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  • The Counterfeit Culture & the Fall of the US Empire

    The Counterfeit Culture & the Fall of the US Empire

    “The Counterfeit Culture” is the title of an article on 2 September 2011 by Mike Adams in his widely distributed daily health email newsletter NaturalNews. He used it to express a dismay that is increasingly widespread, essentially as a result of the corporate takeover and corruption of America.

    Amongst his protests were the following:

    The Federal Reserve is in the business of counterfeiting money.

    The mainstream media is in the business of counterfeiting news.

    The pharmaceutical industry is in the business of counterfeiting medicine.

    The medical schools are in the business of counterfeiting medical degrees.

    Doctors are in the business of counterfeiting false medical authority.

    The mega-sized food corporations are in the business of counterfeiting food.

    The global consumer product companies counterfeit consumer products (“baby oil” from petroleum).

    Social networks like Facebook are in the business of counterfeiting friends.

    Home builders construct counterfeit homes (that won’t stand in 20 years).

    Public schools counterfeit school diplomas. (Who needs to learn to write?)

    The Pentagon counterfeits war. (Bomb the World Trade Centre & blame someone!)

    Mainstream historians counterfeit history.

    Apart from his initial noting of counterfeit money and counterfeit news, understandably Adams focuses mostly on healthcare counterfeits. His inclusion of the September 11, 2001 atrocity as “The Pentagon counterfeits war,” almost as an afterthought, captures something perverse about the contemporary American psyche. After all, this event transformed America more than any other nation in the following ten years, rarely for the better. Adams identifies it as a counterfeit but allows it to be hidden amongst a number of even more troublesome counterfeits.

    There are many more iatrogenic deaths each year than the 9/11 deaths in 2001, but they do not normally serve as a cause for public outrage (iatrogenic refers to complications caused by medical errors). Certainly, they are far from being a credible justification for bankrupting the nation with foreign invasions and unwinnable small wars. Indeed, a commentator of the insight, knowledge and judgement of Mike Adams is so overwhelmed by the corruptions and counterfeits pervading healthcare that he seems to be exhausted by simply recounting his grievances and unable to do much more than list the abundance of counterfeits.

    An article by Gary Null PhD et al reveals something of the extent of the medical counterfeits that preoccupy Adams.

    “A definitive review and close reading of medical peer-review journals, and government health statistics shows that American medicine frequently causes more harm than good. The number of people having in-hospital, adverse drug reactions (ADR) to prescribed medicine is 2.2 million. Dr. Richard Besser, of the CDC, in 1995, said the number of unnecessary antibiotics prescribed annually for viral infections was 20 million. Dr. Besser, in 2003, now refers to tens of millions of unnecessary antibiotics.

    “The number of unnecessary medical and surgical procedures performed annually is 7.5 million. The number of people exposed to unnecessary hospitalisation annually is 8.9 million. The total number of iatrogenic [induced inadvertently by a physician or surgeon or by medical treatment or diagnostic procedures] deaths is 783,936.

    “The 2001 heart disease annual death rate is 699,697; the annual cancer death rate is 553,251. It is evident that the American medical system is the leading cause of death and injury in the United States.”1

    Shocking as it sounds initially, the immediate death toll from 9/11 of close to 3,000 was nothing in comparison. Moreover, annual expenditure per person on American health care is more than double that in most comparable nations, dwarfing the comparable impact and cost of 9/11 and highlighting the pervasive nature of American counterfeits. The subsequent reactions and wars that followed 9/11 incurred costs to rival those of the American medical system.

    Related to the above, but still poorly understood, American deficit finance (the Fed’s counterfeit money), is beginning to threaten the viability of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. This casts dark clouds over the future authority of a nation that would have to reduce its spending (much of it medical and military) each year by at least $1.5 trillion were it not able to continue printing at whim the global currency.

    Like the other counterfeits, this attracts surprisingly little reflective analysis. The direct link between the problems of the Fed’s counterfeit money, the waste inherent in the American counterfeit medical system, and the never-ending War on Terror forever maintained by the counterfeit commemoration of 9/11, is rarely remarked. This reflects the pervasiveness of Adams’ “counterfeit culture.”

    The Cost of the US Response to 9/11

    Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate, notes in an article for Al Jazeera that:

    “The September 11, 2001, attacks by al-Qaeda were meant to harm the United States, and they did, but in ways that Osama bin Laden probably never imagined. President George W Bush’s response to the attacks compromised the United States’ basic principles, undermined its economy, and weakened its security.

    “The attack on Afghanistan that followed the 9/11 attacks was understandable, but the subsequent invasion of Iraq was entirely unconnected to al-Qaeda – as much as Bush tried to establish a link. That war of choice quickly became very expensive – orders of magnitude beyond the $60bn [billion] claimed at the beginning – as colossal incompetence met dishonest misrepresentation.
    “Indeed, when Linda Bilmes and I calculated the United States’ war costs three years ago, the conservative tally was $3-5tn [trillion]. Since then, the costs have mounted further. With almost 50 per cent of returning troops eligible to receive some level of disability payment, and more than 600,000 treated so far in veterans’ medical facilities, we now estimate that future disability payments and health-care costs will total $600-900bn. But the social costs, reflected in veteran suicides (which have topped 18 per day in recent years) and family breakups, are incalculable.”2

    Stiglitz captures succinctly the manner in which America often harms itself more than its “enemies.” Whether al-Qaeda was responsible or not for 9/11, and there are many who question the official story, the response has profoundly damaged US military, political, moral and financial credibility and authority. Moreover, the evolving situations in Libya and Syria could threaten to expose another counterfeit – increasing reports suggest that the US-led NATO alliance is relying on al-Qaeda identities, possibly originally part of some Saudi mercenary group, to advance rebellion in states that fall into disfavour.

    It is the counterfeiting in news, education and history however, that ensures that all these other counterfeits go largely unremarked in serious political, administrative and public debate and comment. This has created a major anomaly in the present global environment where the world is being precipitated into a new order by the ineptness and incomprehension of American and other Western elites. These are trapped in narrow, short-term frameworks of information and thought. They have become defined by rigid ideologies that make them subservient to a chaotic collection of corporate interests. Corporate profit seekers have captured control of critical political, legal, academic and other processes in the major English speaking powers, and through them they cling with self-destructive desperation to the power to dominate and define much international interaction.

    The Internal Decay of Corporate Power

    The attempt to shore up corporate privileges, often related to access to energy in less developed nations, has led to seemingly endless entanglement and draining of resources in small unwinnable wars. In this process, the Pentagon has been given unlimited license to plunge the US budget ever deeper into deficit and its own activities ever further into dependence on foreign, and not necessarily friendly, financiers.

    Moreover, the readiness of American corporations to become ever more dependent on cheaper and more efficient foreign production ensures both the increasing depletion of their own productive capacity and the growing vulnerability of their financial institutions. It is extremely difficult to identify anyone who has strategic responsibility for what seem to be a confusion of disjointed policies that plunge America ever further into a morass of crises.

    Policies are overseen by those who win a few minutes in the political spotlight. Yet they are forever distracted and preoccupied by trying to win favour and approval by servicing the corporate lobbies that fund and endorse their campaigns. They have no time left to even reflect on echoes of more productive strategies from a dimly recalled past.

