A. Elementals and Gods are the same kind of entity structurally,
though they differ enormously in personality and behavior.
You might
say that Gods are civilized elementals. So, for our descriptions of
how the astral bodies and minds of these beings function, we'll use
the general term "Elementals."
On one level, Elementals are specialized types of Theocratic bands.
They are very large composite spirits containing thousands of human
astral souls very closely linked together. On another, they are
sentient creatures in their own right, with personalities and
emotions quite different from those of ordinary human beings. One
thing we want to stress: Elementals and humans are not two races of
beings, but different forms of one race.
The astral DNA template of
both is identical, but humans are the individual form and Elementals
are the composite form.
Composite physical life forms exist on Earth. The bees, ants,
termites, and other social insects are the most intelligent of
these. The Elementals bear the sane relationship to humans as an
ordinary honeybee colony does to a primitive, solitary bee or wasp.
Q. I've speculated for years that a colony of social insects might
have a single soul or group mind that's much more highly developed
than the mind that could fit into the tiny brain of a single
individual insect. Certainly the behavior of a whole colony shows
much more intelligence than the behavior of an individual.
A. The nature of group minds depends on the amount of control they
have over their individual members. There are roughly four levels of
control, though each integrates with the next.
These can be
verbalized as:
-
co-operation
-
persuasion
-
coercion
-
compulsion
Co-operation is working with others because your mutual interests
coincide, and the shared effort is of mutual benefit without major
concessions on the part of either party involved.
Persuasion is
essentially barter:
"I'll do this for you if you'll do that for me."
Coercion is similar, but the barter is negative:
"I'll do harm to
you unless you do some particular thing for me."
Compulsion is
direct control of someone else that transcends that other person's
volition.
Q. It looks to me as if
human societies on Earth operate on all four
levels, so they probably have group minds by your definition.
A. No. Earthly societies operate mostly by co-operation and
persuasion, with some coercion and only a small amount of
compulsion. A bee colony operates entirely by compulsion, almost in
the same way that your brain operates your body through the nervous
system.
Q. People don't like coercion and compulsion, so we tend to think
that they are among the most important factors governing society.
However, you are correct in pointing out that co-operation and
persuasion are much more common. The reason we worry about the two
negative factors so much is that we have an instinctive aversion for
them.
A. There are two reasons why human societies resist becoming a true
composite entity.
-
First, people have highly developed brains and are
fully intelligent as individuals
-
Second, each person has a separate
astral soul with an astral will that resists outside control
It is
possible to control the minds of living people by psychic compulsion
under certain circumstances, but this is very difficult.
People
strongly resist such control because of their highly developed
brains and souls.
A bee colony is a composite entity because individual bees don't
have large enough brains to support true intelligence and because
they don't have individual astral souls. A colony of social insects
has a single astral soul that is linked to the body of every
individual in it.
The brain of a bee has very limited capacity for
storing information, and little programming for processing data.
Instead, the individual uses telepathy to pass information to the
astral mind of the hive. This group mind processes and stores the
information received from individual bees and does the thinking for
the entire hive, passing down its orders by telepathy.
The collective mind of a bee colony shows intelligence far beyond
the reasoning and memory-storage capacity of an individual bee. In
fact, in certain narrow areas, this group mind displays a level of
intelligence almost equal to that of human beings.
One example is
the colony's ability to direct the physical changes that individual
bees go through during the course of their lives to perform
different specialized functions: gathering food, cleaning and
repairing the hive, rearing the young, defending the colony from
enemies, swarming to produce a new colony, etc.
A bee colony is
actually better organized in terms of division of labor than a human
society.
Another example is the colony's ability to control the temperature
within the hive, using a biological central heating and air
conditioning system. When the group mind perceives that the hive is
too hot inside, certain bees are instructed to act as living
ventilator fans.
They cling to the walls of passageways that lead to
entrances of the hive, and circulate cool air by beating their
wings.
When the hive is too cool, the entrances are sealed with wax;
but the bees serving as fans keep on circulating air, which evenly
distributes the heat generated by the metabolism of all the bees in
the hive.
Human societies are superficially similar to composite entities, but
they aren't true composites, because individual people have
independent intelligence and will. However, the human astral soul
has a strong potential for forming composite entities while it is in
a disembodied state, because souls can literally link themselves
together, as was described in the chapter on Theocratic bands.
There
is much more compulsion in a Theocratic band on the astral plane
than in any totalitarian society on Earth, because Theocrats attach
their silver cords to other spirits and control them as directly as
the human brain controls the hands.
The structure of a Theocratic band as we described it earlier is
similar to a wheel: the spirit controlling the band is the hub, and
the subordinate spirits are the spokes.
Notice that the world's
oldest surviving religion,
Vedanta, uses such a spoked wheel as its
symbol.
The rayed sun used by many other religions is the same
symbol, minus the rim of the wheel.
However, the rim is extremely
important, because it indicates that a Theocratic band naturally
produces a structure of astral matter separate from the individual
souls attached to it.
Q. Are you saying that over the course of time, a Theocratic band
develops its own astral soul and astral mind that is the equivalent
of the composite astral mind of a bee or ant colony?
