CHAPTER TWENTY. BROKEN CHINA: THE PROMISE AND PERILS OF THE HIVE MIND

Written by: Rick Staggenborg, MD on Aug 15, 2009 8:28 AM PDT

This chapter is dedicated to Thom Hartmann, who wrote in Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight about the need to change human consciousness in order to save the planet. That is exactly what Soldiers For Peace International is trying to do.

China provides a wonderful example of good intentions going bad out of fear that people are not capable of acting in their own best interest. The assumption of its government is that given the opportunity and freedom of action to disregard the interests of society in their own selfish pursuits, citizens will do so. China’s leadership thus sees itself as responsible for making decisions based on the interests of the nation as a whole, often regardless of the effects on individuals.

In seeking to free itself from the burden of colonialism, China united against a common foe, as America had done before her. Unlike most revolutions, this resulted in a ruling class that actually considered its own long term interests as being best served by concentrating on domestic concerns and going to war only when it perceived its interests to be directly threatened. Its huge military primarily serves a defensive function, at least in its own view.

China has gradually built the basis for what could become the heart and nerve center of the economic world, should America continue its precipitous decline from a powerful industrial nation to one dependent on pillaging other nations to fuel its economy. China now fears that it has built its economic house on sand.

China's dependence on the stability of the dollar to maintain the value of its cash reserves leaves it vulnerable to severe disruption if the dollar declines sharply. The Chinese government is the most deliberative on the planet, incorporating the views of many leaders in a complex system of information exchange akin to that of bees in a hive. The Chinese Hive Mind has realized that if it continues to feed the voracious appetites of financial manipulators in America, it risks sowing the seeds of its own economic destruction.

When it floated the idea of converting to more stable international currencies than the dollar, China signaled to an apparently blind American government that it is not going to indefinitely pick up the tab for the corporatist orgy that is our “service” economy. This would of course lead to abrupt devaluation of the dollar, at great cost to the Chinese but at even greater cost to America. 

The leaders of the rapidly growing Chinese economy understand that the only ones being served in this economy are the American aristocracy, or so the counter-Revolutionaries in this country believe. The Chinese know better, having traditionally taken a longer view than the short-sided hedonists who control the levers of power in the U.S. 

The Chinese Communist Party understands the principle of enlightened self interest at the national level, if not at the level of the individual. Just as the Chinese government is willing to ignore the rights of Chinese citizens for what they see as the greater “good,” they are willing to take the economic hit they would suffer by abandoning the dollar in order to stabilize the world economy.

Congress is now faced with a dilemma it appears not to recognize. If the Senate fails to deliver true health care reform, there will be the devil to pay come Judgment Day, when they are next up for re-election. Alternatively, if they produce yet another bailout to save a dying scion of the corporatocracy, the people’s wrath will be fearsome. 

Congress does not yet seem to comprehend this. How much simpler for all concerned if they simply understood that their own interests would be best served by doing their sworn duty. They must pledge to put the interest of the American people above those of the puppet masters who they now feel control their fate. Let us not seek to punish them like the errant brats they seem to be. 

In reality, most members of Congress are more like frightened children who act instinctively, without understanding the ultimate consequences of their actions. Like good parents, we need to try and remember that most of them mean well, but need to be corrected when they misbehave. Positive reinforcement produces much more enduring positive changes in behavior than punishment.Of course, when they endanger us, we must punish them as we would the bad behavior of children.

For recalcitrant children we have to remember that the withholding of toys is the most effective deterrent to misbehavior. These individuals must be made examples of what happens to the servants of the corporatocracy. I have suggested that Max Baucus be the first. Although not up for re-election until 2014, he is a symbol of how the Democratic Party has adopted Bill Clinton's strategy of moving the Party far to the right instead of leading the American People to the natural center of the political spectrum. 

I suggested to the Progressive Democrats of America that it should start a campaign to target Baucus during the health care "reform" debate. This seemed to them to be an appropriate response to his role in obeying the wishes of the insurance, pharmaceutical and corporate industries that finance the propaganda campaigns that keep him in office working for them. He has accumulated power through the seniority system in the Senate, a policy that ignores both the Peter principle and the Founders intent that the Senate be composed of the "natural aristocracy."  It should be goal of our movement to establish the principle that the Senate, like America itself, should be a meritocracy and not an aristocracy.

The Hive Mind is nothing more than the thinking resulting from the consensus reality of a society. It is up to us to “Be the change” in molding the consensus reality of Americans and their government. We must change the meme, to use Thom Hartmann’s phrase. 