    As the “counterfeit culture” suggests, the lack of coherent strategic thought has wreaked havoc within the United States. Although a multi-cultural community, America’s academia, media, corporate and political cultures display no capacity to generate meaningful policy discussion that allows for other than very narrow and stereotyped cultural assumptions. This cripples the capacity to comprehend the increasingly complex dynamics of the global community.

    Corporate America has brainwashed a priesthood of trained economists to rehearse endless counterproductive economic theory. This has been successful in deceiving domestic populations but has been disastrous by leaving the nation totally vulnerable and defenceless before other cultures that have mastered American corporate dogma and identified and exploited its weaknesses.

    The fragmented, short term and narrow corporate domination of the political process gives the highest priority to a cacophony of disputing corporate interests over any coherent recognition of community priorities and strategies. It makes it easy for external interests to associate closely with and achieve their goals through domestic corporate lobbies. In the midst of this self-serving and self-destructive corporate confusion, is it any wonder that medical and military systems have strayed far from the businesses of health care and national defence.

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    An End of Empire Moment

    It is highly questionable that the events of 9/11 could have produced the outcome they did in any other than such a community as contemporary America. There is in the United States an almost total breakdown of culture, whether political, strategic, financial or military. In a sense the task for rivals is now simply a matter of feeding these weaknesses and being patient. Yet, the frenetic character of American society makes this seem unbelievable, only making it more inevitable and ever closer.

    The corporate adventurism that built the British Empire has become the corporate self-indulgence and corruption that devastates the contemporary American Empire. All the elite groups that exercise real power and influence in the United States – such as politicians, financiers, Pentagon strategists, corporate managers, pharmaceutical executives, food scientists and agricultural entrepreneurs – have assumed a type of unchallenged authority in their areas and a variety of alliances of convenience with the other groups. This ensures that little reform is imaginable, let alone possible. All politically correct information is designed to reinforce the interests of the very groups that have brought the country to its present plight. Deviation from such information signals the end of any personal professional aspirations. Even successful presidential candidates have no option but to negotiate a modus vivendi with such groups and, in the process, abandon any aspiration to dealing with the real challenges at the end of an empire. This shows some surprising similarities with those at the end of other empires, even including the Chinese Qing Dynasty.

    America’s end of empire moment is unique in an important respect. Even Britain was still controlled by a type of inherited aristocracy when it entered into decline. All previous empire collapses tended to be associated with aristocracies that had become ineffective. Apart from a few inter-generational banking families, America’s fate has been guided and dictated by privileged professional groups who have a monopoly on “expert knowledge.” They have become accustomed to a type of indolent privilege based on this “expert knowledge,” which, unfortunately for them, is no longer competitive, or even relevant, in a rapidly changing world. Consequently, they have become the guardians of little more than their own illusions, indulgent privilege and the nation’s decline. This is the source of dismay about the counterfeit culture, whether in medical, military of other areas.

    Disintegration of the Existing Global Order

    There is a growing body of observation, particularly but not exclusively in financial commentary, on the imminent collapse of a global system based on American pre-eminence. This takes on particular importance because it signals not just a decline in American power and authority but also the end of a period of what might be called loosely Anglo-American global order.

    Marc Faber, Mr. Doom and Gloom himself, who is well respected in the financial world, spells it out: “I think we are all doomed. I think what will happen is that we are in the midst of a kind of a crack-up boom that is not sustainable, that eventually the economy will deteriorate, that there will be more money-printing, and then you have inflation, and a poor economy, an extreme form of stagflation, and, eventually, in that situation, countries go to war, and, as a whole, derivatives, the market, and everything will collapse, and like a computer when it crashes, you will have to reboot it.”3

    Irish journalist Eamonn Fingleton recalled a pertinent observation by the late American historian Chalmers Johnson: “The United States today is like a cruise ship on the Niagara River upstream of the most spectacular falls in North America. A few people on board have begun to pick up a slight hiss in the background, to observe a faint haze of mist in the air on their glasses, to note that the river current seems to be running slightly faster. But no one yet seems to have realised that it is almost too late to head for shore.”4

    They foreshadow the end of an Anglo-American order that can be traced back more than four centuries to the founding of the British East India Company. This gave birth to a new form of dynamic human organisation, the corporation, largely independent of government oversight. This led to a freewheeling corporate form of foreign adventurism that built the foundations of the British Empire.

    Anglo-American power and authority, largely based on the discreet but ruthless use of corporate initiative, has established a global pre-eminence over the past two centuries. In the process it established forms and norms of modern life that have until recently assumed the character of certainties, largely beyond meaningful questioning or criticism.

    Mounting and varied American difficulties and uncertainties have, however, intensified serious doubts about the continued viability of this order. Indeed, many of the international organisations founded in 1945 after World War II, whether the United Nations itself, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the GATT and later the World Trade Organisation, or other less prominent organisations like the World Health Organisation and CODEX, seem to be approaching a use-by date.

    The reason for this is simple. These were all defined by the leading victorious powers in 1945 to serve discreetly their own, particularly corporate, interests. Accordingly they have many built in privileges for the United States, the United Kingdom and their close allies. These are rapidly becoming anachronisms, and unacceptable burdens on newly empowered emerging states that can insist on fundamental reform.

    It is unlikely, however, that such reform will prove acceptable to the United States and its developed allies and it seems inevitable the existing international institutional system will become dysfunctional and marginal to important international activity. Already, the establishment of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) offers an indication of likely future developments. The rise of other important states like Turkey, Indonesia and Iran will likely advance this process as none of these communities has any interest in preserving Anglo-American privileges.

    The situation might be redeemable were America and its close allies not widely understood to be bankrupt, propped up only by the continued tolerance of creditors. Were that withdrawn, the US dollar would cease to be the global reserve currency, the Pentagon budget would collapse, American troops could not be maintained offshore, the impoverishment of large numbers of Americans could raise questions of civil unrest and the poor productivity and competitiveness of the “counterfeit” American economy would be exposed and leave little prospect of recovery.

    It is not surprising there is an increased body of English language commentary that implies a situation where global order and activity as it is known can no longer continue. Little effort is made, however, to explore the likely character of a new order with new opportunities. Why is there not more strategic realism and flexibility in the English language world that seemed dominant and assured for so long?

    The events of 9/11 have provided a great distraction from the deteriorating situation outlined above. Many of the aspects of counterfeit culture mentioned by Mike Adams predate 9/11 by decades and have long been corroding and undermining the foundations of the Anglo-American global order.

    The hyping of the 9/11 atrocity and the lust for crude vengeance met little resistance in a counterfeit culture where not only media but also academia had long been accustomed to serving causes backed by powerful corporate, political or other interests.

    The 9/11 psyche is a symptom and a symbol of a counterfeit culture. Vast resources are squandered on the preservation and promotion of a simplistic, misguided, popular sense of righteousness as Anglo-American corporate power and privilege declines and disintegrates.