A. Yes. This is another important reason why Theocratic spirits
don't achieve true immortality. The longer a Theocratic band lasts,
the more it develops into a composite entity with a mind of its own.
At first, the controlling Theocrat completely dominates the group
mind; but eventually that mind becomes powerful enough to become
independent, and the band becomes an elemental.
Q. When I hear the term "Elemental," I think of the
Windigo legend.
Several North American Indian mythologies describe the Windigo as a
huge, powerful disembodied spirit that is capable of both reasoning
and speech.
However, it behaves like a predatory animal, not a human
being. The legends say it eats the souls of the dead on the astral
plane, and can sometimes kill living people and devour their souls
as well. The Windigo is one of the most frightening spiritual
monsters in human mythology.
A. Similar beings are described in mythologies from all over the
world, but only a few Elementals have become as dangerous as
the Windigos.
Most of the Elementals that have formed on Earth so far
have been less dangerous than a large Theocratic band controlled by
the spirit of some human tyrant.
Most Elementals that become
independent of their creator are no more intelligent than a human
infant or a predatory animal. In most cases, the Elemental stays in
one place, feeding on the disembodied souls of animals or humans
that approach it: it was conditioned to do this while still under
the control of human spirits.
Q. I assume this is why so many myths talk about magic spells to
"chain" evil spirits in one place. And it also explains why
primitive religions performed sacrifices and rituals to placate the
spirits that inhabited specific places. Elementals lived there, and
feeding them made it safer for living people to travel by the place.
A. Sometimes the "spirit of a place" was an Elemental, sometimes a
Theocratic band. It really didn't matter: both wanted to be fed
through sacrifices and rituals.
The uninhabited areas where such
sacrifices were made were very often places where large-scale
religious sacrifices of humans or animals had once been conducted,
where a city had once stood, or where large numbers of people had
died in a battle or disaster.
Any of these activities would have
formed Theocratic bands, which may have later turned into
Elementals.
Most Elementals of this type are not particularly dangerous, because
they were formed by first- or third-stage religions, and aren't
particularly large or powerful.
However, the second stage religions
that practiced mass human sacrifices created Theocratic bands that
eventually formed Elementals of vast power. Second-stage Theocratic
bands had to be extremely large because this was the only way they
could exert enough power over their living slave populations to keep
the whole society from collapsing. Invariably, such bands quickly
became Elementals.
Many ancient cities that practiced second-stage Theocratic religion
were abandoned after being conquered by their enemies. Carthage is
one example, and the
Judeo-Christian Bible mentions several more.
No
one wanted to live on the site for a long time, because of the
presence of large and dangerous Elementals. Of course, if people
avoided the place long enough, the elemental would die of
starvation, making the area safe for human habitation again.
The Windigos were a related phenomenon, except that the Elementals
didn't remain where they were first formed.
The Windigos had
originated in those areas where the Incas, Mayas, and Aztecs
practiced second-stage Theocracy. When a new Elemental formed in
this region, the other Theocratic bands attached to those tribes
didn't try to chain it to one place, but worked magic to drive it
far away.
Some of these banished Elementals went all the way to
North America and gave rise to the Windigo legend. Others went to
the southern tip of South America, where the Aurucanians have
similar legends.
Similar things have also happened during modern wars.
The fate of
Hitler and a number of the other top Nazi leaders and their Theocrat
friends on the
astral plane after the surrender of Germany in 1945
is an example.
Q. There were persistent rumors for many years that Hitler didn't
really die at the end of the war, but successfully fled Germany.
Ever since I made the breakthrough, I've suspected that these rumors
might be true, but not in the physical sense. In other words, he did
commit suicide in that bunker, but immediately took charge of a band
of Nazi Theocrats on the astral plane, and is probably still up
there today, sustained by the psychic energies of the creeps and
misfits who continue to wear the swastika and practice the Nazi
creed of bigotry and violence.
A. The truth is much stranger than that.
Hitler and hundreds of
other Nazi leaders fled as disembodied spirits to Japan to assist
their Theocratic allies there. They hoped that a D-Day-type invasion
of Japan would prove too costly to the Allies and that Japanese
Fascism would survive after a negotiated peace.
At this point, both the German and Japanese Theocrats had access to
enormous amounts of energy from the millions of victims of World War
Two, and they deliberately manipulated the American government into
dropping the atomic bomb to provide them with even more victims.
Their hope was to create an Elemental and use its vast psychic power
either to turn defeat into victory on the Earth plane, or to flee to
another world.
Fortunately, the attempt failed, and the Theocrats involved were
devoured by the entity they were trying to create.
This Elemental
still survives on the astral plane, and will become an important
focal point in the struggle between the Invisible College and the
Theocrats in the future.
Q. One thing I read into what you just said about the Nazi leaders
is that the Theocrats themselves may be natural enemies of the
Elementals.
A. This is quite true. That's why the third and fourth stages of
Theocratic religion were invented to allow Theocratic bands to
remain stable on the astral plane for long periods of time.
However,
either a Theocratic spirit has to reincarnate or else its band will
eventually turn into an Elemental. That's a fact of nature.
