If a person really wants to understand the madness of the modern day, particularly that of Western civilization, then they have to get ruthlessly honest about what’s going on in the daily world.  Clear thinking and observation outside the box of established norms is fully necessary.  But to do that one must take a clear look at history, and what our probable future is as a species.

The history of Western civilization is that of continual trauma, social unrest and unnecessary war, combined with the bogus ideologies of unnatural, religious thinking. Even when the Roman Empire died out, it’s legacy continued on in the form of the so-called, “Holy Roman Empire” with Crusades sponsored by the Church against Nature, Muslim invasion, and to promote all manner of other wars internal to Europe. Rome was sacked, but the lust for ruler-ship at the tip of a sword remained alive and well.  Today we find that the same traumas continue to be passed down from generation to generation.  They linger on in the form of social unrest, unnecessary battles and hollow religious ritual, so much so that the informed person cannot honestly say we’ve progressed at all since the gladiatorial games.  Even worse, all these are bound up with the shallowness of consumerism found in television ads, “reality” TV shows and fashion magazine hype.  The fascist self-superiority of old Rome, and in fact of ALL EMPIRES, is the same one we find in the modern attitude that Christianity is Superior and Divinely Guided, while everyone else needs to be “saved”.  In consumerism, products are sold with the very same egotism in mind, as in, “the clothes make the man”, and so too does the new car, fancy house and all the false mannerisms of fashion.  It is commonly assumed in fact, that possessing shiny, expensive objects actually makes you a better person than those who don’t own them. However, the “clothes” never have and never will, “make the man”.  Only the man, (or woman) can do that, and it doesn’t matter in the slightest what they wear in the mean time.

Everyone knows or secretly suspects, that the false imagery of consumerism is a dead end.  They suspect that materialism has led us into a blind alley, and that there is far more to life than the random collision of molecules in a water base, or the buying of products at the supermarket.  Everyone knows or at least suspects that Western society, and most of the world by extension, took a gravely wrong turn upon that path of history, leading to the modern day.  The depletion of the ozone layer, pollution of the oceans, rivers, lakes and streams, genetic engineering, the unwise use of pesticides and herbicides, sweat-shop produced goods, the cutting down of the world’s forests and the conditioning of young minds to become unquestioning little soldiers, civil servants, and corporate gears in a great machine of destruction, is only just a small portion of evidence for this wrong turn.  Additionally, we have mass mental illness in the form of sports hysteria, meaningless religious devotion without substance, and the widespread taking of Prozac and other “depression remedies”.  We also have the drinking of alcohol to excess, 1000 times the incidence of cancer than that of only 3 generations ago, with children on Ritalin and adults with chronic ADD, who watch with fascination their favorite, “game/reality show” every day of the week and never question “why?”. There can be little doubt that the modern world has gone horribly astray, to the point of various forms of mass suicide.  The modern world is not about inner growth, it’s about finding convenient diversions or excuses so all that pain is minimized.  It’s about the stifling of every honest and genuine feeling, so as to survive another day of drudgery and meaninglessness, in our worship of the one true God…the DOLLAR.

So much for an honest review of the modern day. When you take a look at history, you find a similar pattern of human self destruction, except on a far lesser scale.  It is said that one should learn from history in order to avoid the repeated mistakes revealed therein, but what nation or individual can today claim to have learned anything significant from history?  What single person or nation truly embodies this understanding within their values, and as reflected in their daily actions?.  Very few it would seem.   The modern mindset is in fact very resistant to all forms of inner knowledge and self evaluation. It has invented defenses of all kinds, such as the bogus philosophy of, “there’s only my truth and your truth”, or “if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it still make a sound?” Truth is NOT personal and it does not require human perception to operate.  Science has long ago dethroned the absurd idea that world is flat and that WE are the center of the universe, one which was peddled by the Church for hundreds of years.  But today this mindset has just been transferred to the idea that “reality” cannot function on it’s own without human permission or creativity. Due to the popularity of such thinking, society is both anti-intellectual and anti-spiritual.  To put this statement another way would be to say that the modern world is marked by a profound mass denial of three basic things; 1) What the truth is, 2) where we’ve been in history, as well as, 3) where we’re going into the future.