    [alert type=”general” dismiss=”no”]This article was published in New Dawn 129.[/alert]

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    Footnotes

    1. “The American Medical System Is The Leading Cause Of Death And Injury In The United States” by Gary Null PhD, Carolyn Dean MD ND, Martin Feldman MD, Debora Rasio MD, Dorothy Smith PhD, www.ourcivilisation.com/medicine/usamed.htm

    2. “The price of 9/11: Ten years after 9/11, al-Qaeda has been greatly weakened; but the price paid by the US was enormous, and unnecessary” by Joseph E Stiglitz, 5 Sep 2011, http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/09/20119572556433850.html

    3. http://marcfaberchannel.blogspot.com/2011/02/marc-faber-we-are-in-midst-of-crack-up.html

    4. Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic by Chalmers Johnson, Holt Paperbacks, www.americanempireproject.com/bookexcerpt.asp?ISBN=0805087281, cited in “Chalmers Johnson: The passing of a true scholar” by Eamonn Fingleton, www.fingleton.net/?p=712

    © New Dawn Magazine and the respective author.
    For our reproduction notice, click here.

  • The Hidden History of China’s Secret Societies

    The Hidden History of China’s Secret Societies

    From New Dawn Special Issue 11 (Mar 2010)

    Thanks to the latest Hollywood martial arts blockbuster along with a steady stream of Hong Kong action films, audiences around the world have been entertained by wild and colourful portrayals of Chinese secret societies.

    These extravagant fictional tales often obscure the plain truth that for at least two thousand years secret societies did play a vital part in the dynamics of China’s political, social and religious life. Right up to the birth of the People’s Republic in 1949, secret societies were a special characteristic of old China.

    “The officials draw their power from the law; the people, from the secret societies.” This Chinese saying sums up the centuries-old conflict between rulers and ruled, privileged and oppressed in imperial China. Secret societies were directly involved in all the peasant rebellions in Chinese history. As early as the second century, the armed uprising that eventually overthrew the Han dynasty was instigated by a Taoist sect called the Yellow Turbans, whose leader was renowned for his gift of spiritual healing and supernatural powers. The Yellow Turbans in their mixture of religion and political dissatisfaction may be regarded as the forerunners of the secret societies that sprang up all across China.

    By organising opposition to excessive taxation and the despotism of corrupt bureaucrats, secret societies gained widespread support. In the words of Chinese historian Teng Ssu-Yu, they were the “nerve centres” of opposition to the imperial government, “which profit from favourable circumstances to start insurrections and rebellions.” The secret society formed a hidden parallel empire, a state within a state, and this was a major source of its strength. Nocturnal initiation ceremonies, arcane teachings, secret signs, symbols and passwords, all helped bind a member’s loyalty to the fraternity. As China expert Jean Chesneaux explains:

    The secret societies claimed a rival order to that of emperor and mandarins. Vis-à-vis established society they constituted an ‘anti-society’ in the sense in which modern physicists talk of an anti-matter or an anti-universe… Their rites, secrets, oaths of initiation, conventional ideograms – features of which the Triad has provided very typical examples but which are found also in all similar associations – made a powerful contribution towards the consolidation of this autonomous order. The discipline was extremely strict, and any violation, betrayal, or collusion with the authorities was punished by death.1

    One of the most influential of China’s secret societies went by the name White Lotus. It often had to change its name in order to conceal its identity, and was associated with other groups, principally the Society of Heaven and Earth (also called the Hung society or Triad). The White Lotus functioned primarily as a spiritual body, but in times of political dissatisfaction and social upheaval it quickly took on the outer characteristics of a radical political movement. As a Chinese imperial decree written in 1813 points out:

    In normal times the society was engaged in daily worship… and preached that by reciting scriptures and verses, one can escape the dangers of swords and arms, water and fire…. But in times of famine and disorder they might plot for the Greater Enterprises (the founding of a new dynasty).

    The White Lotus society led one of the largest rebellions in the second quarter of the fourteenth century against the foreign rule of the Mongols. Known as the Red Turban Rebels (due to their distinctive red headbands) White Lotus members were behind the formation of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) headed by former Buddhist monk Chu Yuan-chang, who assumed full imperial powers under the title Hung Wu. According to Professor Chesneaux:

    Chu Yuan-chang [Hung Wu], the leader of a peasant rebellion against the Mongol Yuan dynasty in the fourteenth century, belonged to the White Lotus sect, of Manichaean origin, and the name of the new dynasty which he founded, the Ming (which means ‘light’ in Chinese), originated in the esoteric vocabulary of the Manichaeans.2

    That the Ming emperor Hung Wu was both a former Buddhist monk and a Manichaean initiate is significant because the White Lotus teachings blended Buddhism and native Taoism with Gnostic elements which had entered China from Central Asia with Manichaean missionaries. Later secret societies venerated Hung Wu above all other historical figures and pledged their allegiance to the Ming dynasty that he established hundreds of years after its collapse. In 1644 the foreign Manchus, who had menaced the Chinese Empire for centuries, claimed the Dragon Throne and established the Ch’ing dynasty. The secret society networks were united in a common purpose: “Overthrow the Ch’ing and restore the Ming.”

    By the nineteenth century the cruel and despotic misrule of the Manchus had resulted in nearly a century of political and religious turmoil, leaving China in chaos and unable to effectively confront Western incursions. In the history of all the popular rebellions the name of the White Lotus appears and disappears. They have been linked with the famous Shaolin Temple of Chan Buddhism, reputedly where Chinese martial arts originated, and the Shaolin monks who took a blood oath to resist the Ch’ing dynasty. After the failure of the two great insurrections of the late eighteenth century, the White Lotus was the victim of violent persecution. In 1813 White Lotus members called the Eight Diagrams (named after geometrical figures used in Taoist divination) nearly took over the Forbidden City in Beijing.

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    The Society of Heaven and Earth or Triads absorbed much from the White Lotus tradition, and is sometimes regarded as its successor. Persecuted and hunted down by government forces, White Lotus initiates either organised new societies under new names or assimilated with the Triads. All these secret fraternities while clearly united in one political aim summed up in the slogan, “Overthrow the Ch’ing and restore the Ming,” also had their core mystical elements and ceremonial rites. They believed in, and taught, occult techniques to their members, among them the use of ‘magic amulets’ and numerology. J.S.M. Ward, an early twentieth century British expert on secret societies and bishop of an esoteric Christian community, concluded that, “the Hung or Triad Society seems justly entitled to claim that it is a lineal descendant of the Ancient Mysteries. Its signs are of primeval antiquity…” Bishop Ward published an exhaustive study of Triad practices, documenting the striking similarities to those of many other secret organisations.

    At this point it is worth commenting on a strange connection between the secret societies of the Far East and Western esotericism. In the 1880s a young French aristocrat deserted the Foreign Legion in Indochina to join a network of secret societies, the T’ien-ti hui and the Bac Lieu. These Triads were of Chinese origin and viewed as Taoist societies. Count Albert de Pouvourville (1861–1940) thus described his membership in the Triads as a “Taoist initiation.” On his return to Paris, de Pouvourville became a successful writer and journalist, publishing under his Taoist initiate’s name Matgioi. In his writings he condemned French colonial policy in Southeast Asia and explored Chinese and Vietnamese history. He also undertook important translations of Taoist texts. At the same time Albert de Pouvourville, the Taoist secret society initiate, joined the Gnostic Church in Paris and was consecrated a bishop with the spiritual name of Tau Simon. Around 1904 he launched the journal La Voie, and published Les Enseignements secrets de la Gnose (The Secret Teachings of Gnosis). Stanislas Guaita, another French writer and occultist, was strongly influenced by de Pouvourville, as was Rene Guenon who acknowledged him as “one of my Masters” in 1918. Through Count de Pouvourville, Guenon received a Taoist initiation and was led to write his own studies of the metaphysics of the Taoist tradition.

