice for all.

If all lovers of peace, democracy and freedom unite, there is time to prevent Armageddon and restore ourselves to the Garden of Eden we left when the first tribes formed in the aftermath of the original sin that was the slaying of Abel by his brother Cain. We willingly left a place where fruit hung in the trees of the Garden for anyone to freely take and the lion lay down with the lamb in perfect safety. We can return if we forgive our neighbors for their trespasses against us and together work to rebuild the world that we have nearly allowed to be destroyed. God is still speaking and we must now listen. If everything happens for a purpose we must strive to understand the meaning of the gushing of oil into the sea on which America depends for much of its fish. Several of the Apostles drew their living from the sea and Jesus taught us in the Sermon on the Mount that if we share there is plenty for all.

Just as Jesus taught us to share, Mohammed taught that it was the will of Allah that we share with our brothers the Manna that it provided for our sustenance. Buddha taught us that we are all part of the Eternal One that is the Universe we collectively inhabit. Krishna taught us that Vishnu wanted us to destroy the caste system that we created to preserve the wealth and privilege of the Brahmin. Vishnu himself taught us that we are all part of the reality that the dance of Shiva represents. The creation and destruction of Universes will cease only when we recognize that peace can come eternally if we recognize our interdependence and work together for the Salvation of Mankind.

God is still speaking. Are we listening?

In the words of Janet Bates:






I built my house my castle,
the finest in the land
with riches I have taken
but the walls came tumbling down.


The wall came tumbling down my friend,
the walls came tumbling down.
Because no love there could be found,
the walls came tumbling down.


I built my house my fortress,
with stone walls all around.
I built my house with bricks and stones,
but the walls came tumbling down.


The wall came tumbling down my friend,
the walls came tumbling down.
Because no love there could be found,
the walls came tumbling down.


I built the finest temple.
People came from miles around
to justify the greed and hate,
but the walls came tumbling down.


The wall came tumbling down my friend,
the walls came tumbling down.
Because no love there could be found,
the walls came tumbling down.


I built out on an island,
with oceans all around.
I thought I would be safe there
but the walls came tumbling down.


The wall came tumbling down my friend,
the walls came tumbling down.
Because no love there could be found,
the walls came tumbling down.


I built my house with care and love and
gardens all around
There is no use for walls I said,
so the walls came tumbling down.


The wall came tumbling down my friend,
the walls came tumbling down.
Because no love there could be found,
the walls came tumbling down.


A wall can keep a stranger out.
A wall can keep you in.
Forever you'll be strangers
till the walls come tumbling down.






Rick Staggenborg, MD


Portland, Oregon