Once conservatives and liberals share a common understanding of the nature of democracy and their responsibility as citizens to work for a fair and functioning economy and society, we will demand together the end of American corporatism or as Mussolini put it, fascism. If a communist society that places no value on individual liberty can occasionally do the right thing for its People, why shouldn’t an ostensibly democratic country be able to do the same consistently? 

If you do not know the answer to this riddle, look to yourself.  The responsible parent understands that the child is the product of the family. Iranians are risking death for freedom. The citizens of the first modern democracy risk only ridicule by the ignorant. Let us accept that we are a family of man and take to the streets for democracy in America. If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for our children.

In the words of the artists of This Beautiful Mess:

Come on, come one and all.

All weary and heavy laden, pack up your sorrows,

it's time to head back home.

Let's go,

let's go for broke.

No, no one knows which way is home.

Let's move, let's keep on moving.

We will get to where we're going.

How long will this be going on?

I want to know what's going on.

Come back, come back and haunt me like a true shepherd would.

Lead me beside still waters until all time has gone.

I would add, Jesus will not save us himself. We have free will for a reason. It is up to each of us to make the choice to make change happen, restore democracy in America and save the world from the corporate puppet masters.

Rick Staggenborg, MD


Live from the NetRoots Nation


Pittsburg, Pennsylvania

CHAPTER SEVENTY SEVEN. THE TECTONIC PARADIGM SHIFT

This essay is devoted to the unknown author of the Biblical text found in John 8:32: Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

Few truths are as self evident as this. The international elite who are the self-appointed Masters of the Universe and their puppets in the US government are tightening their grip on the people of the United States. They do this to "protect" citizens who appear willing to trade their freedom for the illusion of secruity. Meanwhile, the international coporate terrorists who control the foreign policy of the U.S. expand the dominion of their corporate Empire by preemptive war on defenseless nations, while citizens who consider themselves politically aware waste their efforts arguing about which of the two corporate parties of the Duopoly best represents their interests.

Citizens of the U.S. and other western nations hope to be on the "winning" side in the dawning New World Order whose horrors they do not yet comprehend. These are people who still believe in the concept of nations in a time when international corporations are replacing governments in deciding the fate of the world.  Those individuals who are taking all of us down this path blindly accept the proposition  that life is an eternal competition for survival. They perpetuate this myth to maintain their power by playing on the hopes and fears of gullible citizens who  naively expect the defeat of terror at the price of their own liberty.

The idea that life is inherently a struggle between contending self-interests is a fallacy. The result of  failing to challenge this illusory vision of human nature would be the destruction of human civilization as we know it. Only by working together in the interest of humanity as a whole can we assure that the sins of our fathers will not be visited upon our sons and daughters.

It may seem that things are getting worse at this point in history, but it all depends on your point of view. If we focus on the continuing acts of reckless greed that are threatening the world economy, causing seemingly endless war and creating conditions for mass starvation, pandemic and increasingly frequent and severe environmental catastrophes, it is natural to conclude that human civilization may be already doomed. 

However, if we focus on the many positive signs that people are awakening and remember that our numbers give us the potential strength to resist enslavement in a permanent fascist New World Order, we will see things differently. It is only by going through the pain of the adolescence of humanity that we can learn from the mistakes of generations before us and give up the illusions of childhood. When we do, humanity will finally mature as a society of adults, ready to accept the responsibility of caring for our fragile species and leave a legacy of hope, peace and proseprity for our progeny.

Some compare humanity to a cancer, growing unchecked by natural barriers to growth and threatening to kill the organism from which it arose. However, unlike mindless cells or parasitic organisms, humans have the ability to direct their own evolution. We can choose to act to save our civilization by adapting not physically, but psychologically and spiritually to the threats we have created by our stubborn beliefs in dangerous ideas. We must abandon the belief in the supremacy of individual will over social needs and the idea that life is a zero-sum game in which only the strongest prosper, at the expense of the many. Failure to evolve our consciousness through an act of collective will and effort would be tantamount to mass suicide.

Transforming human consciousness may seem grandiose but it is not. Every major shift in human civilization started with an idea. If an idea has the power to capture the imagination of the multitudes and change how they interact with one another and with the natural world, change is inevitable. Those who argue that the dangerous beliefs that threaten our collective survival are "human nature" are mistaken. If there is one thing that can be said about human nature it is that it can be expressed in as many different ways as there are humans. The many men and women who have already realized the key to saving human civilization is to live up to the ideal of "liberty and justice for all" proves that the capacity to do so lies within each of us.

The very evolutionary pressures caused by human-caused global climate change have the potential to drive the shift in human consciousness that can save us. The threat of imminent demise may be what saves us. If we respond quickly enough, untold millions will die but human civilization may survive, chastened and changed for the better by its near-death experience.

