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Cooperation and Doubt an Essay by Avatar Adi Da Samraj The world is suffering from a wrong understanding of human freedom and human politics. Those who value the notion of human freedom tend to think of it in terms of "Narcissistic" immunity from restraints. That is, they think of freedom basically as separation from parentlike demands, such that the so-called "free person" is conceived of as someone who can do whatever he or she likes, whenever he or she likes. But such so-called "freedom" cannot be realized or practiced in the world of human relationships. Indeed, it is founded on a fundamental revulsion to the limiting power of relationships and to the moral demands of love and self-sacrifice. It is a false, childish, and (ultimately) anti-social point of view. It is the viewpoint of private self-indulgence and ceaseless self-meditation. And it is the very principle that destroys relationships, love, and the greater processes of personal, social, religious, and Spiritual growth. Yet, this childish point of view is the popular notion that underlies the exercise of freedom in democracies in this "late-time" (or "dark" epoch). It characterizes the present popular version of the "American spirit" and the present "Westernizing" state of the "spirit" of democratic and capitalistic free enterprise everywhere in the world. It is the root of private and public irresponsibility and vulgar exploitation of subhuman possibilities everywhere in the modern technological world of TV cultures. Human freedom is not in principle about the ability to randomly fulfill random desires. The true principle of human freedom is a greater cultural concept of the status of mature human individuals, not childish masses of vulgar subhumanity. Human freedom is a mature realization of the status of individual existence in relationship with all other human beings and all aspects of the shared world. Human freedom is a political or relational estate, rather than a separately personal one. It is the disposition in which the greater religious and Spiritual conditions of one's developmental adaptation are chosen, and in which full moral responsibility is accepted for one's social and intimate relationships. If a State is organized as a democracy, it cannot function as a true democracy unless the people are typically and personally mature in this disposition of human freedom. A true democracy is founded on such freedom, or moral responsibility, on the part of the population as a whole. But if the people do not mature, if the people do not learn the ego-transcending Way of life and become fitted to personal patterns of self-restraint and moral patterns of responsibility and service in relation to all others, then democracy will inevitably fail. Indeed, in this "late-time", democracy is already fundamentally in a state of failure—or a stalemate in its development—in America and in democratic societies all over the world. Therefore, the democracies are in a critical moment. The next moment will determine whether the democracies will survive, or whether they will necessarily be replaced by authoritarian and utterly centralized forms of political rule. One can already see that democratic institutions are eroding, and that the populations of the democracies are becoming more and more lawless, chaotic, and childish. And to the degree the people have become irresponsible, the secular State inevitably moves to establish order by law, authority, and force. I Say that the democracies are in serious danger in this "late-time". And there are very few forces at work to turn the tide away from the centralized ordering of mass culture that typifies the present-day non-democratic States. Indeed, the principal influences in American society and other democratic societies are themselves actively, if somewhat unconsciously, working against the development of greater cultural and individual maturity in the populations of mankind. The principal influences that are currently at work in the world belong to the modern movement of scientifc and political materialism. Every great modern State is intimately in league with this movement, as ancient States were with official "cults" of conventional religion. And the products of that marriage are all of the technological and manipulative influences that more and more pervade and control the daily lives of people. The gross-minded popular media of TV, the press, and the publishing industry (as well as the scientifically indoctrinated intellectualism of the universities) are all working for a common cause, which is the ultimate and exclusive triumph of scientific and political materialism. Such is the character of all of the dominant influences in technological societies in this "late-time". All contrary or superior voices tend to be excluded, negatively manipulated, or, otherwise, overwhelmed and minimized in their effects by all of this machinery of popular culture. Certain traditional voices continue to be heard, particularly in the less sophisticated areas of the mass culture, but the traditional voices have already had their day, and the archaic mind that supported the old ways and the old days is gradually dissolving into a condition that is not distinguishable from the dominant voice of scientific and political materialism. Apart from the gross-minded popular media of communication, the social