www.newdawnmagazine.com
"The Truth is Out There"
By M. Sabeheddin
"Ignorance...brought
about anguish and terror. And the anguish grew solid like a fog and no one was
able to see."
- The Gospel of Truth, 17:10, Nag Hammadi
Texts
"Humanity
is asleep, concerned only with what is useless, living in a wrong world....Do
not prattle before the People of the Path, rather consume yourself.
You have an inverted knowledge and religion if you are upside down in relation
to Reality. Man is wrapping his net around himself. A lion (the man of the Way)
bursts his cage asunder."
- The Sufi Master Sanai, teacher
of Rumi, in The
What role does conspiracy and cover-up
play in the multifarious facets of life in the closing years of this twentieth
century? Are powerful groups manipulating events as part of a long-range
strategy to bring about a totally controlled global society? Does recognition
of conspiracies lead to paranoia and delusion? Or does it actually explain
events and thereby empower people?
It is not the purpose of
this short article to examine the range of crimes, cabals and secret plots
broadly covered by the word conspiracy. Nor do we intend to prove the existence
of some international conspiracy at work in the crisis torn world of the 90s.
What we want to touch on is the implications of conspiracy theories for
personal transformation. What we want to explore here is a different way of
seeing the world.
First let us define the
meaning of that seemingly disturbing word: "conspiracy". Webster's
International dictionary gives, as one connotation, "a combination of men
for an evil purpose; a plot". The Oxford Dictionary of English agrees,
defining conspiracy as "a combination of persons for an evil or unlawful
purpose; an agreement between two or more to do something criminal, illegal or
reprehensible; a plot".
If, as a significant
number of researchers claim, it can be shown that influential - largely hidden
- elites have knowingly combined their efforts in a plot(s) to manipulate and
control people and events, then on the basis of the standard definition just
cited, a conspiracy does indeed exist.
Readers who are
accustomed (or is it conditioned?) to automatically regard any mention of
conspiracy as irrational paranoia, will find this very subject a 'problem'.
Jonathon Vankin, the author of two excellent books exploring a host
of conspiracy theories, observes that, "The word 'conspiracy' may be a
'problem' for some, but only because it represents the unknown, mystery, and
risk. Those are the things that grip the human mind and bring it to life. These
ideas can only be a problem for those who wish to keep our minds under
control."
Last century the British
politician, Benjamin Disraeli, a man of wide political experience, declared
that "the world is governed by very different personages from what is
imagined by those who are not behind the scenes." This century U.S.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt has been quoted as saying: "In politics, nothing
happens by accident. If it happens, it was planned that way."
"Ruling elites will
use conspiracy," states political scientist and activist Dr. Michael Parenti. "They will finance elections, publicity
campaigns, publishing houses, wire services, and academic studies. They will
use surveillance, mobsters, terrorists, assassins and death squads."
Conspiracy
researchers 'look behind the dark curtain' that shrouds history and the
sacrosanct assumptions reinforcing contemporary society.
There really are, as
investigative author Jim Hougan says, two kinds of
history, the safe, sanitized "'Disney version,' so widely available as to
be unavoidable...and a second one that remains secret, buried, and
unnamed."
This "second"
version of history, Jonathon Vankin and John Whalen argue, does indeed have a name: "conspiracy
theory." According to the co-authors of 50 Greatest
Conspiracies of All Time the official, safe "Disney" version of history
"could just as easily be called the 'New York Times version' or the 'TV
news version' or the 'college textbook version.' The main resistance to
conspiracy theories comes not from people on the street, but from the media,
academia, and government - people who manage the national and global economy of
information."
The structure of the modern
world demands mass adherence to faith in the institutions that maintain the
existing order and make it run. These institutions are innumerable: government,
business, science, education, politics...and their survival is dependent on
people's faith in authority.
"We have to believe
the institutions are functioning in our best interests," wrote Vankin in his 1991 ground-breaking book Conspiracies,
Cover-Ups and Crimes. "We have to believe what the people within those
institutions assure us to be true."
This is why 'conspiracy
theories' are universally anathema to the Establishment. They directly
challenge the status quo, undermining the blind faith of the 'brainwashed'
masses in society's machiavellian
'leaders'!
Vankin quotes anthropologist
Jules Henry as saying that "our civilization is a tissue of contradictions
and lies." Henry used the term "sham" for the everyday
deceptions that reinforce this malignant society. "Sham gives rise to
coalitions because usually sham cannot be maintained without confederates."
