Charlotte Iserbyt: Societies Secrets

[Lauren Johnson]

[quote=Lauren Johnson]EJ: Why are you including the Aquarian Gospel etc. in your reading list?

#1) It represents to me a personal challenge in knowing my own beliefs and spirituality, and in sensing the tug and pull of 'the twins of God and politics' in American culture. I was baptized a Presbyterian. After my mother died five days after I was born, my nanny was a Mennonite. I was sent to a Methodist Sunday School by my step-mother, and to a Congregational church by my parents in a new locale. I married a Catholic in a Congregational and, later, Catholic ceremony. My father disowned me. Eight years later, we divorced. My father disowned me again. I met and married a lapsed Catholic. I had already seen and borne witness to the hypocrisies of organized religion. I begun to study Taoism, then a bit of Buddhism, and then expanded a library on religion and spirituality to 80 volumes. And then, suddenly, available through a regular outlet for discounted books while I read the other noted material, was this "gospel" that theoretically filled in the missing years in Jesus' history when he studied with masters from other faiths. Personally, I revere Jesus, and have shared with my children a book limited only to His own words from the Bible. I also find a great deal of resonance in Gaffney's book. Even the Aquarian Gospel -- like a good juicy hunk of propagandistic disinformation -- is appealing and parallels much in the Bible (with errors noted by others). But there's that tug and pull again...

I remain in the church as a Lutheran in part because I have concluded there is no escaping hypocrisy. I prefer a community of hypocrites to none. Thanks for you brief bio. The key is that we share and recognize our hypocrisy.

#2) I had a strange encounter (actually, a complete lack of contact) with an individual I met during an extended interaction years ago who claimed to be a "Disciple in Christ"-in-training [I didn't realize it required more than simple reverence and belief!?] and whose secretive motives and controlling actions regarding a third individual of mutual acquaintance I found to be highly questionable and suspect. This concurrence had connections and correlations to some of the text in Levenda's "Sinister Forces" and some of the additional background of the mutual acquaintance.

I have ordered the first two vols of Sinister Forces. What the hell? Why not? I guess I feel like pissing off Seamus.

And there is the role of Allen Dulles, in his first foreign posting, in the "outing" of Protocols.

Mind saying a little more?

The issue comes to roost for me in the matter of 'direct access to God' and mind control, having had -- and documented -- a number of personal epiphanies, and based on my reading, reflection and meditation, and my personal reading in issues of mind control. As I live, and reflect on Christ, and other masters and methods of mastery, I am interested in understanding this matter of self, God, and society and in placing myself in correct relationship to them.

Along the lines of the direct contact with God, you might appreciate The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes. I don't know exactly why, but you might enjoy The Conquest of America by Tzvetan Todorov. He distinguishes religious murder (sacrifice) from massacre (atheistic murder). The birth of modernity is wrapped up in the latter. "...The conquistadors obeyed the rule of Ivan Karamazov: "everything is permitted." Far from the central government, far from royal law, all prohibitions give way, the social link, already loosened, snaps, revealing not a primitive nature, the beast sleeping in each of us, but a modern being, one with a great future in fact, restrained by no morality and inflicting death because and when he pleases." (p. 145)