order (in general) daily manifests more and more critical signs of deterioration. Mankind is not permitted to learn the greater Purpose of Man, but is continually indoctrinated into a superficial state of mind that is merely observing and reacting to objective events and struggling with mortal psychological states. Human beings are currently learning little more than how to desire elemental bodily fulfillment and how to achieve the goals of material self-glorification. All the rest of what mankind can be is kept in a state of perpetual doubt by the propaganda of scientific and political materialism. Humanity has come to a moment in time when democracy as it has been is beginning to look like a passing romantic adventure. Indeed, democracy was originally created by humanistic and somewhat romantic idealists who belonged to the old traditional order, but who also maintained an enthusiastic interest in the newly emerging possibilities of a scientifically fabricated culture. Democracy, as it has been conceived of in this "late-time", was essentially created in response to the new scientific and political possibilities that were beginning to emerge in the eighteenth century. Such democracy not only recognized the new possibilities for the personal and political relief of the burdens of "Everyman", but it also maintained an idealistic hold on the intellectual and religious culture of the old world, in which human individuals were viewed as ultimately superior and perfectible beings. The problem is that the religious basis for the traditional idealism that was the original foundation of democracy has gradually and steadily been propagandized out of existence by the emerging cultural, technological, and political forces of scientific materialism. As a result, the people no longer generally or seriously presume the idealism that is the necessary support of democracy as it has been conceived of. Men and women of great religious and Spiritual development and the true cultural, political, religious, and Spiritual leadership of such men and women have ceased to be popular—and the common mood of people is no longer idealistic in the greater cultural sense, but it is materialistic in the sense of subhuman and ego-possessed desiring. Science is properly and originally a method, but it has become the source of the popular world-view. And, just as science is a method of self-isolation for the sake of objective observation of events, the mood (or strategy) of "Everyman" has become the one of separative self-consciousness and the inability to surrender the separate and separative ego-"I" and make it responsible to the Totality, or total Pattern, of Existence. The popular mood that the scientific method tends to produce is the intellectual (or verbal-mental) mood of doubt. The method of science is to question, or inquire, without ceasing—just as the ancient cultural method was to pray without ceasing. Therefore, science is not about the end to questioning. It is not about finding a final answer. It is about always questioning, and, by this method, increasing the knowledge people have about things. And, thus, true scientific inquiry is based on the constant and tacit acknowledgement that the present state of knowledge about things is neither permanent nor absolute. (Actually, if scientific and intellectual leaders would fully understand this principle of the tentativeness of all knowledge acquired by the scientific method, the destructive propagandizing against greater cultural, intuitive, religious, and Spiritual movements, or persuasions arrived at by other means than the scientific method, would be significantly decreased—to the general benefit of mankind.) Since the scientific method does not admit of a final (or perfect) answer to any question, the mood (or strategy) of scientific inquiry remains that of the question itself. Only the questions are forever. Thus, the conventional mood established by the popularization of a culture exclusively based on scientific materialism is the mood of doubt. And, therefore, the psyche of "Everyman" has become more and more characterized by doubt, or questions without answers. As a result, the only certainties that can be propagandized are questions, doubts, anxieties, objective phenomena, and elemental states of body and mind. For this reason, the cultural scientism of today is perpetually, and wrongly (since it is has no direct knowledge or understanding of what it is criticizing), propagandizing against whatever it has not yet proved by its own method. Whatever is not yet proved by the scientific method is still in doubt (or still existing in the form of a question, from the scientific point of view)—but the popularizers of the viewpoint of scientific and political materialism (which is the cultural extension of the scientific method and the current summation of proved knowledge) tend always to speak dogmatically. They either imply or directly propose that what is not yet proved by the scientific method is also simply false. And, since the scientific mind knows or presumes no other method to enter into relations with things than by objective scientific inquiry, no method is seriously suggested to the general and rather uninformed population of scientifically based cultures for entering into the mind and process of the esoteric Wisdom-Way. Even those intellectuals who comment on religious and Spiritual matters have no