Only when we are forced to challenge our most deeply held misconceptions will we succeed. The change has begun. It is almost imperceptible, as any exponential change is at first. However, it is a characteristic of exponential growth that at some point the rate of change grows so rapidly that transformation seems to have come from nowhere, like an algal bloom on a pond that appeared clear the day before.

With the power of the internet, our ability to communicate is amplified manyfold. People across the world struggling to find a way to change the course of human destiny can talk to each other directly. Through such personal interactions we can teach each other to reject the notion that conflict is inevitable. We can build a united international front against fascism and war at the grassroots level.

When a critical mass of people come to understand that our interdependence dictates that what is best for each of us is what is best for all of us, we will witness a tectonic paradigm shift in human consciousness. When we put aside the self-imposed distinctions that keep us from recognizing our common identity, consensus reality will change. Only then will democracy be truly possible. 

The most important lies that we tell ourselves are those that conceal the evil acts of leaders in government. Acceptance of atrocities as natural by the people in the nations whose governments commit them makes them complicit in these crimes against humanity. We can and must change the paradigm of consensus reality that accepts enslavement of people in weaker nations by powerful governments run in the interests of international corporations. The change begins when the individual accepts the interdependence of each of us with each other and the planet itself, but it can only become an exponential process if each of us dedicates ourself to awakening those around us to this reality.

Having come to understand that the survival of human civilization itself is in danger, each of us who have awakened must translate our understanding into political action, however we believe our efforts are best spent. Americans can begin to accept their responsibility to future generations by demanding a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate the constitutional violations by the Cheney regime that have sown the seeds of fascism in the United States. These have laid the ground for wars of choice to maintain the powerful oil interests that put them in office, wars that continue under the Obama administration.

As of this writing, it remains to be seen whether President Obama intends to address global climate change that is threatening human civilization or whether he intends to offer any resistance to those who would subjugate the world through fear and threat of perpetual war. In seeking to move forward without looking at how we got to where we find ourselves, he is continuing down a path of self-destruction.

In the process of creating democracy in America so that it might flourish in the world, Americans must demand transparency and accountability for the crimes of those in the U.S. government and the shadow government who create conditions to justify wars of choice. This will entail declassifying documents hidden from public view under the Orwellian logic of “state security.” The leaders who have treasonously betrayed us and used war to further the interests of international corporations and those who benefit from these crimes against humanity must face our collective judgment. 

The list of these crimes includes the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the murder of democratic leaders throughout the world and the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions and occupations designed to make the chosen among the US aristocracy the rulers of a slave planet. War is the ultimate betrayal of humanity. That it persists in a world where there is only one superpower makes a mockery of the claim that the U.S. is a democracy. In a democracy, a free People who know the truth about what the government is doing in their name would not permit it to prey upon the rest of the world to benefit those who pay to put elected officials in power.

The true enemies of freedom are those stateless actors of the corporatocracy who direct the U.S. government and military to achieve their plans of world domination. The vast majority of elected officials in the U.S. are guilty of giving material aid to these international corporate terrorists and are thus guilty of treason. The idea of concluding an investigation with prosecutions is thus a fantasy. No serious investigation will ever take place if those in power had to face the same consequences as those they deem enemies of the state. The appropriate way to have accountability is with a Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

In the end, we must punish only those who refuse to cooperate with or who lie to the Commission, or there will never be an end to recriminations. Peace and freedom on Earth depend on facing the truth about what we have allowed our government to do in our name, then forgiving all but the criminals most responsible, while never forgetting their crimes. After all, any American who has not devoted themselves to ending the crime of war and its attendant evils shares some measure of blame. Only by forgiveness can we hope to move on to a future where all participate in the salvation of an otherwise doomed planet. Vengeance will only breed the pursuit of more vengeance by the vanquished.

Let's end the Uncivil War that has raged in the US for decades and establish true representative democracy. Only then will we have the moral authority that will enable us to spread freedom, justice and peace throughout the world by our own example where we have failed to do so at the barrel of a gun. We must have some sympathy for the devil within all of us and find a way to forgive those who are have acted out of shortsighted, narrowly defined self-interest. We have all at times let selfish considerations into our hearts and allowed them to guide our actions. When we free ourselves from the this self-imposed enslavement of our minds, we will free ourselves from a desire for revenge that would only breed resistance to our efforts to create a world where our children can live free of fear of want and oppression.

In the immortal words of John Lennon:






When I find myself in times of trouble,
Mother Mary comes to me,
speaking words of wisdom.
Let it be, let it be.

And in my hour of darkness
she is standing right in front of me,
speaking words of wisdom.
Let it be, let it be.


Whisper words of wisdom,
let it be, let it be.

When the broken hearted people
living in the world agree,
there will be an answer,
let it be, let it be.

