Piercing the veils
Started: Saturday, September 17, 2005 13:23
Finished: Saturday, September 17, 2005 13:27
Posting this third-hand. It was forwarded to me through an email list by someone who attributed it to a post on the Rigorous Intuition discussion board. I'm not saying I necessarily agree with all of it, but it is interesting.
Slavery and the eight veils
by Don Harkins
Over the last several years I have evolved and discarded several theories in an attempt to explain why it is that most people cannot see truth -- even when it smacks them in the face. Those of us who can see "the conspiracy" have participated in countless conversations amongst ourselves that address the frustration of most peoples' inability to comprehend the extremely well-documented arguments which we use to describe the process of our collective enslavement and exploitation. The most common explanation to be arrived at is that most people just "don't want to see" what is really going on.
Extremely evil men and women who make up the world's power-elite have cleverly cultivated a virtual pasture so grass green that few people seldom, if ever, bother to look up from where they are grazing long enough to notice the brightly colored tags stapled to their ears.
The same people who cannot see their enslavement for the pasture grass have a tendency to view as insane "conspiracy theorists" those of us who can see the past, the farm and into the parlor of his feudal lordship's castle.
Finally, I understand why.
It's not that those who don't see that their freedom is vanishing simply can't see what is happening to them because of the unpierced veils that block their view.
All human endeavors are a filtration process. Sports is one of the best examples. We play specific sports until we get kicked off the playground. The pro athletes we pay big bucks to watch just never got kicked off the playground. Where millions of kids play little league each spring, they are filtered out until there are about 50 guys who go to the World Series in October.
Behind the first veil: There are over six billion people on the planet. Most of them live and die without having seriously contemplated anything other than what it takes to keep their lives together. Ninety percent of all humanity will live and die without having pierced the first veil.
The first veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the first veil and find the world of politics. We will vote, be active and have an opinion. Our opinions are shaped by the physical world around us; we have a tendency to accept that government officials, network media personalities and other "experts" are voices of authority. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the second veil.
The second veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the second veil to explore the world of history, the relationship between man and government and the meaning of self-government through constitutional and common law. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the third veil.
The third veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the third veil to find that the resources of the world, including people, are controlled by extremely wealthy and powerful families whose incorporated old world assets have, with modern extortion strategies, become the foundation upon which the world's economy is currently indebted. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the fourth veil.
The fourth veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the fourth veil to discover the Illuminati, Freemasonry and the other secret societies. These societies use symbols and perform ceremonies that perpetuate the generational transfers of arcane knowledge that is used to keep the ordinary people in political, economic and spiritual bondage to the oldest bloodlines on earth. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the fifth veil.
The fifth veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the fifth veil to learn that the secret societies are so far advanced technologically and in the means of brainwashing and controlling the actions of people that their members do as offhandedly as we tell our children when they must go to bed. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the sixth veil.
The sixth veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the sixth veil where the dragons and aliens (Satan) we thought were the fictional monsters of childhood literature are real and are the controlling forces behind the secret societies. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without piercing the seventh veil.
The seventh veil: I do not know what is behind the seventh veil. I think it is where your soul is evolved to the point you can exist on earth and be the man Ghandi was, or the woman Peace Pilgrim was - people so enlightened they brighten the world around them no matter what.
The eighth veil? Piercing the eighth veil probably reveals God and the pure energy that is the life force in all living things - which are, I think, one and the same.
If my math is accurate there are only about 60,000 people on the planet who have pierced the sixth veil. The irony here is too incredible: Those who are stuck behind veils one through five have little choice but to view the people who have pierced the veils beyond them as insane. With each veil pierced, exponentially shrinking numbers of increasingly enlightened people are deemed insane by exponentially increasing masses of decreasingly enlightened people.
Adding to the irony, the harder a "sixth or better veiler" tries to explain what he is able to see to those who can't, the more insane he appears to them.
