A. In addition to helping people make the breakthrough on an
individual level, the Invisible College is also trying to start an
overt Spiritual Revolutionary movement. We do not desire this to be
a highly organized movement with recognized leaders and a narrowly
defined ideology, but a merely a name for all the people who have
made the breakthrough and share the general viewpoint on spiritual
reality presented in this book.
The Feminist, Environmentalist, and
Civil Rights movements are examples of the type of organization
we're talking about: in order to belong to the group and use the
name, people need only believe in its general principles.
Of course, individual members of such a general movement often get
together and organize action groups to further the cause. These may
need to have a formal political structure and a fixed ideology in
order to perform their activities efficiently. If Spiritual
Revolutionaries do ever form such action groups, the members of each
one should remain aware that we don't want it to try to control or
speak for the movement as a whole.
Instead, they should concentrate
on accomplishing some specific purpose, studying and writing about
the breakthrough information, publishing a magazine, working on
personal psychic development, etc.
Q. The S/R Press is an example of such an action group.
It is
registered as a sole proprietorship, and is technically a
profit-making business (to avoid bureaucratic hassles over
non-profit status). I organized it this way only so that I can
assume all the financial and editorial responsibility myself, not so
that I can make money from it.
(So far, I've gone out of pocket on
the project every month it's been in operation. If income ever does
exceed expenses, I'll just reduce cover prices, give away more free
copies of the publications, or increase the advertising. Should it
ever become possible, I'll start paying myself average wages for my
labor; but I never intend to make an actual profit.)
However, on another level the S/R Press is an anarchist collective.
Other Spiritual Revolutionaries help me with my writing and
publishing projects on a strictly voluntary basis, and we decide
matters of policy and economics as they come up.
Sometimes I can pay
for this help, but more often people just agree to donate it. I've
also received a few monetary contributions and a lot of good advice
on both business and editorial matters. This kind of collective is
immune to most of the political compulsions of socialism and the
economic compulsions of capitalism, because it's just a loosely
organized group people working together to further a common cause.
This kind of organization doesn't sound like much from a verbal
description, but it's more effective than it seems. Theoretically, I
have complete control of the enterprise and also complete
responsibility for whatever is done. In practice, the other people
involved share a significant part of the total labor and take a
major role in making decisions.
The job is too big for me to do all
by myself, and I refuse to either hire people or lead a formal
organization, so everything is voluntarily.
However, the others are
motivated to become involved because they believe that what I'm
publishing is important, and I'm willing to give them a say in
making decisions for exactly the same reason.
A. This is one example of how a Spiritual Revolutionary action group
can be run.
It's an anarchist model because you and most of your
friends are anarchists or libertarians, but we expect that other
groups may want to pick other organizational structures, depending
on the members' opinions about politics and economics.
As long as
people remain aware that their particular group does not officially
represent the movement as a whole, any organizational structure the
members are comfortable with is OK with us, as long it doesn't
generate a negative public image.
Q. Several of the people who commented on Spiritual Revolution asked
why you want to give the movement a name at all. Why should people bother to
call themselves Spiritual Revolutionaries if there's no concrete
belief system or formal organization behind the name?
A. We want people who support the theories and opinions in this book
to call themselves Spiritual Revolutionaries openly, even though
different individuals may hold different personal interpretations of
what this material means and what they should do as a result of
accepting it.
If they share a name in common, then the activities of
each one will generate publicity for the movement as a whole.
We also want to avoid a mistake we made back in the Sixties. Instead
of encouraging the people we communicated with telepathically to use
a single appropriate name for the movement, we tried to let it
remain nameless. Of course, it acquired a name anyway when a gossip
columnist coined the term "Hippy."
Q. I always hated that word. It's linguistically suitable only as a
term of derision. But I still had to admit grudgingly I was a Hippy
for a few years. It wouldn't have been honest to say I wasn't one,
because I definitely belonged to the general movement labeled with
that name.