In other words, to keep the system afloat requires a conspiracy. "In
sham," Henry continues, "the deceiver enters into an inner conspiracy
against himself."
Acknowledging the
conspiracies and cover-ups behind history and contemporary events means we can
no longer lie to ourselves, like Colin Wilson's "Outsider" who
"cannot live in the comfortable insulated world of the bourgeois,
accepting what he sees and touches as reality."
Modern civilisation is a
conspiracy against Reality.
R.D. Laing
explains in The Politics of Experience how people are
'conditioned' and 'brainwashed' by modern society. Beginning with the children,
Laing says, "It is imperative to catch them in
time. Without the most thorough and rapid brainwashing their dirty minds would
see through our dirty tricks. Children are not yet fools, but we shall turn
them into imbeciles like ourselves, with high IQs if possible.
"From the moment of
birth, when the Stone Age baby confronts the Twentieth century mother, the baby
is subjected to these forces of violence, called love, as its mother and
father, and their parents and their parents before them, have been. These
forces are mainly concerned with destroying most of its potentialities, and on
the whole this enterprise is successful. By the time the new human being is
fifteen or so, we are left with a being like ourselves, a half-crazed creature
more or less adjusted to a mad world. This is normality in our present
age."
In our conditioned
environment we accept what we are told, largely without question. Society, or more precisely the ruling elites, define
reality.
Central to every
conspiracy is the suppression of specific information or the deliberate
avoidance of certain key facts. Control of information is a mechanism of social
control. If information is used by the ruling elites to programme and mentally
enslave people, then information can be used to deprogramme
and liberate them. Knowledge is the key to freedom.
According to the Sufis,
the potential for clear, direct perception in man in his everyday life is
largely frustrated by a distorting complex of sociopsychological
conditioning factors. Often these appear in the seemingly innocuous forms of
unfounded assumptions and expectations. Consequently man is ready mental putty
in the hands of powerful manipulators. Conspiracies are detected only by the
exercise of unfettered perception and thinking. Thus, conspirators must
propagate a necessary level of confusion in those whom they seek to deceive and
control.
The mere realisation of
the existence and activities of various 'conspiracies' orchestrated by powerful
ruling elites, has a largely liberating effect on a thinking individual,
disclosing to him as it does the vast magnitude of the lies and deception
incorporated in the various layers of official culture. The whole social
structure, educational structure, economic and political structures are
directly challenged.
Once a person realises
that there is a 'hidden history' behind our so-called history, they invariably
start to want to break away from the futile human pattern of seeing reality as
it is not and thereby living a lie. They want to abandon the anaesthetic of
ignorance and suppression within which man cocoons himself
and to embrace the intensity of reality - as it is.
Conspiracies and
cover-ups do exist. However, their underlying root cause is our own
irresponsibility, ignorance and inactivity. The world tells us what we want to
hear, giving us justifications for different states of irresponsibility.
Civilization may well be destroying itself, but individuals don't have to
destroy themselves with it.
The modern world with
its phobias, neurosis, contradictions and conflicts, is what we must overcome.
We must break our links, sever our ties; plumb the depths of our unconsciousness,
and cut the bonds with which we've bound ourselves.
Confronted by the
intrigue of conspiracy and cover-up, we don't react to the sham by constructing
an equally dogmatic, paranoid worldview. Nor do we become down-cast, depressed
or consumed with red-hot anger. There is no point in hiding away or running
wildly in the street. Just be AWARE. From the inner certainty, clarity and calm
of AWARENESS proceeds right and constructive action. Channel your anger, your
fear, your hopes and dreams into TOTAL AWARENESS. By discerning society's true condition you are free from the bonds of
ignorance and no longer a pawn in the game. Awakening from the sleep of
conditioned existence we can appreciate the words of the Sufi teacher Al Ghazzali: "The higher one ascends a mountain, the
farther one sees."
Some radical students of
the Bible identify the existing social, political and economic order as "
"It may be that mankind has been invited to participate in a bizarre kind of contest with some undeclared cosmic opponents," says Brad Steiger, a writer on the paranormal. "Man may have been challenged to play the Reality Game; and if he can once apprehend the true significance of the preposterous clues, if he can but master the proper moves, he may obtain a clearer picture of his true role in the cosmic scheme of things."