Our enemy, the state
Behind the first two veils we find the great majority of people on the planet. They are tools of the state: Second veilers are the gullible voters whose ignorance justify the actions of politicians who send first veilers off to die in foreign lands as cannon fodder -- their combined stations in life are to believe that the self-serving machinations of the power-elite are matters of national security worth dying for.
Third, fourth, fifth and sixth veilers are of increasing liability to the state because of their decreasing ability to be used as tools to consolidate power and wealth of the many into the hands of the power-elite. It is common for these people to sacrifice more of their relationships with friends and family, their professional careers and personal freedom with each veil they pierce.
Albert Jay Nock (1870-1945), author of "Our Enemy, the State" (1935), explained what happens to those who find the seventh and eighth veils: "What was the best that the state could find to do with an actual Socrates and an actual Jesus when it had them? Merely to poison one and crucify the other, for no reason but that they were too intolerably embarrassing to be allowed to live any longer."
Conclusions
And so now we know that it's not that our countrymen are so committed to their lives that, "they don't want to see," the mechanisms of their enslavement and exploitation. They simply "can't see" it as surely as I cannot see what's on the other side of a closed curtain.
The purpose of this essay is threefold: To help the handful of people in the latter veils to understand why the masses have little choice but to interpret their clarity as insanity; 2. To help people behind the first two veils understand that living, breathing and thinking are just the beginning and; 3. Show people that the greatest adventure of our life is behind the next veil because that is just one less veil between ourselves and God.
I would say I have pierced the third veil, so I can agree with everything it says up until there, but tend to view anybody who makes claims consistent with having pierced the 4th or beyond as having questionable sanity. That's why I can't say I necessarily agree with the whole thing. :)
Interesting stuff, anyway. I need to be off to work!
by Bitscape (2005-09-18 00:39)
I kept thinking about this today while I was at work, and wanted to add some comments.
There's a strong tendancy among those who see through more of the veils to view anyone who can't see as deeply as either dense, ignorant, or both. There is a temptation to condescend, or at the very least to become frustrated. For example, I've heard people who have pierced the first one or two vails speak about others who have pierced none or one with vexation. "Why can't he/she just look around at what's going on? Can't they see that if everybody like them got informed and involved in the political process, we could make things so much better?" (Or something along those lines.)
I would suggest, in agreement with the essay's thesis, that no matter how much supporting information you present to someone, or how logical your arguments are, they will not truly comprehend, or be able to "pierce the veils" based on facts alone. Try it. Argue with somebody who doesn't vote, or doesn't care about the political process, or believes everything the media tells them (including the spin). They'll find a way to dismiss or disregard everything you say. Nothing will convince them until they're ready.
Why is this? It has to be because this sort of "seeing" does not come from knowing a bunch of raw facts alone, but by gaining an intuitive understanding (based at least partly on first-hand experience) of How The World Works.
I would also revise my earlier comments to suggest that rather than viewing people with deeper vision as insane, those on the lowel levels might actually view higher knowledge as unverifiable or irrelevant. I know that tends to be my view of the higher veils. When confronted with arguments about why they should vote, a common response from someone behind the first veil might be to say, "So what? Why should I care about what the government does, or whether it follows constitutional law if it doesn't affect me directly?"
I said earlier that I had pierced the third veil -- recognizing that a small number of families have held control of the bulk of the world's resources for generations, using their financial clout to shape the direction of governments and corporations which affect us all. Though there are facts to support this assertion, at least in part, I don't think such statistics by themselves are enough to really "see" the truth of it.
To do that, you have to look at your everyday life, and realize that nobody I know really "owns" much of anything that concerns them. Neither the manager at the gas station where I work, nor any of the other employees who keep it running on a daily basis own a bit of it. Ditto for the previous workplace. At my software job a few years ago, we got to "own" a bunch of stock options which ultimately amounted to nil, and that still didn't give anybody a damn bit of control over the company's direction or key decisions. Some of my friends (such as those in whose basement I currently dwell) "own" their houses, but they'll be paying mortgage for a good many years.
