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by M.
Sabeheddin
August 21, 1995
from
NewDawnMagazine Website
Spanish version
"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
'The Walled Garden of Truth'
(1131 C.E.)
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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.
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
The Fifty 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 civilization 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 program and mentally enslave people, then information can
be used
to deprogram 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 socio-psychological 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 realization 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 realizes 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 anesthetic 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
"Babylon".
A name synonymous with a system of total
oppression and exploitation, taken from the Book of Revelation.
The government, the bureaucracy, indeed all worldly authorities are
mere instruments of Babylon.
Babylon, built on falsehood and
sustained by ignorance, will one day come crashing down because of
fundamental untruths. Awakened to the actual nature of this world,
one's life is that of exile. A stranger in a strange land.
Conspiracy and cover-up is what we first
encounter when we begin to perceive real life in Babylon.
"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."
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