And when the night is cloudy,
there is still a light that shines on me.
Shine on till tomorrow,
Let it be, let it be.


I wake up to the sound of music,
Mother Mary comes to me,
speaking words of wisdom,
Let it be, let it be.


Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be.
There will be an answer, let it be.
Let it be, let it be, let it be, yeah, let it be.
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.




Rick Staggenborg, MD

Roseburg, Oregon

CHAPTER NINETY NINE. PHYSICS 102: CAUSE AND CAUSALITY

 

 

Written by: Rick Staggenborg, MD on Jul 21, 2010 6:37 AM PDT

This chapter is dedicated to Larry Niven, whose knowledge of science and vision of the possible took me to many previously undiscovered worlds. It is also dedicated to my brother Wayne, who introduced me to the delights of science “fiction.”

The hypothetical cosmology in the essay What if God Were All of Us? describes the physical world as the four dimensional representation of a higher reality that prophets have attempted to describe in the great religions in pre-scientific terms. I have recently spoken to Bernard Haisch, astrophysicist and author of The God Theory, who agreed that my model corresponds with his much more sophisticated formulation of the nature of the universe.

In his book, he postulates a theory of reality based on a deep understanding of religion and the physics of cosmology, both of which he has studied in much more depth than have I. More accurately, his model can be said to describe the Multiverse, an infinity of universes which exist simultaneously in this fifth-dimensional realm in which time has a different meaning.

An interesting property of such a multiverse is that from the perspective of this higher dimension, which can be called Heaven, Valhalla, Nirvana or the eternal One, any member of the Heavenly host or Atman can be conscious of any moment in human history and thus present in that moment. Time is irrelevant in this dimension and thus all is revealed to the observer in that sphere of reality.

Of course, an individual consciousness can still only focus on one thing at a time, since that is a fundamental property of the individual consciousness. Only a higher form of consciousness can be aware of all things at all times and then only through the awareness of the individuals who directly experience the events. To such an entity, time as we know it is irrelevant, since events we perceive of as occurring in the past and future are equally evident to such a consciousness.

Even events occurring at different “times” in the fifth dimension where our higher selves dwell are all known to this hypothetical resident of a yet higher dimension, who is an observer of the angels of our better and darker natures and of their Avatars in the four-dimensional sphere of reality that we call the “universe.’’

I would further postulate that the Gnostics are right in arguing that our fifth dimensional counterparts are aware of and can influence their Avatars on Earth through the dream process. By manipulating the probability of specific synaptic connections to form in the process of memory consolidation while we sleep, our higher selves can influence our perception of reality.

The most perceptive and creative right-brain dominant individuals who are writers, screenwriters, artists and poets are important parts of the mechanism by which our higher selves could thus influence the consensus reality of humans, moving it ever closer to an understanding of the reality that they experience directly. If so, then the most visionary works of the various arts could be  clues to the nature of objective reality.

The only way to conceptualize a consciousness that can be aware of all things at once is to postulate that what has been termed God, Allah, Vishnu/Krishna and various other names in various systems of faith is the collective consciousness of the angels of our better natures. My theory of reality postulates that this collective consciousness arises from the individual consciousness of each of us in this higher realm.

Our minds are an epiphenomenon of the fields generated by the workings of our brains. They serve as instruments by which we can filter our sensory experiences and use them to construct a personal model of reality. If we are observant and diligent in questioning the assumptions we make when we try to conceptualize reality, our individual consciousness evolves to correspond ever more closely with the objective reality. When we fail to question these assumptions then we fail to evolve as humans, both individually and collectively.

We can only directly experience the Multiverse if we are conscious independent of our bodies and the physical world itself. Knowledge of scientific models of physical reality is essential to the creation of a mental model of objective reality that is consistent with what is logically inferred about physical reality from scientific observation and experiment. It is not possible to construct a rational model of a higher reality without knowledge of the physical universe to which we are bound.

If we are Avatars of our higher selves then we are born in ignorance of our true nature. It is logical to assume that if we are purposefully incarnated our ignorance is the means to an end. It is my contention that we are born to a “blooming, buzzing confusion” so that we might acquire free will. If we were aware of our higher selves and their relationship to the God that I have argued is the collective consciousness of our higher selves, then we would already know what is expected of us as moral beings. In having the capacity to choose, together we create an infinity of possible realities both subjectively in the world we experience through our senses and in a higher dimension that our higher selves experience directly.

The only restriction on our creations of the various worlds in the Multiverse is that they correspond to the iron laws of logic. We cannot postulate and create a physical world or universe that is inconsistent with anything with which it is interconnected. Unfortunately, this cannot be said of the models of reality that we carry in our individual consciousness. That is why human society is fractured along lines of belief systems that artificially separate us.

