08-07-2012, 02:33 PM
The posthumous assassination of JFK is supported by the arguments that:
A) The combination of drugs and sex was sufficient to prompt a sea change -- from Cold Warrior to peacenik appeaser -- in his world view and, by extension, inform his actions as president.
B) He was a committed pacifist/socialist long before he sought public office -- ideological choices that prompted treasonous acts before and during his presidency.
These points of view are mutually exclusive. Which doesn't necessarily mean that they weren't weaponized and intentionally offered simultaneously and to great desired effect within a broad range of targeted audiences.
There is, however, a third option -- one that takes into account the never-ending spiritual and intellectual growth for which I continue to argue and that remains anathema to materialist thinkers.
James Douglass, in Gandhi and the Unspeakable: His Final Experiment with Truth, writes of the life-long (and beyond) testing and refinement conducted by his subject -- a man whose spiritual and intellectual growth are commonly assumed to have ended long before he left the earth -- on the most basic of guiding principles.
"In the course of his experiments with truth, Gandhi discovered there was a third choice besides state terrorism and revolutionary terrorism. Satyagraha, truth-force, was based on a harmony of means and ends. Gandhi saw 'there is just the same inviolable connection between the means and the end as there is between the seed and the tree. We reap exactly as we sow.'" (p. 101)
Read it again: "In the course of his experiments with truth, Gandhi discovered ... " [emphasis added]
I suppose that Gandhi and Kennedy have yet to reach a point at which movement toward enlightenment ends -- which is to say, when enlightenment has been attained. But who can say with any degree of certainty -- other than Gandhi and Kennedy, of course.
Bet the farm that both great men died in states of transition -- sacred movements toward the ultimate state to which we all aspire.
A) The combination of drugs and sex was sufficient to prompt a sea change -- from Cold Warrior to peacenik appeaser -- in his world view and, by extension, inform his actions as president.
B) He was a committed pacifist/socialist long before he sought public office -- ideological choices that prompted treasonous acts before and during his presidency.
These points of view are mutually exclusive. Which doesn't necessarily mean that they weren't weaponized and intentionally offered simultaneously and to great desired effect within a broad range of targeted audiences.
There is, however, a third option -- one that takes into account the never-ending spiritual and intellectual growth for which I continue to argue and that remains anathema to materialist thinkers.
James Douglass, in Gandhi and the Unspeakable: His Final Experiment with Truth, writes of the life-long (and beyond) testing and refinement conducted by his subject -- a man whose spiritual and intellectual growth are commonly assumed to have ended long before he left the earth -- on the most basic of guiding principles.
"In the course of his experiments with truth, Gandhi discovered there was a third choice besides state terrorism and revolutionary terrorism. Satyagraha, truth-force, was based on a harmony of means and ends. Gandhi saw 'there is just the same inviolable connection between the means and the end as there is between the seed and the tree. We reap exactly as we sow.'" (p. 101)
Read it again: "In the course of his experiments with truth, Gandhi discovered ... " [emphasis added]
I suppose that Gandhi and Kennedy have yet to reach a point at which movement toward enlightenment ends -- which is to say, when enlightenment has been attained. But who can say with any degree of certainty -- other than Gandhi and Kennedy, of course.
Bet the farm that both great men died in states of transition -- sacred movements toward the ultimate state to which we all aspire.