I did say that I wasn't one of the Flower Children or
Dropouts, because I found it easier to work than to live on the
streets, and I needed a certain amount of property in order to
write, teach magic, and spread my ideas.
But I still had to admit
that the ugly name for the movement included me. I'm really glad to
see that you yourselves are picking a name for the movement this
time.
Actually, though, I think the name "Spiritual Revolutionary" may be
a little too long and formal sounding. Someone may still coin a
short, snappy name and get it into common use, and it may be another
monster like "Hippy."
A. The worst that could happen is that there would be two names in
use, as, for example, the anti-Theocratic church that calls itself
the Society of Friends is much better known as the Quakers.
Quaker
started out as a term of derision, but now even the church members
themselves use it quite commonly. However, those that don't like it
have the official name to fall back on. If the same thing happens
here, members will always be able to use the name Spiritual
Revolutionary if they don't like the other name.
We are also suggesting a graphic symbol for the movement, a
five-pointed star with a Roman C inside it, which you can describe
in more detail in an appendix to the book.
Another appendix should
present a suggested code of conduct for Spiritual Revolutionaries,
and we'll discuss this concept a little more right here.
The code of
conduct is just a set of general common-sense rules, which shouldn't
interfere with individual self-expression or creativity, but which
will allow Spiritual Revolutionaries to easily disassociate
themselves from Theocratic provocateurs, self-centered exploiters,
and plain crazies.
Q. In other words, Spiritual Revolutionaries will be able to "quote
chapter and verse" to the public if we face major problems like the
Manson Family or some of the professional criminals who joined the
Sixties counterculture and made fortunes dealing drugs, or minor
annoyances like the "crazies" who got a lot of media attention for
saying "Kill your parents" and ‘burn all books."
We can say,
"These
people are violating the code of conduct recommended by the
Invisible College, so they really aren't Spiritual Revolutionaries
at all."
A. In addition to a list of "don'ts", we also have a number of more
general suggestions for things we would like to see overt Spiritual
Revolutionaries do.
We are purposely keeping these things rather
vague, because we want people to be as independent and creative as
possible.
One thing we'd like to see happen is the growth of an information
network around this book. For example, everyone who reads War in
Heaven and agrees with the basic theory ought to start writing
letters to newspapers and magazines describing it.
We urge anyone
who publishes an amateur magazine or newspaper of any kind - an
occult or Pagan publication, a rock fanzine, a political or
conspiracy newsletter, or anything else - to start discussing the
Spiritual Revolution in it.
This is going to result in almost as many different theories as
there are people writing about them, and that is exactly what we
want. The resulting diversity of opinion will keep the movement as a
whole from developing a narrow, fixed ideological viewpoint.
We also
feel that any group that alters consciousness through ritual,
meditation, drugs, or any other means should not program people with
the full information about the War in Heaven presented in this book.
Q. Does this mean that conscious Spiritual Revolutionaries shouldn't
use magical rituals and other forms of group psychic practice to
help people make the breakthrough?
A. We encourage you to use such methods to teach people how to
reprogram their minds so they can make value judgments about
spiritual matters rationally, but not to indoctrinate them to accept
political or cosmological theories on faith.
Spiritual
Revolutionaries should not attempt to reprogram people with the
complete set of theories in War in Heaven, because none of you yet
have a complete understanding of the material yourselves.
The people
you will be teaching have just as much to contribute to reaching
such an understanding as you do. For this reason, all you should
teach is rational spiritual thinking, not rigid ideology or
doctrine.
Q. What relationship do you intend conscious Spiritual
Revolutionaries to have with the
New Age movement?
I should point
out that I don't have a very high opinion of many of the groups that
label themselves as part of the New Age movement. Most of them seem
to be either commercial enterprises or social clubs first, and
schools for teaching spiritual knowledge or psychic development
second. Now I'm not saying it's wrong for the leaders of such a
group to be paid for their work in running it, or for its activities
to provide members with recreation and social contact as well as
spiritual training.