There has been no one event or series of events that have occurred in past millennia, which could completely reveal the reason why modern humanity is in such an awful mess.  What we see today is the accumulation of the wrong intent of many centuries, (karma). But there are some historical highlights worth mentioning in greater detail.  Two that come to mind on this occasion are the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, and the Crucifixion of Christ.  In the case of the Roman Empire, we find a very militaristic and materialistic society, who, with its’ slavery, corruption and utter thirst for world domination, is so similar to modern personal attitudes and international relations alike, that it is difficult not to think of it as an ancient template for our modern age.  Any student of history can clearly see that this is so.  With the ancient Romans we witnessed the widespread suppression of literally ALL other cultures and peoples for the sake of the so-called, “Glory of Rome”, a view that reflected the belief that the enslavement and domination of the entire world at the whim of a greedy few,  was by Divine Providence.  Today we have before us a carbon copy of these views, at the highest levels of government and corporate endeavor. 

The second and perhaps more noteworthy event, The Crucifixion of Christ, (whose fate was tied in with the Roman Empire and it’s materialism/corruption),  is an interesting study of the Western psyche.  Although the Church would like to apply various bizarre and non-demonstrable implications regarding this event, the fact of the matter is far more simple.  The fact is, Christ did not “die on the cross for our sins”, at least not in the Catholic sense; nor did he die as they claim, as some sort of “Divine sacrifice” to offset the wrong doings of all people who would live forever-after.  He died as tens of thousands of other political and criminal opponents of the Roman Empire did, both before and after him.  He died just like them to provide a public and graphic display, demonstrating to any onlooker of the futility of opposing Rome and it’s established views.   The Romans made a public example of Christ just as they did the common thief, rogue politician and runaway slave.  To apply some sort of cosmic, spiritual significance to this heinous act, is to debase the intent of Christ and all those that would be spiritual Masters, with such primitive thinking as, “I now sacrifice this goat or lamb or bull to the God…(whoever) so that they might grant my personal wishes.” Spiritual Masters do not die on crosses just so that our personal wrongdoings can be taken away forever.  That is utter nonsense.  The Church’s view of the crucifixion of Christ is a left-over from such primitive thinking, that if you sacrifice one thing, you’ll get another in exchange.  But real spiritual progress doesn’t work that way and never will.  The crucifixion of ANY person is a terribly cruel act.  But the crucifixion of a spiritual Master is a true disaster of unspeakably degrading karma, for whoever commits it. 

So let me tell you now why Christ really died on a cross.  Christ did not die on a cross as some bizarre, Divine exchange of one wrong doing erasing all others.  He was crucified because his message was opposed in every way…morally, socially, economically, emotionally and intellectually by his contemporaries, who were themselves devout materialists and dogma-steeped, religious ritualists.   He died on the cross because mankind put him there.  Why did people do this?....because they rejected his teachings as unacceptable to their existing religious and social beliefs.  Christ in his spirituality was an ardent opponent of materialism, and of phony religious displays full of show and utterly hollow of meaning. It is for these reasons and these reasons alone that Christ was rejected as a dire threat to the existing social order.  So in a way, the statement “Christ died on the cross for our sins” is indeed true, but not in the way that it is interpreted today.  This statement is a leftover of what was said over and over again just after the crucifixion of Christ.  People at that time realized that they had betrayed Christ, rejected his teachings and failed to carry forth what he prescribed in the enlightenment of all humanity.  They failed to protect him from Roman and religious persecution, standing by instead as traitors to all that is Good.  They watched him hang on pieces of wood, and then used his name to live the same Roman materialism and wage the same wars in the name of God.  To them, it was better to follow the established norms of the day…the barbarity of empire, the foolish hollowness of religious myth, as well as mob rule, than to do and to be, what they knew to be true and correct.  It is for this reason that Christ did not die on the cross for our sins, but BECAUSE OF THEM. He died then just as he would die now, for rightfully criticizing the hypocrisy of church organizations, phony rituals that mean nothing, and the utterly false values of the marketplace, all for the sake of truth and spiritual progress. Once again, Christ was tortured and killed by humanity just as he would be today, just as the truth is tortured and killed everyday in every form of mass media and social decision-making.

If we are to realize the modern day as based in large part by these two historical highlights, it is not difficult to understand that at one time humanity was given the choice between spiritual truth and that of materialistic, world dominating egotism.  They were given a choice by the teachings of various spiritual teachers throughout history…between false religious myth, and the direct experience of God and Truth, based upon right intention and right living. Humanity has, in the vast majority, made it’s choice. It chooses materialism and false religious myth over the direct experience of truth.  If ever there was an example of this in the choosing of destructive self indulgence at the cost of all else, the glorification of ego and the mindless following of religious folly, it is the modern day.  These times in which we live are but an extension of Roman mental pathology.  They are a further and complete rejection of truth.  These times are yet another form of the on-going crucifixion of Christ, (as well as similar teachings of all other spiritual Masters) each and every day.  Modern Christianity is about placating the still lingering guilt, (or sin, if you will) of the original (and on-going) rejection of Christ and all that is true, over all that is false.  That is why modern Christianity bears no resemblance whatsoever to the teachings, methods, states of consciousness, or advocated lifestyle of Christ and other spiritual Masters.  That is also why consumerism, materialism and the lust for empire rule the day.  Even bombs are dropped in the name of God today.  Wars of aggression are fought for the supposed sake of “liberty, justice and democracy for all” in unprovoked, “pre-emptive” conquests, no less brutal than under the rule of the Caesars.