    By the start of the twentieth century China’s secret society networks had grown into a considerable force. They had long experience of resistance to the imperial bureaucrats and could rely on the support of the peasants and the poor. Writing in 1908, a young Chinese radical living in exile in Paris noted how throughout the Chinese Empire there existed, “secret revolutionary associations whose importance in the history of China has been great and whose activity in the contemporary [revolutionary] movement is considerable.”

    The hated Ch’ing dynasty continued on until 1911 when it was overthrown by Dr. Sun Yat Sen’s Republican Party, with the considerable aid of the Triads. A Triad member of long standing, Sun Yat Sen had made use of the secret society networks to recruit supporters, raise funds, and disseminate propaganda on behalf of the Republican cause. The 1911 Revolution fulfilled one of the Triad’s traditional aims – “Overthrow Ch’ing.” On a visit to the tombs of the Ming emperors, China’s first president declared that the Ch’ing had finally been dethroned.

    Mao Zedong is known to have been a keen student of Chinese history particularly China’s numerous peasant uprisings. Mao studied the structure and role of secret societies in these tumultuous events, and used this knowledge in building the Chinese Communist Party and waging a successful guerrilla war against both the Japanese invaders and the right-wing forces of Chiang Kai-shek. In these struggles Chairman Mao appealed directly to the ‘revolutionary spirit’ of the secret societies, urging them to join the ant-Japanese resistance and work for the liberation of China.

    [alert type=”general” dismiss=”no”]This article was published in New Dawn Special Issue 11.[/alert]

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    Footnotes

    1. Jean Chesneaux, Secret Societies in China in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

    2. Jean Chesneaux, Peasant Revolts in China, 1840-1949

    © New Dawn Magazine and the respective author.
    For our reproduction notice, click here.

  • 2012, the Apocalypse & the End of the Age

    2012, the Apocalypse & the End of the Age

    Cultures that view themselves as waning are usually those most likely to tap into doomsday scenarios, especially when the world’s end is followed by universal renewal.

    – Prof. Anthony Aveni, American anthropologist & astronomer

    An Apocalypse (Greek: ἀποκάλυψις apokálypsis; “lifting of the veil” or “revelation”) is a disclosure of something hidden from the majority of mankind in an era dominated by falsehood and misconception, i.e. the veil to be lifted…. By extension, apocalypse can refer to any End Time scenario, or to the end of the world in general.

    – Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org)

    In 1997, a former reporter with the Wall Street Journal, Michael Dronin, wrote The Bible Code, based on the notion that hidden messages are embedded in the Bible. Not surprisingly, considering the uncertainty of the times, The Bible Code quickly became a best seller. Using a numerological system said to be derived from Jewish mysticism and facilitated by computer technology, Drosnin searched for signs of the ‘End Times’ and discovered the years 2006 and 2012 are of special importance. According to Dronin’s Bible Code system in 2012 the Earth will be hit by a devastating comet.

    In Dan Brown’s mega best-selling fictional tale, The Da Vinci Code, his lead character Robert Langdon, in answer to a question about ‘the end of the world’, explains:

    “Many religions speak of the End of Days. It refers not to the end of the world, but rather the end of our current age – Pisces, which began at the time of Christ’s birth, spanned two thousand years, and waned with the passing of the millennium. Now that we’ve passed into the Age of Aquarius, the End of Days has arrived.”

    For Dan Brown and many others we’re not talking about an ‘end of the world’ with all its connotations of the destruction of humanity or the planet, but the transition from one age to another. Bible scholars support this view pointing out that often when the Gospel writers mention the ‘world’, the original Greek word used is ‘aion’, meaning age, or system of things. The biblical ‘end of the world’ refers not to the destruction of all life on the planet but to the conclusion of an allotted period of time, or a system of things. The end of the zodiacal Age of Pisces and the transition to the new Age of Aquarius is marked by a change in consciousness.

    The Swiss psychologist C.G. Jung took an interest in the zodiacal ages and concluded we now live in an ‘End Time’ period, the transition from Pisces to Aquarius. Not long before his death in 1961, Jung experienced a series of visions of a future great catastrophe. His long-time associate, Marie-Louise von Franz, claimed Jung saw a worldwide conflagration occurring around the year 2010. Students of Mayan prophecy will be sure to note the close proximity of 2010 to the end date of the Mayan calendar.

    Michael Dronin, Dan Brown, and Carl G. Jung – three very different writers – but their speculations about the ‘End Times’ have gained considerable attention in the Western world.

    Less than a century ago, in the aftermath of the carnage and upheaval of the First World War, many of Europe’s most astute thinkers and writers concluded the Western world was in its death throes. They took the rationalism and materialism engulfing Europe in the first decades of the twentieth century as inevitable symptoms of the slow ‘decline of the West’. Many shared Oswald Spengler’s conviction, persuasively set forth in his 1918 book The Decline of the West, that Western civilisation was in an unstoppable process of spiritual and cultural disintegration.

    The great French writer and Noble Prize winner Romain Rolland was amongst those who believed Europe was dying and that the only hope for the world lay in Asia. The celebrated French novelist and adventurer André Malraux also looked to Asia for inspiration. After his first journey to South East Asia in 1923 he openly attacked the sterility of materialistic Western culture, and in the following years he devoted himself to the radical nationalist uprising against Western imperialism that was developing in Indo-China.

    A half a century earlier in 1888, the redoubtable Madame H.P. Blavatsky penned a controversial expose of the Catholic Jesuit order for an issue of her Theosophical journal Lucifer. After documenting the conspiratorial activities of the Jesuits, Madame Blavatsky left her reader in little doubt about the coming show down between the East and the West:

    “There is a prophecy in the heathen East about the Christian West, which, when rendered into comprehensible English, reads thus: ‘When the conquerors of all the ancient nations are in their turn conquered by an army of black dragons begotten by their sins and born of decay, then the hour of liberation for the former will strike’. Easy to see who are the ‘black dragons’. And these will in their turn see their power arrested and forcibly put to an end by the liberated legions. Then, perhaps, there will be a new invasion of an Atilla from the far East. One day the millions of China and Mongolia, heathen and Mussulman, furnished with every murderous weapon invented by civilisation, and forced upon the Celestial of the East, by the infernal spirit of trade and love of lucre of the West, drilled, moreover, to perfection by Christian man-slayers – will pour into and invade decaying Europe like an irrepressible torrent. This will be the result of the work of the Jesuits, who will be its first victims, let us hope.”

    One hundred years after Blavatsky penned these apocalyptic words, ‘decaying Europe’ which for centuries – thanks to ‘the infernal spirit of trade and love of lucre’ – had plundered the lands of Asia, Africa, and the Americas, found itself challenged by fast rising new global powers. The creation of the European Union and the absorption of the former socialist East European states were not enough to stop spiritual and cultural paralysis overtaking lands once identified as the ‘Christian West’.