way to view or recommend religious practice. They (ultimately) recommend nothing more than questions and doubts, and the intention to "keep on studying the problem". Intellectualism based on scientism (ultimately) remains in the exclusive mood of scientism. Therefore, it cannot find answers, but only questions, doubts, and so forth. This is because the method of science is not identical to the primary structural process in mankind that produces greater human participation in the world, including the moral force of love, the religious force of Divine Communion, and the developmental force of ego-surrender into the Self-Existing and Self-Radiant and Self-Evidently Divine Spirit-Power That Is the Matrix of the human body-mind and the world. And, unless commentators of greater cultural phenomena will attain a Wisdom superior to science, they will never understand the disposition that produces love, Spirituality, and the mature, and Spiritually Awakened, man and woman. The summation of the effects of the predominant intellectual and popular influences of modern societies is dogmatically anti-religious and fixed in the mood of doubting and inquiring, such that anything that looks like an "answer" is regarded as some kind of demonic absurdity. But the intellectual and popular leaders of the dominant mentality have simply failed to understand the true nature of mankind and the primary form of the human relationship to other beings, to the events of moment to moment experience, and to Reality Itself, or the Divine Self-Condition and Perfectly Subjective Source-Condition of all and All. For this reason, they have failed to allow for a process in humanity that is senior to doubt and inquiry. The childish religious mind proposes that "faith" (or non-rational belief) in "revealed" or pre-verbal "answers" to fundamental questions is the alternative to the chronic doubt of the scientific, analytical, verbal mentality of modern society. But the viewpoint of "belief in answers" was established in the childhood days of mankind, long before the era of scientific inquiry and the culture of scientific and political materialism. Since the era of scientism began, the traditional "answers" have gradually been found to be largely untenable. And there is no right reason for believing something (if it is clearly untrue) simply because belief feels better than doubt. Thus, in the "late-time", the childish and dependent religiosity of traditional men and women has been confounded by the adolescent and separative intellectualism of modern scientific men and women. But the culture offered by the rule of scientism is bereft of anything but doubt and materialistic enthusiasm. Therefore, you must be awakened to the maturity of mankind, beyond childish religiosity and adolescent intellectualism. The mature man or woman is a Spiritually Awakened being who has transcended both the method of conventional religion and the mood of conventional scientific intellectualism. He or she is established in the primary disposition of mankind—which is the realization of Unity with cosmic Nature (or the world-process) and heart-Communion with the Spiritual, Transcendental, and Divine Reality (in Which the entire realm of cosmic Nature is arising, changing, and passing away). The mature man or woman is possessed neither by questions nor by answers. He or she transcends all knowledge and all experience in heart-Communion with the Divine Self-Condition and the Perfectly Subjective Source-Condition of all and All. Therefore, he or she is able to participate in the greater and developmental acculturation of his or her own body-mind without resorting to archaic belief systems and childish salvation schemes, and also without succumbing to the self-divided and subhuman fixation of non-participatory doubt and intellectual impotence. Only the mature man or woman can provide the workable foundation for the establishment and survival of future human cultures. He and she must become the new man and woman to which every individual commonly aspires—or else the adolescent era of scientific and political materialism will destroy not only the child in mankind but also the mature adulthood of humanity. In this Essay, I have continually linked scientific materialism with political materialism. This is because science, as a dominant world-view, inevitably establishes or re-establishes the social and political order in the image (or mood) of science itself. And I began this Essay by referring to the idea of human freedom. Now I would "Consider" that the failure of true human freedom, or more advanced human acculturation, will inevitably produce a false politics—and, indeed, is already so doing. As I have Said, the concept of democracy was an idealistic and even romantic notion, founded in the ancient traditional mentality, and produced in the earliest stages of the transition to the era of scientific materialism. But, as the era of scientific materialism progressed, a new political design was conceived that was founded in a new idealism, entirely conceived within the "realistic" (rather than "romantic") framework of scientific materialism itself. That idealism is called "communism" and (somewhat more loosely) "socialism". Simply stated, the communist and socialist ideal is associated with a collectivist (rather than an individualistic) social structure. However, the basic foundation of a communist or socialist