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Dethroning the Gods of the Religions, p. 2 The
formation of the mass mind is governed by three fundamental determinations
which - through complex subconscious mechanisms - control all the individual
beings that compose it. In a descending order of importance, the first
and the most important is the influence of the ancestral reservoir from
which all genetic heredity flows; the second is the immediate parental
generation that has given birth to any generation currently alive, and
the third, commonly considered to be the most powerful but in reality
the least, is the environment. An environment is in reality the product
of the accumulated achievement of the whole historical line of a given
sector of humanity - and in particular its representatives closest to
the present - and this is why its effective influence is derivative
and not primary. The environment is precisely the exteriorization of
the contents of the collective psyche and not its cause. It serves both
to fix and stabilize it as well as provide the field for its activity
and its external identity. The
ancestral pool or the hereditary deposits of all antecedent generations,
in other words the dead, being infinitely greater in number than those
physically alive are to the same degree immensely more powerful than
the total quantum of force represented by the living. The cumulative
mass of hereditary force represented by the ancestral ascendants therefore,
and in particular those proportionately more proximate to the generations
physically alive, exercise by far the greatest influence over the collective
subconscious of the mass mind and determine both its qualitative characteristics
and the directional tendencies of its historical development. Current
generations continually contribute to this pool and the course of its
development as they pass from physical existence but the strength of
their influence is significantly weaker than the momentum communicated
by the past. However, while not ignoring the great achievements that
the great historical individuals have contributed to this mass, the
true individual attains real consciousness only by emerging from and
therefore radically transcending the immense force of gravity of the
lunar pool of the mass mind [4].
Because
the mass mind is unconscious, it is passive and therefore tends to coagulate
in fixed patterns of behavior and thought which persist indefinitely
unless modified by an external force. These patterns are the traditions
which define it and give it significance. Therefore, all the achievements
of civilization, to the extent that it exists, have been the achievements
of individuals and not of collectivities. All positive evolutionary
changes in collectivities have come from individual men and women who
precisely have to some degree or another emerged out of the general
conditioning. Even in the case of inventions, their creation was made
possible by men and women who asked why not. However, because collectivities
are passive and have been formed largely from the legacy of its past
ancestral heredity all changes are slow and only take effect after continuous
repetition, that is, until they are integrated into the subconscious
and become part of the collective conditioning. The
conscious individual is, in integral terms, one who has engaged in a
yogic process of association with the very force of Existence itself
by virtue of which he or she acquires the capacity to emerge from and
overcome the gravity field of the mass. In that event the conscious
individual steps out of the stream of horizontally determined time and
realizes a complete vertical discontinuity with respect to the past.
The immensity of the task of conscious individuation lies precisely
in the fact that the collective mind, as I have said, is constituted
not only of the existing generations but also by the whole cumulative
influence of its hereditary antecedents which are continually active
at the level of the subconscious mind. Consciousness may become conditioned
by such hereditary elements but it is neither caused by them nor is
it inherently bound by them. One
of the most important conclusions that can be drawn from these considerations
is that a true civilization, what I have called a civilization of the
universe, one that is really in harmony with the universe, is the achievement
of an organic integration of conscious individuals, not the exteriorization
of the mass psyche, or the collective mind. Only the conscious individual
is connected to reality. For the collective man, reality is mediated
through the unconscious mass mind and therefore he is fundamentally
delusional. Even in the modern case where a succession of unique individuals
have contributed to the economic and technological improvement of the
man of the mass, the result is not an advancement of civilization because
it does not result in the emergence of the conscious individual. The
contributions of the great individual have historically been put at
the service of the usual narcissism of the mass mind once they have
become part of it. Hence mankind remains completely tribalist and fundamentally
primitive in its disposition for which patriotism and nationalism are
but thin disguises. Civilization is a not a possibility of the mass
mind. Reality is relational and real knowledge therefore means total
integration with reality, not distance, not separation, not provincialism,
not isolation, not prejudice. The conscious self-responsible, self-originated
and self-realized individual - one who has directly realized reality
- is the only true man or woman, the only source of truth and sanity,
the only foundation of a civilization worthy of the name and the only
hope for the future [5]. Since
the mass mind of terrestrial humanity is passive - the direct realization
and identification with reality having being broken or rendered ineffective
- it is necessarily controlled by that which lies outside it, and given
the overwhelming obstructions in its historical development, it follows
that the ultimate controllers of the current humanity are not beings
who have transcended the psychic domain by virtue of a unique realization.
They are not individuals or truly individuated beings who have conquered
the collective unconsciousness of the mass psyche on the basis of a
sublime realization of the spirit or consciousness itself. The controllers
of the present humanity pertain to yet another mass mind that lies outside
the vectors and coordinates of the terrestrial plane and properly pertain
to an extra-human species. This species clearly demonstrates a vaster
psychic amplitude and mechanical cunning than does the present humanity
in virtue of which this species is able to dominate it. Even the Gods
of the religions have been exceptionally useful tools for its purposes.
There is a faction on earth that sees the human species as another animal
to be husbanded. |