    For much of the twentieth century the United States led the Western world. With the end of the British Empire after World War Two, American economic, social and cultural values steadily became almost synonymous with the ‘West’. Today in 2012 the United States desperately strives to maintain its ‘New World Order’ of global dominance. At home the United States is in major social and economic trouble. In a country where the wealthiest 5% control 60% of the nation’s wealth, many find themselves in agreement with the late American novelist Kurt Vonnegut who remarked just before his death, “Working people have no leverage whatsoever. I’m trying to write a novel about the end of the world. But the world is really ending!”

    The decline and fall of Europe and the USA may look like the end of the world. “This is going to be just like the Book of Revelation said it was going to be – the end of the world as we knew it,” the late Hunter S. Thompson wrote back in 2003.

    The Apocalypse and the ‘End Time’ loom menacingly on the horizon. But is it really the ‘end of the world’ or are we witnessing the end of a civilisation that long ago reached its high point and now is in rapid decline? The Piscean Age which dominated the world for roughly the last two thousand years, represented by the Christian West, is quickly fading as we experience the first influences of the coming Aquarian Age. These are tumultuous and challenging times, pregnant with great possibilities, both constructive and destructive. Though an atheist, André Malraux predicted that “the third millennium will be spiritual or there will be no third millennium.” In the end this remains the only guarantee of a future worth living.

    [alert type=”general” dismiss=”no”]This article was published in 2012 New Dawn Collector’s Edition.[/alert]

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  • Imperial End Times, Progress & the Water Dragon

    Imperial End Times, Progress & the Water Dragon

    English speaking people who have benefited from the past 200 years of Anglo-American global order have reason to view progress through 2012 with some sense of trepidation.

    Almost everywhere, comfortable certainties are under challenge, whether from the widespread sense of economic decline and overwhelming debt or from the sense of tectonic shifts in geopolitical power blocs. Clumsy responses to these challenges are beginning to raise serious questions about the viability of some leading democratic powers. This is particularly so as their ever more desperate initiatives engage them in lands where unfamiliar cultures and local resentment offer little more than quicksands to devour military and other already depleted resources.

    At the end of 2011 various commentators foreshadowed this from very diverse perspectives.

    The prolific Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University New York, James Petras, titled an article that appeared on the Global Research website on 25 December 2011 Unrelenting Global Economic Crisis: A Doomsday View of 2012 and concluded it with the following words:

    “All indications point to 2012 being a turning point year of unrelenting economic crisis spreading outward from Europe and the US to Asia and its dependencies in Africa and Latin America. The crisis will be truly global. Inter-imperial confrontations and colonial wars will undermine any efforts to ameliorate this crisis.”

    The peripatetic Brazilian born journalist, Pepe Escobar, in a German interview by Lars Schall carried by Consortium News on 29 December 2011, gave a much more geopolitical slant. He commented on the evolving global scene with passages that highlighted the possible further substantial growth of the BRICS grouping, the Russian and Chinese dominance of Central Asia, the pervasive influence of the Chinese diaspora throughout South East Asia, the fact that US policy shapers know absolutely nothing about other cultures and don’t even travel and the way that US action and Chinese inaction is inevitably drawing Pakistan closer to China.

    The geopolitical environment was presented even more starkly by the Canadian based Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya in an article on the Global Research website on 1 January 2012:

    “Neither Russia nor China will be able to stand idly in the case that a war is launched against Iran. In one way or another, if Russia enters a war against the US and NATO then countries like Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Moldova would all be dragged into the conflict as it broadens. The Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) and Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) would be collectively involved.”

    The Nobel prize winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz, in the Australian Financial Review of 2 January 2012, offered a profoundly gloomy assessment of leadership in the US, without even referring to the above geopolitical challenges:

    “Americans will have to choose between a leader who has proven that he can’t lead the US out of its economic morass and one who has not yet proven his inability to do so – but who could make matters even worse through policies that increase inequality and slow growth.”

    In other words, it will be difficult to emerge from 2012, the Chinese Year of the Water Dragon, without an escalation of recent trends that have witnessed a steady decline in Western economic strength and a discreet but relentless growth in Asian wealth. This has been accompanied by the restructuring of political and economic order beyond the effective reach of Western power. On occasions, these trends can prompt acts like the “humanitarian intervention” in Libya and activities in Syria and Iran that may provide brief pyrrhic victories that only serve to strip away the last remaining threads of Western (NATO) credibility and authority.

    While Escobar hinted that China often has to do little more than allow American misjudgements and misadventures to run their course to advance its interests, Nazemroaya suggested that the SCO, including China, may be approaching the moment where it is pressed to openly oppose American initiatives.

    The weight of evidence suggests that China has been intent on a peaceful rise, committed to preserving the post-1945 Anglo-American United Nations based global order. The desperation that increasingly seems to infuse US leaders confronted with problems on many fronts has the capacity, however, to lead to a hastened decline in the authority of American led institutional structures, adding further to a sense of disintegration throughout the West.

    As someone who has followed closely the rise of Asia and the decline of the US for almost half a century, since arriving in Tokyo as a diplomatic language student in 1964, it has been a matter of profound puzzlement that US policy has increasingly shown itself to be totally inept in responding to the creative energies of diverse Asian peoples. These have all at various times sought to align themselves closely, and as tacit subordinates, with the world’s “indispensable power.”

    Today, the ASEAN plus Three grouping comprises over 2 billion people who lead the world in financial reserves, manufacturing production, applied technology, educational excellence and much else, and who are all led by administrative and commercial elites shaped by the Confucian tradition that derives from China. Over more than a decade since the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, they have been exploring prospects for a new currency order and the recent China-Japan currency arrangement confronts America with a number of challenges with which it is ill equipped to cope. These include the further weakening of the US dollar as the global reserve currency, the growing consolidation of understanding across ideological boundaries between the Confucian communities of Asia, heightened questions about the longer-term allegiance of assumed US allies like Japan and Korea and the increasingly irresistible attraction of China’s economic dynamic, particularly when compared with American decline and financial distress.

    East and South East Asia showcase perhaps the fundamental weakness of the US, which is an inability to think beyond popular stereotypes and work strategically with peoples of unfamiliar cultural character. American policy has proven vulnerable to over-reliance on using its financial leverage to buy alliances and wield military muscle, while neglecting serious diplomacy that seeks to build bonds informed by an understanding of educational, economic and political values and practices.

    While America’s takeover of the British heritage of empire was skilfully managed by Franklin D. Roosevelt prior to and after 1945, it might be suggested that it has failed to use the British legacy to innovate successfully its own imperial tools. Perhaps the two central aspects of British success might be seen as fundamental to US failure. The invention of the modern corporation was used brilliantly by British leaders to motivate and mobilise young men to adventure out and discover and exploit wealth far from British shores. Moreover, the British were first movers in identifying and exploiting the power of fossil fuels – coal and oil – in seeking to extend power across the world’s seas.