State is not collectivism but the authoritarian role of the parentlike State, which enforces collectivism. There are many positive things that may be said for forms of collective (or cooperative) social order and activity themselves. Indeed, it is the failure of the cooperative mentality and the practical politics of cooperation that is the principal sign of disintegration in a democracy. When human beings become obsessed with the motives of exclusive privacy and uninhibited personal exploitation of conventional desires, they become more and more self-indulgent, non-cooperative, and anti-social. Then the intimate world of cooperative community disintegrates, followed by the disintegration of family structures. The mass of human individuals must awaken to the True Condition of humanity and to the more advanced developmental culture of Spiritually Activated heart-conversion of the individual and the society as a whole. This means that the mood of both non-rational belief (which produces only the consolation rather than the transformation of mankind) and rational doubt (which produces objective knowledge but allows for no fundamental transformation of the knower in the process) must be transcended both in the mood of intelligent self-knowing and ego-transcending participation in the conditions of existence and in heart-Communion with the Transcendental, Inherently Spiritual, and Self-Evidently Divine Reality. If the massive populations of human beings will begin to respond to this "Consideration", and if benign leaders will begin to create a culture that has outgrown childish religion and that transcends science while also making right use of scientific methods and discoveries, then it should be possible for true human freedom to persist as the fundamental characteristic of future societies. However, if such a response and such responsibility do not begin to characterize the quality of "Everyman", then future societies will more and more consist of authoritarian and materialistic States engaged in great centralized efforts to manipulate and control irresponsible populations of disturbed people. One can already see how the democracies (as is naturally the case with large collectivist societies) are moving more and more toward the political structures of a centralized State that must support and control a large, fragmented population of disturbed and demanding people. The effects of the popular social influences in America, for example, not only tend to destroy or prevent the greater cultural development of the populace, but they actually create and exploit the subhuman and hopeless motivations that ultimately produce social fragmentation and chaos. The false concept of human freedom produces a mass population that is fragmented into a chaotic and reactive collection of mere individuals. In that case, communities and families dissolve or become weak, and only the secular State remains as the source of order, help, and security. The next step is the deliberate and total centralization of power in the mechanisms of the secular State, and the reduction of the population to an orderly machine of production. But what if the fragmented masses awakened to the truly responsible mood of human freedom and destiny? Then the spell would be broken, and a new possibility for the future would emerge. And what are the political characteristics of such free and more advanced human beings? The primary urge of the free human being (who is responsible for himself or herself and his or her relationships) is to enter into cooperative relationships with others. Therefore, if the masses of mankind will awaken to the process of greater and truly human acculturation, they will transcend childish and adolescent attitudes, they will make right use of scientific and technological means of knowing and improving the common conditions of human existence, and they will naturally enter into cooperative (or relational) forms of social order. It is natural for free or responsible men and women to live in forms of cooperative commitment to one another. Therefore, truly free men and women are not separative and self-indulgent in their actions, but they are fundamentally cooperative and ego-transcending in their actions. This means that responsible people establish families and intimate cooperative communities, and they maintain right and responsible agreements with their intimates as well as with members of other families and communities. But the current trends in so-called "democratic" societies are toward self-indulgent furfillment of individual and lower desires (even through technological means) and away from cooperative commitments, including marriages, families, and intimate communities. The popular mood expressed in the current media of the mass culture demonstrates a general fear and disdain relative to intimate religious or secular communities, and the average citizen lives in a private castle of ego-based illusions, comforted by TV viewpoints and the degenerative habits of his or her choice. Nonetheless, human societies must be founded on families and autonomous intimate, cooperative communities, or else the secular State becomes the only autonomous political structure, and all culture is replaced by the salt-of-the-earth round of political subservience to State controls over every aspect of human existence. The only defense individuals have against the centralizing