It is only through the objective and informed examination of our personal model and comparison of it with those of others that we can begin to approach a personal model of reality that reasonably approximates objective reality. In the same way, the collective consciousness of humanity can only begin to correspond to objective reality if we are able to approach our differences in outlook in a genuinely loving spirit.

This is a collective effort. When enough of us accept a given property of reality, it becomes a part of the collective consciousness. Until then, it abides in the collective unconsciousness of which Jung wrote. None of us are omniscient as individuals. Only together can we begin to appreciate the fuller reality that is the subject of all religious and other spiritual traditions. I would argue that any meaningful conception of God is created through the interactions of the thought fields generated by the higher consciousness of each of us. Thus, we literally create God in this model of reality.

Some would object to the idea that God is a creation of our higher selves. To them, it is a fundamental tenet of their model of reality that God created the “angels” that are our higher selves. However, the observation that everything exists independently of time as we perceive it reveals that this is in fact not a paradox but a non-issue. The Bible says that God is the alpha and the omega, present at the “beginning” and at the “end” of time. 

What is the meaning of that in a Multiverse where time itself is an artifact of observation, not reality itself? The universe may well be closed and unbounded. In such a reality there is no beginning or end, only a point in a figurative “circle” where the “beginning” meets the “end.” If this is true then we will eventually come to a point in history where time will cease to have meaning because the Multiverse will have become one in which the world will be as it was created.

If all this is true then it is our task to recreate the conditions that gave life to Earth and perhaps other planets. Until we “return to the Garden” we are at risk of destroying all we have created, at least from our limited human perspective. All creation stories tell us that the world has been destroyed in our “past.” The Hindus tell the story that Shiva dances to this cycle of destruction and re-creation. At some point we can collectively choose to end this cycle by creating a world together where all live in a rational, sustainable world. This does not require unanimity of thought but a consensus that this is the world that we are going to create together. Such is the nature of democracy.

If God exists then we cannot exist independently of it nor it of us. The fact that our physics do not yet describe the process by which God and the world were co-created only tells us that a model that might describe the process has not yet been developed by theoretical physicists, not that it does not or cannot exist. All scientific theories start with observation alone. When known physics does not adequately explain observable phenomenon it means that the science has to change, not the evidence.

The very existence of the mind cannot be described in terms of known physics at this point. Nonetheless, its existence can be demonstrated by any act of free will. The fact that many people have successfully quit smoking is an elegant proof of the power of the mind over the body’s physical drives. If we were simply sophisticated machines acting only according to our learning and instinct, free will would not exist.

The fact that free will exists proves that life is not deterministic and the apparently predetermined aspects of our individual and collective histories are in fact the result of choices freely made, whether in the dream state that we call life or in a higher realm of existence.

It is not unreasonable to postulate that the consciousness that we dimly perceive with our minds exist in a higher dimension. The implication of this is that if we discover our true natures and each of us thinks and acts in accordance with the consensus reality of our higher selves, we would be in direct communication with what Christians call God and act according to our collective will. Theoretically, we might then have the collective power to determine physical reality as long as it corresponds to the logical rules by which we constructed it.

Imagine traveling at will between the various worlds of the Multiverse, as Jodie Foster did in the movie Contact. If my theory of reality in fact reflects objective reality in this higher dimension, then we may not require the mechanism of wormholes for our physical bodies to travel between the various universes that comprise the Multiverse. The Multiverse may be an epiphenomenon of acting on our collective free will because a new universe may arise every time that we make a decision on what to believe or how to act.

If there is a finite probability that we will choose to act or to select a belief different than that which we are aware of having chosen, then we may simultaneously have made all possible choices, splitting the future into many possible and equally real four dimensional paths in five dimensional space-“time.”

According to the Schrödinger equations that describe the probabilistic nature of the physical universe, the probabilistic behavior of particles can also be observed in the macroscopic world, given an infinite length of time with which to observe it. Just as a cat placed in a box with a divider in it may with a finite probability be found on either side of the divide, so given Eternity can a world arise through individual and collective acts of will in which reality itself becomes a collective act of creation, with an infinite number of universes existing side by side.

Each of these universes must of course conform to logical rules or risk annihilation when a particle of truth collides with a fiction from which the universe might be created. Like matter meeting anti-matter, the chain reaction that results would destroy such a false universe and everything in it and Shiva would continue his dance of creation and destruction within the universes that remain in the Multiverse.

Due to the butterfly effect, the decisions our minds arrive at are based on a virtual infinity of factors beyond our direct control. Given the thousands of decisions about what to think and how to act that each of us faces in our lifetime, the billions of other decisions that others make and the unfathomable interactions between these events, the result is an infinity of universes that all exist within one reality. Many of these universes are so similar that their differences are imperceptible to the human mind, but the effect of this continuing process is to create widely different universes where the course of human history takes startlingly divergent paths.