    Unfortunately, American corporations might be described as having gone feral, shipping American manufacturing and technology to countries that now do it better than the US and all too often harming human well-being and environments by focusing on short-term profit rather than on adding quality to human lives. Added to this, the concern to maintain a near-monopoly hold over fossil fuels seems to have been a major motive in initiating several recent disastrous wars. Moreover, there is growing evidence that the US has failed to master all the financial tricks that Britain developed as a centre of empire and may have fallen victim to practices of rehypothecation encouraged by the City of London.

    In contrast, the peoples of East Asia, led initially by Japan but now by China, informed by the world’s longest continuous written tradition, and matured by the most colourful and enduring experience of imperial strength and weakness, have responded with tact, caution, imagination and strategy to the opportunities offered by poorly educated American political and business leaders. Indeed, education is probably the critical factor in the success of Asian communities, shaped as it is largely by a Confucian tradition that placed it above almost any other human endeavour. Educational deficiencies also seem to be a critical factor in US failures, as it repeatedly ignores clear warnings about its declining capacities.

    Confucian education has qualities the West has never properly recognised and that place ignorant people from advanced economies at a serious disadvantage. These include early rigorous rote learning that builds a lifetime skill for mastering new subjects quickly, a knowledge of key classics and historical experience that is rare in today‘s West, a highly disciplined and social approach to life from an early age, a broad foundation in lifetime knowledge and skills and a lively and active intelligence behind the most discreet and obedient of manners. In many ways, it is the antithesis to the profit driven corporate spirit that initially built and then sought, with less success, to maintain an empire.

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    The excellence of Asian and Chinese education is increasingly taking on a new relevance. Many, of course, still dismiss rote learning as being a poor preparation for life where innovation and adjusting to continuing change plays a critical role, but this is simply pandering to comforting and deceiving delusions and prejudices. Those educated by rote practices may be allowed a little longer by their societies to mature and apply the benefits of their learning but their success is demonstrated by the manner in which first Japan and later China have taken monopoly leadership positions in many of the hi-tech materials and components that are now fundamental in technological innovation. Moreover, competition for the world’s fastest computer seems now to be a two horse race between China and Japan. Asian graduates regularly make up large numbers in advanced courses in science, technology and engineering at Western universities where they tend to excel. And China is now said to graduate more students from domestic universities each year than America and India combined. As a consequence, it is difficult to see America even today retaining any technological military advantage, except in the minds of poorly educated political aspirants.

    The situation is made no better by a little examination of American corporate culture. With the growing employment of mercenaries to undertake US military initiatives this has become even more critical in the projection of US power. Unfortunately, whether it is synthetic pharmaceuticals that not infrequently kill people quickly, processed food that poisons more slowly, chemical agriculture that depletes nutrition or financial services that can bankrupt a nation, the focus of US corporations on short-terms profit results has failed to guarantee quality in their products. It is difficult to believe that US military-industrial corporate culture is fundamentally different in basic quality.

    The recent Iranian hacking and capture of a US drone with the latest technology can only reinforce such conjecture. Moreover, an article on 9 January 2012 titled The Heritage Foundation: Then and Now released by Counterpunch reveals fundamental and shocking inadequacies in the latest US fighters, F22 and F35, and is explicit about a web of institutional corruption that feeds defense mega-corporations:

    “Here is a paradigm of the moral decay so visible among contemporary Washington defense ‘intellectuals’. These dabblers in defense pretend to serve seriously the real needs of our national defense and our people in uniform – when, in fact, they are serving the needs of foundations, universities, non-profits or politicians funded by defense mega-corporations seeking to expand their sources of government largesse.”

    The unique and curious dilemmas posed by America’s decline and China’s peaceful rise for Australia, a country with Western history and culture but overtaken by Asian geo-political and geo-commercial realities, were captured acutely by another 2 January 2012 article, this by Andrew Clark, in the Australian Financial Review:

    “So China – Australia’s biggest trading partner, the biggest foreign investor in Australia, the nation that generated the resources boom, transformed Australia’s terms of trade and has accumulated more spare cash than any other country – is about to take another great leap forward. This means a pervasive Chinese presence spreading from mining to farming, services, education, manufacturing, high tech industries, medicine and tourism and presenting a dilemma for Australian foreign policy traditionally wedded to retaining a strong US presence in the western Pacific.”

    By highlighting apparent Australian dilemmas, without seriously addressing the sources of the West’s economic and political malaise or the East’s unique cultural and educational strengths, the article can be seen to illustrate the lack of informed forward strategising in even a front-line Western community like Australia. As elsewhere, a narcissistic assumption of Western, and American, superiority has caused a prosperous, but critically situated, nation to neglect even basic preparations for a world that would be profoundly reshaped by another decade of 10 percent per annum Chinese growth.

    Of course, recently there have been a number of commentators warning of a bust in Chinese real estate and the decline of Chinese manufacturing markets in Europe and America. These, however, often have the character of wishful thinking or some form of political posturing and correctness. Invariably, they ignore China’s internal development strategies, growth of domestic markets and external strategic positioning in alternative global markets. In other words, there has been little or no reflection in the West on how best to accommodate China’s “peaceful rise.” In contrast, the “peaceful rise” itself has been achieved through careful and far-sighted strategising and sensitive diplomatic manoeuvring.

    The harsh reality from a Western perspective is that numerous dangers and uncertainties loom large as the Mayan calendar foreshadows an approaching critical moment in December 2012. Yet these are likely to be viewed somewhat differently from an Asian perspective, where the Year of the Water Dragon accompanies a pervasive if discreet understanding of Chinese political and strategic tradition. It would seem that China has now advanced to a strategic position of economic and technological power and influence where anything other than informed and disciplined understanding and acceptance will prove highly damaging to would be rival powers. In other words, the biggest threat to a world already confronting a growing number of problems may derive from ignorant attempts to defend positions of privilege that have already been surrendered through neglect and complacency.

    It is from this position that it will become increasingly important to address China’s peaceful rise from a perspective informed by an understanding of Chinese culture and history and accept with some resolution that those who achieve the best deals are likely to negotiate them by anticipating Chinese needs, goals and intentions. In this respect Russia’s Vladimir Putin seems to be well ahead of his Western rivals as he continues to show a keen interest in Chinese martial culture and traditions during frequent visits to his dynamic neighbour.

    While it remains to be seen how Hu Jintao’s successor, Xi Jinping, defines his responsibilities, he dropped some hints in a 1 September 2011 address to the Communist Party school when he strongly recommended the careful study of Chinese history, particularly since the mid-19th century Opium Wars. Western behaviour in China in the second half of the 19th century is not something that puts it in the best light. The time may be approaching for some serious and objective work on strategies of how to negotiate with a revitalised Confucian civilisation and how to move on from the false and misleading stereotypes of Communist authoritarianism that remain popular in Western discourse.

    Yet some Western comment suggests that many recent developments have been driven by a determination to strengthen the influence of the inter-generational financial families that control the West’s central banks and move towards a new and dominant global order. If this is true, such interests are approaching a decisive moment where they are far from well positioned to achieve their goals. Rather they seem to have created a global situation where they are in inevitable retreat and where a reluctant China will find itself in a dominant economic, technological and political position, desperately seeking to define strategies that do not impose on it the burdens of a monolithic global order.