The fact that human beings tend to create a technology that allows
the planer's total population to increase steadily is another factor
preventing Theocratic spirits from becoming truly immortal.
Of
course, a rising population generates new souls in large numbers,
which in turn increases the number of souls on the astral plane that
are easy prey for Theocratic spirits. But this superabundance of
souls is a mixed blessing, because it encourages Theocratic bands to
grow so large they go out of control and turn into Elementals.
This
is why Theocratic religions often try to inhibit technological
progress; but such a policy is self-limiting.
Q. I see what you mean. If the Theocrats keep their particular
society from developing technology at the same rate as neighboring
societies, it's likely to be conquered from outside. Can you tell me
why human beings have this instinctive drive to achieve
technological progress?
A. The cause of technological progress is a process
of Darwinian natural selection which allows a society to survive natural
disasters, defeat enemies in war, and develop the natural resources
available to it more fully.
All these give it an advantage over any
society that doesn't do these things. Cultures that encourage their
members to work for technological progress survive better than those
that don't.
This particular cycle contains the seeds of its own destruction:
technological advancement on a primitive planet like Earth
invariably causes the human population to increase to the point
where exploitation of natural resources seriously upsets the
planer's ecological balances.
Most people on Earth are now aware
that a population bomb is ticking toward explosion.
Scientists are predicting that this rape of the planet's resources
will destroy the Earth's biosphere and cause the extinction of the
human species, or, at the least, destroy technological civilization.
Others are more optimistic. They predict that almost everyone in the
underdeveloped countries will die of plagues and famines, but that
the advanced nations will survive the crisis with most of their
population and technology intact.
Biologists on Earth already know that population explosions in a
particular species followed by massive die-offs are quite common,
and usually are not a sign that the species is headed for
extinction.
Overpopulation/die-off cycles are commonest in
successful species that are trying to extend their range but are
blocked by environmental barriers. The process often creates new
variants of the species that can survive in a wider variety of
environments.
We are reasonably sure from our experiences on other planets that
Earth's biosphere is not so fragile that it can be destroyed by the
actions of human beings, except possibly by a massive nuclear war.
We are also reassured by the fact that the populations of all the
technological advanced societies on Earth are already reasonably
stable, even in countries like the Soviet Union where the official
government policy is to encourage population growth. However, we
still broadcast telepathic messages that urge people to take an
alarmist position on overpopulation and possible destruction of the
Earth's biosphere.
If Theocratic spirits and Elementals didn't exist, the massive cycle
of poverty and over-population which now afflicts the majority of
the inhabitants of this planet wouldn't exist either.
Political
radicals are partly correct when they blame First World greed for
Third World poverty, but economic imperialism is itself just another
effect of the same root cause - a Theocratic plot to swell the
Earth's population to the point where massive die-offs occur.
We've already described how an increasing population forms new
souls. If there is an abundance of human astral souls at a low stage
of development in the astral plane for the Theocrats to recruit or
feed upon, Theocratic bands tend to grow larger and larger, making
the creation of new Elementals more common.
Right now, Earth has
more Elemental spirits than it ever had before in its history. And
this is a very dangerous situation.
As long as the Earth's population goes on increasing, the existing
elementals and Theocratic bands have a steady supply of new souls to
feed upon or recruit. But when massive human die-offs occur, vast
numbers of new souls will be stranded on the astral plane at once.
This overabundance of souls will cause thousands of embryonic
Elemental spirits to start growing very rapidly towards adulthood.
Once a young Elemental reaches a certain critical mass it becomes
able to seize and capture souls psychokinetically against their
will, something that ordinary Theocratic bands cannot do because
they lack the necessary psychic energy.
As such an Elemental grows in size and psychic power, it can
forcefully capture disembodied souls at a higher and higher stage of
spiritual development; if it becomes big enough, it is able to
devour ordinary Theocratic bands, and finally even the astral souls
of living humans.
If this happens, then most of the planer's human
population, living and disembodied, can end up being taken over and
eventually devoured by a small number of elementals.
These adult Elementals are then forced to leave their planet of
origin in search of a new food supply. They can travel interstellar
distances. Advanced civilizations can usually defend themselves
against such beings, but they can depopulate whole planets at a
lower stage of civilization very easily.
This is why the Invisible
College is intervening in the evolution of human society on Earth.
The natural order of the universe is for people (not necessarily in
Earth-type human bodies) to start developing an advanced technology
under the control of Theocratic spirits. Such a world never gets
beyond the second stage of Theocratic religion, but it does develop
enough technology to allow the human population to reach into the
billions.
When it does, a nuclear or biological war suddenly reduces
the population, and the Elementals and the Theocrats start fighting
among themselves over who controls the planet, and which Elementals
will reach adulthood.
Within a few years after this point is reached, the adult Elementals
leave the planet and go off into deep space. Sometimes the sudden
growth and violent end of the human civilization destroy the
planet's biosphere, and sometimes the biosphere survives but human
beings do not.
More commonly, a few living people and a few
Theocratic spirits survive and the whole cycle begins again and runs
its course over a period of thousands of years.