When our collective consciousness mirrors that of our five-dimensional selves, there may be no distinction between the four dimensional world of the universes that comprise the Multiverse and the five-dimensional world of “Heaven.” Thus, the achievement of evolving into a species with full awareness of itself and that understands and acts upon the collective will of our higher selves that is God may cause the collapse of the distinction between the physical world and the next dimension. The effect would be to bring the “Kingdom” of Heaven to Earth. By this means, Mankind could in theory collectively answer the Lord’s Prayer by doing our will on Earth as we do in Heaven.

It is beyond my understanding why atheists reject this as even a possibility. It seems to me that even the more prosaic ideal of creating an imperfect version of this higher world would be sufficient to raise their sights to a higher aim. Perhaps it is not a lack of faith in God that limits their vision, but a lack of faith in Man’s ability to perfect itself. In my mind, the seeming improbability of human perfection is no reason not to try. If life had no inherent purpose, could we aspire to any higher?

Death has been defined as the absence of change. In a living, breathing Multiverse free will is a necessary perquisite to life itself. This suggests that our ultimate purpose is to find a way that we can achieve a common understanding of how to live together so that the Multiverse itself can continue to evolve, conscious of its nature. This is just another way of saying that God itself will evolve and we as individuals will never die. I have tried to imagine what reality might have been like for a hypothetical before the Universe was created and decided that “In the beginning, God was bored…”

There can be no higher purpose of life than to try to create a perfect society where every citizen of the world is considered to be endowed by his or her Creator with the inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In my cosmology, there is no distinction between acting according to the collective will of humanity or of God, since we are One and the same.

If we are five-dimensional creatures who can collectively see the past, present and future, then we have a vantage point by which to see the events which collectively have driven human destiny throughout time. If humans are but Avatars of their higher selves, then we can exercise our free will through our Avatars, who are not aware that their destiny is predetermined by choices we have already made “prior” to their birth.

This apparent predestination is the result of the fact that we make all possible choices when faced with a significant choice about what to believe or how to act. Thus, the consciousness of which we are aware itself splits into different aspects of the Multiverse and we are entirely unconscious of the process. If we make a fatal mistake, we will never know it as we will continue to exist in the remaining universes of the Multiverse of which we are still a part while that aspect of ourselves will simply remain manifest in our higher, five-dimensional self.

In this way, free will can exist in both realms, since our higher selves can lead us to opportunities that give us the opportunity to choose our paths in life. It seems to be a feature of human nature that we are drawn to the “thin spots” where we can feel the presence of the next dimension even while trapped in the prison of four-dimensional space-time. Perhaps we are drawn to these “vortices” by following the guidance of our higher selves.

The “prison” of the transient world that we can perceive directly is indeed a golden cage for those of us born into the luxury of a secure existence, where access to the essentials of life are readily available. It is not until we fully accept that the lives we lead are dependent on maintaining our advantages through the subjugation of others that the horror of what the world has become as a result of our choices becomes apparent.

Americans grew fat and happy from the spoils of WWII and enjoyed the blessings of a liberty that few now enjoy, even in the birthplace of modern democracy. How soon we forgot that the war was fought to end the threat of world-wide fascism, a threat which through our moral and intellectual sloth we have again let loose on Earth. The “Greatest generation” reaped the spoils of victory but is holding on to what it has amassed so tightly that they and their children are prepared to deny the blessings of our hard-won liberty to their children and grandchildren.

After the war, the United States magnanimously rebuilt Germany and Japan from the ashes that they had left them. Having learned the lessons of WWI, where the vengeful Treaty of Versailles led directly to the Second World War, the government and the People of the United States were determined to see that they made friends of their former foes. How soon they have forgotten that none of us are free while others are not.

In this interdependent and globally connected world, we face a clear choice. We can collectively submit to the fate that the international corporate terrorists have chosen for us, or we can choose the only path to freedom by simultaneously freeing the rest of the world from the threat of fascism even as we restore representative democracy to the United States. The stench of incipient fascism is everywhere in America today and the only alternative to democratically restoring freedom in the United States is a bloody uprising with the potential to destroy not only America but human civilization.

Fortunately, there exists in every human heart the spark of the divine, the better angel of our nature that allows us to in the end see our duty. If we reject the dark angel of selfishness and covetousness, we can prove what I have always believed: Good is stronger than evil and we are essentially good.

Ayn Rand is well dead and it is time that her sick ideas die with her. We are not by nature selfish, at least in the sense of putting our individual interests over those of others. This is learned through our families and our cultures. As we grow we create a reality in our minds that we foolishly believe represents objective reality.