    Nevertheless, it is hard to see any other power that is positioned to play a comparable role in the post Anglo-American world. Given its likely role in shaping the ASEAN plus Three and SCO communities, with which it has geo-political and historical intimacies and its likely capacity to influence events in most parts of the world through the growing reach and importance of the BRICS community, both America and Europe may find themselves struggling to establish their relevance and importance if present trends continue. Their disposition to understand the character of changes taking place around them in terms of their recent, but declining, global dominance and to disparage unfamiliar cultural norms and standards leaves them particularly vulnerable to the unintended consequences of their own actions.

    In this context, it is possible to see a situation evolving where the US, the UK and their close allies are the least aware and clear-sighted about the increasingly likely consequences of present trends and policies. Corporate and financial power, which fragmented private interests exercise within democratic communities, has so taken over media and academia that only the most determined and experienced alternative thinkers are likely to be able to formulate a sense of the rising influence of groups like ASEAN plus Three, SCO and BRICS and the inept and self-destructive actions of the global communities erstwhile leaders.

    The processes touched on above are now so far advanced that attempts to address and reverse them are only likely to harm the personal and professional fortunes of those so bold to attempt such work. The corporate energies and fossil fuels that built and maintained imperial structures have not been able to nurture a more subtle and mature sense of civilisation and means of exercising power. The Chinese experience of imperial decline at various times over three millennia will suggest to them that these situations are rarely if ever reversed. The absence of a comparable interest in and knowledge of history in the contemporary West only further reinforces, through neglect, the dynamics leading to Western decline.

    The concluding words of an article, appearing in Global Research on 7 January 2012, by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, a senior Treasury official in the Reagan administration, reminds that US policies offer little hope of reversing its present decline:

    “I cannot predict how long policymakers can hold economic armageddon at bay with spin, money creation, currency swaps, intervention in gold and silver markets, and outright lies. The onset could be sudden and take place this year, but we shouldn’t underestimate the power of spin over a gullible public that trusts ‘their’ government and fervently believes that Muslim terrorists are out to get them and that the demise of the Constitution, the product of an eight hundred year struggle that produced Anglo-American civil liberty, is worth the price of ‘safety’.

    “There is no safety in a police state and a debauched currency. The comfortable world that Americans have known is falling apart at the seams.”

    Of course, US attempts to maintain its standing in the world through increasing and disruptive involvement in the domestic politics of those who are not “with us” and the incessant rhetoric and posing about Muslim terrorists has made the movement towards “a police state” an almost inescapable defence measure, necessary to avoid the deployment of US tactics against “the home of the free.” The simultaneous peaceful rise of China is in some respects the restoration of a global order where China led the world with forms of production and political authority until the Western intrusion into China’s domestic affairs with the Opium Wars in the mid 19th century.

    A peculiar question emerges from the probable end of a period of Anglo-American Empire – does it also signify the end of the mythologies of universal values that derive from the European Enlightenment, such as democracy, rule of law, human rights and, most intriguing of all, progress? After all, the innovative culture of the modern world has depended on a close alliance between capital and science and it might in future be said that this must be seen to have failed in terms both of human politics and natural order. While the profoundly cyclical and holistic consciousness of Chinese civilisation is unlikely to surrender its recent technological conquests, it remains to be seen whether it will continue to be enamoured with the Western illusion that humanity can continuously reconstruct nature for the better.

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  • Embraced by the Light: Journeys to the ‘Other Side’

    Embraced by the Light: Journeys to the ‘Other Side’

    Ancient religions including the shamanic traditions are replete with myths regarding the dying and death process. It was believed within these traditions that when a person died their soul was escorted into the afterlife by a special being called a psychopomp. In Greek psycho means soul and pomp means guide, so a psychopomp is a guide of the soul. In our modern world, the psychopomp tradition has changed to not only helping the dying, but also helping people develop their own specific spiritual path while living.

    In 1983, I began a two-year internship at the Cincinnati Health Department’s Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD) Clinic. At the time, I had no idea what was in store for me regarding my own talents in creating guided imageries, which eventually led me to become an ordained Gnostic Catholic Priest as well as a modern day psychopomp.

    Within a few months into my internship, one of the counsellors informed me that the clinic had received the first AIDS case in Cincinnati. He asked if I was interested in working with him on the case, and I jumped at the opportunity. Throughout the internship and months following, we worked together on that case as well as other AIDS cases. I became a specialist in HIV and AIDS as well as other sexually transmitted diseases.

    Creating Journey Into The Light Imagery

    Working with HIV and AIDS afforded me the opportunity to begin working with the terminally ill. At the time, AIDS was a death sentence and it wasn’t long before I began counselling the dying. It soon became evident that several of my clients with AIDS had intense fears and anxieties around dying and death, so I decided to create imagery to help relieve their fears.

    I plunged myself into various types of meditation, Kabbalistic pathworking, imagery techniques, hypnosis, as well as rituals from a variety of religious traditions. I searched the esoteric, spiritual and scientific literature, and attended workshops and seminars on dying and death. But what brought all the information together was the local near-death experience group. It was here I heard personal stories that enabled me to craft the imagery that would help my clients reduce their fears and anxieties regarding dying and death.

    The imagery utilised various components of the near-death experience as well as the Tibetan Buddhist bardo journey. I also felt music along with mindfulness meditation would help my clients settle into a relaxed posture. I experimented with various types of music and found the perfect compositions by Marcey Hamm called Inward Harmony. The reason I chose this composition was the way it sounded, coupled with a profound testimonial. After one of Marcey’s concerts a man came up to her and told her several years ago he had a heart attack that was accompanied by a near-death experience. When he went through the tunnel into the light, the music he heard in the experience was the same as Inward Harmony.

    Once finalised, I began using the imagery. I had my clients relax in a recliner and helped them move into a mindfulness meditation, while Inward Harmony played in the background. Once relaxed, I told my clients they have two bodies, a physical body and a soul body. I incorporated the Eastern religious belief that at death the soul moves out of the body through the crown or seventh chakra at the top of the head. Once their souls were out of their bodies, two beings of light were waiting for them. The beings of light escorted their soul bodies through a tunnel of darkness toward a dot of light that expanded, as their souls got closer. Once in the light, I left their soul bodies there for thirty minutes, and then had the beings of light escort the soul bodies back. Once back, I brought their soul bodies into their physical bodies, and then counted them out of the experience.

    Although the imagery was designed to alleviate fears of dying and death, which it did, there was also an unexpected effect. At the time I assumed the imagery was just a made up drama occurring in the mind, similar to other imageries I used professionally. But all the clients I used this imagery with had profound mystical experiences when their soul bodies were out of their physical bodies and in the light.

    Experiences With The Imagery

    The first client I used the imagery with was Mark, and he was in extreme physical pain and going blind, complications from AIDS. He had a fear of dying based on his Roman Catholic upbringing around sin. When I first took Mark’s soul body out of his physical body with the imagery, his physical body became very calm and peaceful as I gently guided him into the light. When I brought him back into his physical body and into ordinary reality, I asked what had happened? He told me he met his sister. Your sister who lives in a nearby town, I queried? “No my sister who died before I was born,” he answered. I was startled and stunned by his answer.