The fact that even so many people who are middle or upper-middle class have hardly any control over the resources and organizations that they interact with daily makes it obvious to me that the distant few who do hold such ownership have one hell of a lot of clout, money-wise. Forget about building mansions in Aspen. That's small potatoes. Think the ability to set policies at multi-national corporations, the DMCA, GATT, CAFTA, etc etc etc. That's where the top 1% (whose combined wealth exceeds the bottom 95%) comes in.
But I could sit and rant about this all night, and still someone who hasn't already "seen" it themselves isn't going to be any closer.
Regarding the fourth veil. Secret societies; ceremonies; perverse rituals to support the concentration of power. I can conceptualize such stuff, but its presence isn't inherently evident to me, nor are the connections. I can read interviews with survivors of ritualized CIA child-torture, and maybe even believe such individual accounts. But I have trouble seeing how it fits into the bigger picture. How does raping children help our leaders (or shadow puppeteers behind the throne) perpetuate their grasp on world events, other than perhaps blackmail?
Maybe in order to pierce this veil, one must have a good knowledge of the nature of ritual, and the power it wields. The paranormal, beyond science. (Assuming, of course, that the author of the essay knows what he's talking about, and isn't a nut; I'm assuming, for the moment, that he speaks truth.) I have read of the power in certain types of rituals (albeit in a much less foreboding context (i.e. Wicca, and even some of Anton LaVey's stuff, though neither will acknowledge the validity or worth of the other)), but I haven't directly experienced much of it myself.
Regarding the sixth veil: We gnostic adventurers might substitute the concepts of "Demiurge" and "archons" for "Satan" and "dragons/aliens". With my current perspective, I view these merely as useful metaphors for describing the behavior of things, rather than literal beings. But who knows! Maybe if one sees deeply enough, they might actually grasp enough of the pattern to recognize actual living entities that can be as alive as the mass of cells we call a "human body".
(Then we could get into the definition of "entity". I was reading Jeff Vail's book again today, and it's informing my vision.)
Finally, before I conclude this massive sprawling comment, a note on the effects. What does "seeing" through these veils do for your life? What good would it do to know all this stuff? Does it make any appreciable difference in our lives if we do?
The author of the essay seems to suggest that by piercing the veils, especially the higher ones, people become more effective against the forces of enslavement. (i.e. like Ghandi and Jesus at the highest awareness.)
Looking at myself, I think it's probably true that as I have grown in awareness, I've become less willing to merely "go along" with the soul-sucking machine, and more motivated to find ways of escaping it, as well as wanting to help others do the same. I have to admit that even after years of study and fooling around, I still don't really know a damn thing about how to fight it.
Is that really true? Maybe I'm not giving myself enough credit. I think I have freed my mind to a large extent. Compare with where I was 5 years ago. My well-intentioned but ineffective struggles: the short-lived MPAA boycott, the squirming and protesting about management-mandeted MSWord bullshit at the office. Cute perhaps in retrospect, but ultimately, I was so focused on futile or trivial squabbles that I neglected the bigger picture.
I guess the past couple of years have been focused mainly on pulling my own shit together -- disentangling myself mentally from the Culture of Empire, searching for ways to find my balance without going off the deep end or becoming enmeshed in the Black Iron Prison. Learning to survive within the system without letting it eat my soul completely. Lately, since moving to Lincoln, I feel like I've reached a new stage where I'm ready to reach out and seek community involvement. (i.e. volunteering at Open Harvest, getting involved at a church compatible with my eclectic spiritual pursuits. But still I want more!)
So anyway, wow. What was meant as an addendum to the article has turned into a full-scale ramble. Final summary: Though I'm not sure about all the details, I think the author of the above essay has some truly worthy insight, especially about how increasing awareness causes in people a greater willingness and ability to help their fellow humans. This rings true with me.