tendencies of the secular State is to break the spell of dependence on the parentlike powers of the secular State and enter into cooperative relationships with one another. Only in that case—when the social order is composed of autonomous, intimate and advanced culturally oriented cooperative communities of free and responsible men and women—can the overwhelming trend toward State control of populations by political means and also cultural means (via the official "cult" of knowledge at any given time, be it the Church in the old days or the new "Church" of scientific materialism in the present day) be brought to a halt. The practical ideal of communism, or socialism, is founded on "realistic" exploitation of the lowest wanting needs of mankind, and it does not "romantically" depend on the developmental qualities and more advanced aspirations of mankind. Perhaps for this reason, many people presume that it is the political ideal most likely to achieve dominance in the future world of mankind as it now seems, since the general population of mankind is not presently aligned to the processes of more advanced human acculturation. And even the once "romantic" democracies are vulnerable to the tendencies of the parentlike State as a response to the chaotic problems of societies in this "late-time". The truly negative aspect of the trend toward communism or socialism and away from democracy is the single one of the development of a parentlike State with totalitarian police power over all people. As I have already Indicated, forms of intimate, cooperative community are basic and essential to truly human and free societies. The democracies are now deficient in this respect, and (as is said in moments of angry despair) "everyone is out for himself". But the communist and socialist societies seem to be prospering through the establishment of cooperative forms of social order. Then is not the communist solution superior? Of course not! The communist solution is only superficially based on cooperative communities. Actually, the communist solution is founded on the principle of the parentlike State, which controls the general population, maintains the general population as a mere machine of production, and (by maintaining the cultural dominance of the propaganda of scientific materialism) prevents the appearance of true (intimate, cooperative) communities oriented toward developmentally advanced human (and religious and Spiritual) acculturation. True communities must be the foundation of human societies, but true communities must be based on the more advanced and developmental cultural principles of Spiritual Wisdom and ego-transcending habits of action on the part of every individual. If such true communities can begin to develop and achieve a primary voice in the media of daily understanding, then the present trend toward the politics of the parentlike State can be overcome. But true communities must arise among the people as autonomous, free, and advanced cultural entities. If they do not thus arise, but, rather, if the superficial communal aspect of human communities is enforced as a method of the secular State, then community simply becomes an instrument of the suppressive powers of the parentlike State machine. The secular State cannot create true communities. The secular State cannot elicit advanced cooperative motives in the people, nor should it be relied upon to do so. Nor can science or scientific materialism create a true culture of mankind, since the primary acculturation of mankind takes place as a process of ego-transcending heart-Communion with the Transcendental, Inherently Spiritual, and Self-Evidently Divine Reality and of ecstatic participation in the world-process, and it involves the immediate and moment to moment developmental transformation of the individual—whereas the mood of scientific materialism is doubt, and the method of scientific inquiry excludes the process whereby the knower himself or herself is transformed. Therefore, the "cult" of scientific materialism is fundamentally a tool of the parentlike State, and it only serves the establishment of a disturbed and dependent humanity that must resort to the authoritarian propaganda and technological resources of the secular State and the scientific "cult" of the secular State. Science is only benign when it becomes the tool of free men and women, and the secular State is only benign when it must necessarily respond to the demands of the people. But the people do not represent a power superior to the secular State unless they become responsible and autonomous through the establishment of free cooperative communities, wherein individuals are obliged in their actions only by the advanced culture of Wisdom served to them in intimate company, while they yet remain entirely free of the dictatorial limitations that a parentlike State will always apply to their actions and circumstances—even their most personal, private, and intimate actions and circumstances. Likewise, the masses of humanity will not enter into true forms of cooperative and developmentally advanced community unless they begin to respond to the Wisdom-Teaching of Truth and, thereby, overcome both their childish and dependent religiosity and their separative adolescent predisposition toward a self-indulgent, analytical, and dissociative view of the world and mankind.
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