What I object to in many of the New Age groups
is simply their system of priorities.
For example, I remarked a couple of years ago that I kept getting
fliers from New Age groups that were charging as much for a single
weekend seminar as it cost me to promote and advertise Spiritual
Revolution for a whole year. I spent over five years working on that
book, yet I felt somewhat embarrassed to have to charge fifteen
dollars for it. A lot of New Agers were charging the same price or
more for a slender pamphlet or a thirty-minute cassette tape that
was probably produced in five days or less of actual work.
In my opinion, the same is still true today: very little New Age
literature or teaching is worth the price charged for it. This makes
it easy for hostile outsiders to label the whole movement as a
commercial rip-off or an expensive hobby for Yuppies. And such
smears always rub off on the other new spiritual movements as well:
occultists, Pagans, Spiritual Revolutionaries, and others.
I also get very negative telepathic impressions when I meet some New
Agers in person. I perceive that the leaders of some groups don't
really take the system they're teaching seriously. Inside their own
minds, they laugh at people who take their teachings literally, and
they feel that any benefits students get from practicing the system
are caused by nothing more than "the power of suggestion."
Now, that
sort of attitude disgusts me. If these people think their system is
actually just a placebo, then they ought to either dispense with the
fiction that they have a system at all, or find one that really
works.
I also dislike the preoccupation of many New Age groups with fads
that have little or nothing to do with spirituality, especially some
of the health and nutritional fads. Many of these are based on pure
pseudo-science, and some are cold-blooded commercial rip-offs. It's
often quite ironic: the leaders of a New Age spiritual group think
of themselves privately as charlatans taking advantage of the people
they teach, yet they are being exploited by another group of
charlatans peddling phony theories about food, exercise, and
physical health in general.
A significant number of people have died or become seriously ill
because of health fads; this is bad enough in itself, but the
negative publicity generated by such incidents has an even worse
effect.
It gives the Theocratic enemies of the New Age movement a
legitimate excuse to label members as gullible, irresponsible, and
immature.
A. Everything you say is true, but you're missing the point because
you have trouble realizing what it's like to be a beginner in the
psychic development field. In many New Age groups, the teachers are
just as much beginners as the students, and you're quite right that
most of the progress they make is simply by the power of suggestion.
You don't seem to realize that this alone is enough to teach many
people the rudiments of mental self-reprogramming.
Almost any
system, no matter how arbitrary or fanciful you may consider it, is
usually sufficient to put people into a state of altered
consciousness that serves as a limited "command mode" for beginning
mental reprogramming.
Q. OK. I stand corrected, but it is still difficult for me to
communicate with people who take fads and pseudo-scientific theories
so seriously.
On one level, these people are re-inventing Western
occultism, without realizing that everything they've "discovered,"
both the valid elements and the errors, has been familiar to the
regular occult community for a long time. In many cases, all they're
doing is inventing new jargon, or borrowing jargon from psychology
and other disciplines, to describe spiritual concepts or psychic
development techniques that ought to be taught to children in
grammar school.
A. But these things are not taught in American grammar schools.
That's the point. Unless people grow up in a family of occultists or
join the occult community at an early age, they're simply not going
to learn basic psychic skills.
The New Age groups invent their own
jargon or re-interpret technical psychological terms instead of
using standard occult terminology simply because such terms are more
readily understood by the people they're working with, who come to
the groups as adults with an average general education and
vocabulary.
Q. I see what you mean. On the elementary level, practically any
system works as long as the people employing it put serious effort
into what they're doing. I'll accept this.
A. We also encourage cynical, self-serving leadership and obsession
with fads and pseudo-science: it keeps people from getting stuck in
a particular group long after its limited knowledge and training
system are capable of helping them make progress in their personal
spiritual development.
Even if they don't consciously realize that
they've outgrown their group, they may get tired of egotistical,
exploitative leadership or silly fads, and start looking for a new
one.