Such perspective helps us understand the truth of where we’re going as a species.  Materialism, consumerism and militarism, are a dead end that can lead only to our mass annihilation, and it could be easily said that this is exactly what Christ would advise as well.  What Christ would also probably say is that materialism is the emotionally insecure clinging to the material world as if it were the cure for all inner ills, when in fact our real remedy is spiritual realization. [Our world is not plagued by social ills, it is plagued by spiritual ones.] He would also criticize consumerism as the endless accumulation of far more material goods and monies, (for the sake of ego-indulgence) than are actually needed to live well.  Today, products are sold more for their how they will make their owner look, than for what they actually do at a reasonable cost. A persons’ materialism, (synonymous with greed) is directly proportional to the degree of their inner spiritual poverty.  The greater the materialism and consumerism, the greater is this inner lack for which these material things are intended to compensate.  But material things have not, cannot, and never will be an adequate compensation for inner spiritual and emotional lack.  Nor can they compensate for grave mental illnesses that are a direct result of a lack of self knowledge.

Material things and credit cards are merely a distraction from emotional lives that are in decay and out of balance.  The primary reason the modern world is filled with such fear and pain, is due to a lack of right and spiritual living, not because life is inherently “hard” or because, “nature is cruel”. Nature is actually very giving…it is humanity that has become cruel and demanding.  Finally, materialism, consumerism and militarism are not only extensions of extreme inner poverty; they are a collective groping for inner relief from this pain and fear that comes from spiritual blindness.  These are the symptoms of individual and social desperation.  They are the reaching out by those suffocating in social lies for “things” with which to stay afloat, upon this sea of mediocrity we’ve invented for ourselves.  They are the gnawing hunger of ravenous and wasting frailty, which can never be satisfied by eating, (consuming) more and more.  They are the desperate squeezing of the last drops of water from the canteen of the natural, amidst the vast desert of social lies and silly religious myths.  They are the screams of agony of the mentally insane from those who long for the thirst quenching truth, but who haven’t the courage nor the honesty to deal with that truth on the basis of daily lifestyle. 

The only real sin is the Sacrifice of Truth.

Had Christ not been rejected by humanity, he may have been able to instill his level of consciousness into at least his disciples, if not the greater mass of humanity.  This would have changed the course of history completely, and today we may well have been Masters, teachers and philosophers, rather than corporate managers, consumers and blind followers.  We could well have been a race of Christs and Buddhas instead of these warring and petty simians, concerned with nothing more than self gratification, (sensation without substance) and ego glorification, (social status and fashion magazine “beauty” that is only skin-deep).  Because of our lack of HONESTY in grappling with the truth which Christ, Buddha and others revealed to humanity, we have not progressed, we have digressed.  Because we would rather deny, as a vast majority, rather than accept the sometimes unpleasant truth of the modern condition, we have not evolved.  We have in fact become far more primitive than the so-called “primitives” of the jungle, who know at least as much to respect the Divine in Nature.  Modern culture respects nothing but power as brute force, sophisticated deception, and the put-on con artistry of salesmen and priests, public speech-making by politicians who don’t mean a word they say, social drama and other insincere displays.  That is why modern society will not and cannot last.  If it continues on in this direction it MUST die by the same sword that it lives by.  It will die miserably and in confusion, until not only is all the natural world “consumed“ in the quest for more and more without end, but so too will those who follow society, consume each other in the end.  The Biblical Armageddon is an exercise in self fulfilling prophesy, one that demonstrates not the inevitably of social downfall, but the aimed at, worked for, and otherwise insisted upon DENIAL OF WHAT IS TRUE. 

For those who sincerely seek a daily remedy for these social ills, further suggested reading can be found in the Library of the World Mind Society at http://www.eoni.com/~visionquest   Read the following articles;

1)  Truth, Most Dreaded and Useful, Bibles Do Not Equal Wisdom, The Survivalists’ Guide for the New Millennium, Software for the Mind, and Of Master and Disciple.

With Love and Clarity,

Matthew Webb visionquest@eoni.com

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