Those of us who have evolved beyond our animal nature understand that our own interests are served in the long run only when we act in the best interests of all. We created ourselves to respond to instinctual drives that assure not only our individual survival but by necessity, our collective survival. Collective survival depends on a conscious collective awareness of the interdependent nature of all things with one another.

Those with inadequate Superego (conscience) to put a check on their Id (instinctual drive toward pleasure) do not fully utilize the gift of reason that is the Ego, or self. We are in reality not fully individuals because we are bound spiritually to the Atman, or Holy host whose collective consciousness gives rise to God, the Eternal One, from which we are derived. We create our own Egos because we have free will. When we succeed at modeling ourselves after the better angels of our nature, the darker angels of human nature will have no power over us and we can enjoy eternal and ever-varying life, at One with one another and with all of Creation.

Once more, in the words of John Lennon:

Imagine there's no Heaven.

It's easy if you try.

No hell below us,

above us only sky.

Imagine all the people

living for today.

Imagine there's no countries.

It isn't hard to do.

Nothing to kill or die for

and no religion too.

Imagine all the people

living life in peace.

You may say that I'm a dreamer,

but I'm not the only one.

I hope someday you'll join us

and the world will be as one.

Imagine no possessions.

I wonder if you can?

No need for greed or hunger,

a brotherhood of man.

Imagine all the people

sharing all the world.

You may say that I'm a dreamer,

but I'm not the only one.

I hope someday you'll join us

and the world will live as one.

Rick Staggenborg, MD

Drain, Oregon

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND THREE. FAITH AND REASON

Written by: Rick Staggenborg, MD on Aug 31, 2010 8:55 PM PDT

This essay is devoted to Christopher Hitchens, who has issued a challenge to people of faith to show that faith is not inconsistent with reason. His intent appears to be to prove that the two are mutually exclusive. He has generated an army of followers dedicated to their faith in nihilism. He makes a good case against organized religions based on the fact that leaders of most faiths believe they have the only true concept of God, but his followers seem to take this as an affirmation that their own faith that God does not exist is a logical conclusion, when in fact it is not even a valid proposition.

I write about this only because I believe that a movement can only become powerful enough to end war if it is as inclusive as possible. Therefore, it would be helpful to convince as many atheists as possible that their belief that God does not exist is as utterly illogical as the rigidly assumed yet vague concept of God of religious fundamentalists. The point is not to humble either but to help both appreciate that they should honestly respect the opinion of the thoughtful believer at least as readily as the casual atheist or other fundamentalist. I am not trying to sell the idea of religion, even in its broadest sense. Agnosticism is just as valid a belief system.

Any college freshman in his first week of Introductory Logic can explain that since you cannot prove a negative, the assertion that the belief  that God does not exist is "scientific" is a logical absurdity. The proposition that God does not exist is only a hypothesis about the nature of reality, one that is not testable, since any negative result can be invalidated by a single counterexample. This makes atheism a matter of faith and not scientific fact. In contrast, it is theoretically possible to scientifically prove God’s existence. The trick is to agree on what God is and set up an experiment to prove that it is much more likely that God exists than that it does not. This does not have the elegance of mathematical proof, but is in fact how we construct most of our beliefs about reality, in a probabilistic manner.

Faith that God does not exist is not only fallacious, or the question might be trivial. More importantly, it might impede the development of a mind capable of grasping objective reality. If in fact God does exist and we are a part of it, as atheists we may miss the fact that our lives do have an inherent purpose. If in fact it does, then we may never understand our role in the larger game of Life if we dismiss the possibility without considering the merits of the argument. If we truly want to understand reality to the fullest extent possible, we may have to admit that it is possible that God’s existence is testable by direct experience.

Each of us constructs our own vision of reality based on our personal experience. No individual can understand every experience that any other has, so those who have not performed an unbiased test of the hypothesis that God does not exist can make no claim to knowledge of whether it does. This is as true for fundamentalists as atheists, of course. To understand the likely nature of reality as fully as possible, the seeker of truth must therefore attempt to understand the experiences of others that shape their minds, bodies and souls. Pagans, Native Americans, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and Christians of all schisms seem to experience something that those blind to the possibility of the existence of the soul cannot or will not comprehend. What that is may be just as real as what we can measure. 

It is not necessary for atheists to believe that God exists in order for them to work with religionists and others in the continuum of faith. It is helpful for them to have an appreciation of the fact that spiritual beliefs do not have to be illogical. Those who have come to believe in God through doubt and an honest test of their faith may be more open-minded and more aware of the nature of reality than those who limit their conception of reality to a model based only on what is measurable. Fundamentalists stop thinking for themselves when they hear a fairy tale that resonates with their prejudices. Atheists should not be proud of doing the same thing.

