began with the image of a sign. It simply said “One”. It was pearlescent white with pale blue letters and some wavy lines of pale blue around the letters. What followed was a frightening scenario of the twisting of a beautiful and true idea into an excuse for a cruel totalitarianism. It was shown to me as a possible future, one way future possibilities could collapse into a reality. I was told this could be the state of affairs in two hundred years.
It is a tenet of many spiritual disciplines that we are one with all other human beings, one with all other life forms and one with the Earth and the Universe. It is a beautiful teaching and can lead to selfless behavior as well as the ability to see things from another’s point of view. So far so good. We are told that when the true sage reaches enlightenment she becomes one with all and perceives a continuum between herself and All That Is. Modern physics teaches that any particle that has ever touched any other particle in the universe is aware of that other particle into infinity despite any huge physical distance.
In this future possibility of reality that I saw, a (nearly world) government is set up with a mandatory state religion in which this Oneness is the central idea. There is an invisible central power which decides what the denizens of this world must do all in the name of “The One”. It is a cruel existence in an environmentally ruined land, lacking uniqueness and diversity. It is a horrible perversion of a beautiful idea.
In retrospect this premonition sounds like an Ayn Rand novel of some sort. Alas I am not a Libertarian but tend more politically to the Green Party. But this is what I saw.
June 22, 2010 at 4:0 1
I don’t like Ayn Rand at all. But you might be interested to read The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power (Frog, 1993), co-authored by the philosopher and renown yoga teacher, Joel Kramer, and his partner, the sociologist and women studies pioneer, Diana Alstad. They distinguish between the immediate and beneficial mystical experience of oneness that transcends all language and concepts on the one hand, and the various abstract ideas of oneness created by the religions (both eastern and western) out of that primary perception of unity on the other. In the religious systems of the East, the individual self becomes unreal, and its interests an obstacle to achieving virtue and enlightenment. One must renounce and erase their individuality through submission to the guru. “Separation becomes the bad guy with no inherent value, the enemy that keeps Oneness away, or as in Hinduism, maya–the grand illusion. The meaning of life, or the spiritual path, then becomes transcending separation and all the negativities therein” (Kramer and Alstad, p. 305). In Christianity, the Devil (like Eve) is an egotist–pride goeth before the Fall. Perfect freedom is perfect obedience to the will of God. So in our established religious traditions we already have an authoritarian kernel that can be cultivated (and has been) by both mainstream religious leaders (who have defended every brutality from caste systems, slavery, enforced ignorance, and pedophilia) as well as fringe “spiritual teachers,” “cult leaders,” and practitioners of “crazy wisdom,” from Jim Jones to the Branch Davidians, Rajneesh, Chogyam Trungpa. . . . and the list goes on and on and on. The marvelously fluid oneness experience has already been horribly perverted for thousands of years by abstract concepts and concrete organizations. What you describe as a vision of the future has its roots firmly planted in our cultural past.
June 22, 2010 at 4:0 1
Dear Joe,
Thank you for your astute comments. I know nothing about the person Ayn Rand so I neither like her or dislike her. I actually enjoyed reading two of her books as an adolescent. But I strongly distrust the people who have incorporated her books as a part of their political dogma.
I will look for the book you mentioned.
Although I am aware of the ideas you expounded here, I think you phrased them so well, I hope my readers will take the time to read your comment which is so well written as well as the book you are referencing.
Thanks again.
June 22, 2010 at 4:0 1
Dear Farusha,
Thanks for your compliments! I think the Kramer and Alstad book is one of the most important books I have ever read (apart from Bob Monroe’s and Jane Roberts’ books–both of whom were extreme anti-guru types). What I know of Rand (and I never read her books) is strictly secondhand: that she reacted to communism by becoming a kind of cult leader of the opposite extreme; that she fostered the mystifications and adoration; and that folks like Alan Greenspan worshipped at her altar. That is enough for me.
June 24, 2010 at 4:0 1
Thanks for that info on Rand, and again, it’s the worshippers here I don’t trust.