Once they've started this "shopping," they may look at training
systems objectively enough to pick one that's advanced enough to
meet their present needs.
Q. It never ceases to amaze me how subtle the manipulations of both
the Theocrats and the Invisible College often are. In most cases,
what look like errors or oversights are actually deliberate plans to
maneuver people into doing what was desired all along.
I didn't
figure out that the total anarchy of the Sixties Counterculture was
a deliberate policy of the Invisible College, for example, until
long after the movement was over. And I didn't discover for myself
what you've just told me about the New Age Movement.
However, now that the overt phase of the Spiritual Revolution is
beginning, I'd like to see you replace the present New Age movement
with something less diverse and more efficient, led by people on the
highest levels of Western occultism. I'm quite aware that every
single individual tradition within Western occultism has its faults,
especially in accepting major fallacies about spiritual reality, but
many of the New Age groups are even worse in this respect.
There
simply hasn't been time for practical experience to force them to
give up some of their more ridiculous fads, fallacies, and errors.
The traditions of mainstream occultism contain numerous errors, but
centuries of practical experience have taught occultists enough
common sense to avoid a lot of the sillier mistakes that the New Age
people are making.
A. Most of the millions of people now involved in the New Age and
related movements aren't ready for such a program.
We intend to
allow the New Age movement to exist in its present form for quite
some time into the future. It is doing its job of elementary psychic
training very well, and its continued existence will not interfere
with the development of other, more advanced movements growing out
of present high-level occultism.
The official opinion of the Invisible College is that you conscious
Spiritual Revolutionaries should not consider yourselves enemies of
the New Age movement just because you don't like the actions of
specific groups or individuals within it. Instead, you should
encourage the public to identify your own groups as part of the New
Age movement.
The movement itself is so large and so diffuse in
structure that no one can stop you, and it has a reasonably good
reputation except among the two extreme edges of the spiritual
political spectrum: the radicals like you, and the servants of the
Theocrats.
Q. You mean I should describe War in Heaven as a New Age book?
A. Why not? You have as much right to use the name as anyone.
There's no reason why the New Age movement can't have a radical left
wing whose members also call themselves Spiritual Revolutionaries.
If the commercial rip-off artists and the teachers of pious
banalities try to throw you out, it'll just give you a lot of free
publicity.
Q. Now that you've explained the idea, I like it. And I remember
doing similar things back in the Sixties. I thought it was stupid
for anti-war demonstrators to burn the American flag, while people
who supported the Vietnam War acted as if the flag was their
exclusive property while they called us traitors and themselves
patriots.
I frequently said that the anti-war protesters and other
radicals should also wave the flag and say 'WE are the real
patriots! It's these militarists who are violating the traditional
American values.
After all, didn't George Washington speak out very
strongly against getting involved in foreign wars?"
A. Your idea was a good one, and the inspiration for it came from
us.
If enough radicals had followed this suggestion, it would have
weakened support for the rightists by depriving them of a monopoly
over people's subconscious emotions of patriotism and respect for
the flag. Unfortunately, we were never able to make the idea catch
on with the majority of Sixties radicals.
Most of them were too
serious about their protests to make fun of their enemies by making
fun of themselves at the same time, as was so common in the rest of
the counterculture.
Humor is one very important weapon against
Theocracy, you know. It's a positive human trait that they can't
counterfeit very convincingly.
In fact, the New Age movement has a lot of optimism and warm human
qualities that we hope Spiritual Revolutionaries will adopt. Some
New Age groups carry optimism and positive thinking to excess by
ignoring the grimmer aspects of spiritual reality, but no one who
has made the breakthrough can possibly do this.
You need to make a
conscious effort to adopt some of the positive thinking of the New Agers to keep from becoming doomsayers and rabid militants as many
political radicals have done.
After all, we are convinced that our
side is going to win the War in Heaven.