The Army of Soldiers For Peace International is composed of any fighters for justice from around the world who have vowed to fight powerful oppressors armed only with truth. If our strength is in our numbers, it is important to remember that truth may take many forms. We cannot afford to  reject those who would join our cause because of different ways of viewing the world that do nothing to diminish what we have in common. Our purpose is to unite all men and women who understand that war can only continue as long as the belief prevails that it cannot be ended. There is strength in our diversity. Regardless of where any of us lie on the spiritual continuum, we all understand the concept of interdependence and must be willing to cast aside irrelevant points of disagreement in order to accomplish our objective of ending war forever.

We need the support of all men and women who share faith in or at least hope for the idea that men and women are essentially good. This belief is a prerequisite for democracy. If we do not regard ourselves as essentially good and capable of rational discourse about how to accomplish our mutual goals, democracy is not possible. In the absence of democracy, the powerful will exploit our divisions to conquer us. A form of fascism will be the inevitable consequence of the growing influence of global corporations if we do not join forces to stop it.

Those who believe that men are essentially evil and saved only by faith are deluded if they also think that America is a democracy and a model for the rest of the world. Many are religious fundamentalists who reject the notion that we are good enough to rule ourselves, yet they encourage us to place our faith in them and often, in political leaders who share their sick view of a a society where order is more important than freedom. These are the “patriots” who place their faith in men and women with no vision for a better future and who cling to their political power with one hand while reaching out to corporate lobbyists with the other.

Fundamentalists regard war, famine, disease and want as inevitable in a world filled with evil men. The result is the predictable self-fulfillment of their dark prophecy for the future, one in which free men have given up their God-given right to rule themselves. Some of them are so sure of their deluded beliefs that they have willingly participated in mass suicide and mass murder in the name of serving whatever idol they imagine rules them and guides their actions. Others are doing their best to hasten Armageddon so that they can be swept up and away from the disaster they will have let happen. In doing nothing but holding on to blind faith that someone else will save them from the consequences of their own actions, these so-called “People of God” have truly let themselves be led astray.

There are more people with an unquestioned belief that we will always have violence than there are who even dare hope that may not be true. The truth is that it is up to us both individually and collectively to both to choose to believe whether the end of war is possible and to act according to that belief. We must choose what we will believe is possible if we are to see how to make it real. We must also decide whether to continue to fight over relatively minor differences or join together to force our leaders to solve the many threats facing humanity today.  

Either the optimist or the pessimist may turn out to be the realist, depending on whose vision prevails. If we believe in democracy, we must cling to the belief that Jesus, Mohammed  and other utopian visionaries were right when they taught that the perfect society is possible if we all regard one another with equal dignity and respect. To do otherwise reveals only our fears, prejudices and ultimately our rejection of faith in either Man or God. If we are to stem the rising tide of fascism, environmental destruction, eternal war and unchecked famine and disease, we must join forces now to stop the forces of Empire from enslaving us all in a network of fascist control.

It is possible to win this war to end all wars if we believe in our selves and love our neighbors as we would like to love ourselves if we felt worthy. If sin is a valid concept, then surely it is a sin to despair of success in saving the world from ourselves and leaving our children and succeeding generations a legacy of nihilism and hopelessness. This will only happen if we are too weak of faith to believe that the power of the People can overcome the power a wealthy few who would rule us all if we let them. As a father, I cannot accept this any more than I can imagine giving less than all I have to the cause of making my children's future one worth living.

There is no conflict between well-founded faith and reason. Only a well thought-out system of belief can be considered reasonable, whether or not it includes the belief in a power we cannot directly measure. Those who close their eyes to the possibility of Mankind redeeming itself through its own works are not capable of seeing how seeming miracles are in fact possible. Just as justice and democracy will not exist in the real world until we make them manifest, so will the end of war be only a dream until we choose to make it a reality.

Once more, in the immortal words of John Lennon:






Imagine there's no Heaven.
It's easy if you try.
No hell below us,
above us only sky.
Imagine all the people
living for today.


Imagine there's no countries.
It isn't hard to do.
Nothing to kill or die for
and no religion too.
Imagine all the people
living life in peace.


You may say that I'm a dreamer.
But I'm not the only one.
I hope someday you'll join us
and the world will be as one.


Imagine no possessions.
I wonder if you can.
No need for greed or hunger,
a brotherhood of man.
Imagine all the people
sharing all the world.


You may say that I'm a dreamer,
but I'm not the only one.
I hope someday you'll join us
and the world will live as one.








Rick Staggenborg, MD
Roseburg, Oregon