    In a later journey, Mark told me he met his grandmother who raised him and had died several years before I started seeing him professionally. At the time I couldn’t figure out what was happening inside Mark’s mind. Mark was slowly going blind but with these inward journeys into the light he was becoming calmer and more peaceful and could see the inner experiences clearly. Mark’s experiences were so profound he asked if I would promise him that when his life partner James was ready to die, who also had AIDS, I would take him through the imagery as well. I promised him I would.

    Within a few weeks Mark was completely blind. The imagery worked so well that he wanted to know of any method I knew that would allow him to see the physical world with a different set of eyes. The only method I could come up with was the out-of-body experience method pioneered by Robert Monroe at The Monroe Institute. The Monroe method I practiced myself, and it works. So over the next few weeks, I taught Mark the method and he began practicing it with success. He finally related that he could see the physical world, but it was different.

    Shortly after teaching Mark the Monroe method, he was admitted to the hospital for the last time. As Mark lay dying on the hospital bed, his father told me Mark came out of a deep sleep and said he saw me and his mother in the room. His father asked the physician about Mark seeing them and was told it was just the morphine. Maybe yes, maybe no.

    I became more baffled with the information Mark shared with me. I could not understand what was happening in the imagery process. I had believed the imagery experience was only occurring in the mind. I could not explain his unusual stories. I definitely did not think I was actually escorting Mark’s soul into the light.

    I continued using the imagery with people who were dying and they all had similar results until I met Phyllis. Phyllis was not dying, but in deep grief over the death of her father resulting from a severe long-term illness. I took Phyllis’s soul body on the inward journey into the light and left her there for thirty minutes. When I brought her back into her physical body, out of the experience, she began crying. I allowed her time to regain her composure and asked what happened in the experience. She reported meeting her father in the light and he had his dog with him. She revealed her mother hated dogs, and would not allow her father to have one. Her father kept in his wallet a picture of the breed of dog he loved, and when she met him in the light the dog in the picture was with him. This experience with her father in the light lifted the severe grief she had over his death and she now knew he was in a better place.

    Hearing these experiences only confused me further because I didn’t know what to make of them. What was I doing? Was I actually taking their souls or consciousness out of their bodies on a journey into the light? I was at a loss to explain what I was doing until I began working with Mark’s life partner James whose experience put it all together for me.

    James was Roman Catholic and, like his life-partner Mark, had a deep terrifying fear of death because of the extreme guilt of having AIDS. His dying process was painful and fraught with many bouts of denial. At times he could not bring himself to discuss death and had the delusion he would be cured. Working with James had a major impact on me, both psychologically and spiritually.

    As I watched James deteriorate, it became evident he was running out of time. The promised I had made to Mark kept running through my mind to help James with the imagery when the time came, and the time had come. It took several months to prepare James for the imagery experience with much resistance on his part. Even discussing the imagery produced extreme anxiety and fear because it signalled his death. However, during the imagery preparation, James was diagnosed with a resistant strain of bacteria that was infecting the frontal lobe of his brain, a complication from AIDS. Within a week after the diagnosis, he was in a semi-comatose condition and placed in a hospice.

    I began visiting the hospice weekly along with my life-partner Daryl, who also knew James. During those visits I was hoping James would become conscious enough so I could take him on the journey into the light. I explained to the hospice nursing staff about the imagery and how it worked and they were very supportive. On every visit, James’s nurse would give me the gloomy prognosis as he slid deeper into a semi-comatose condition.

    I would stand beside James’ bed and talk to him as if he was fully conscious with Daryl standing on the other side of the bed just observing. After leaving the hospice on several occasions, Daryl and I discussed James’ condition and his lack of response to any verbal communication. We decided, although James was semi-comatose, I should still take him through the imagery experience as promised. James would be the first semi-comatose client to experience the imagery and I didn’t know if it would work.

    The following week Daryl and I visited James with the intention of taking him through the imagery. James lay in bed shaking and screaming as I began playing the musical composition Inward Harmony. In James’ semi-comatose condition, I did not know if he could experience the music but I continued anyway. As before, Daryl stood on one side of the bed and I on the other.

    With music playing, I began talking to James, guiding him into a mindfulness meditation as his body continued to shake. Then I told James he has a soul body connected to his physical body. His soul body is disconnecting from his physical body and moving toward and through the top of his head. When I told James his soul body was out of his physical body, his physical body stopped shaking and he went silent. I looked at Daryl and he looked at me with a questioning expression. I shrugged and shook my head indicating I had no idea what was going on inside James. This experience was unexpected.

    I continued guiding James’ soul body through the ceiling and up through the next three floors of the hospice facility. On the roof there were two beings of light. One took James’ right hand and the other took his left hand and escorted him through the darkened tunnel into the light. In the light I told James he would meet his loved ones who had died, especially Mark, and I would leave him with them for thirty minutes and then guide him back.

    After thirty minutes, I had the beings of light escort James back to the hospice roof. I brought James’ soul body back down through the three floors. When I told James his soul body was re-entering his physical body, James screamed and his body started shaking again. I had performed the imagery many times and heard many experiences, but nothing compared to this. At that moment my worldview was shattered and knew I had experienced something profound. A new insight flooded my awareness; I suddenly became uncomfortable performing the imagery as a psychotherapist and knew I had a spiritual and religious calling. Moreover, I knew the clergy and not a psychotherapist should conduct the imagery because we are not trained to work with the mystical experiences unfolding before my eyes.

    A week later, still trying to understand the ramifications of the experience, I received a call from James’ mother informing me he had died. She requested I go to the hospice, gather his belongings and bring them to her. I agreed, went to the hospice and it so happened the nurse who was with James when he died was on duty. Gathering James’ belongings the nurse and I talked about his death. She informed me she had seen many people in semi-comatose conditions die, but James’ death was different. She said she watched him for a long time and noticed a subtle comfortableness slowly settling over him. He became so serene and then he was gone. She indicated it was a beautiful death and attributed it to the imagery.

    Forgiveness & Comfort by Way of the Light

    I had now used the imagery with the dying, and those in grief and in a semi-comatose condition, but had not used it with people in preparation for death long before they died. I started working with Jack who is one of the longest survivors of AIDS. His viral load was non-detectable and he was living an ordinary life given his condition. Jack contacted me for spiritual direction with an emphasis on preparing him for his eventual death. It took about a year to get Jack ready for the imagery experience.

    In preparing Jack, one of the issues he had to address was his parents, who were deceased. Jack came from a highly dysfunctional alcoholic family. He grew up feeling unloved and rejected by both his parents. He knew his father hated him and was physically abusive. His mother was critical and condescending; he felt totally rejected and unloved. Jack hated his father for physically abusing him and disliked his mother for constantly telling him how stupid he was. There was a lot of unfinished business between Jack and his parents.

    After working with Jack’s issues around his parents and those related to AIDS in conjunction with his psychiatrist, he felt ready to journey into the light. He felt going into the light would create a sacred path when his earthy journey finally ended. He had no expectations as to what would happen or what he would see. He just felt he would be closer to God.

    I took Jack on the journey into the light and after thirty minutes brought him back and out of the experience. He sat for several minutes with tears streaming down his face. As usual, I had Kleenex on hand and waited for him to gain composure. Between emotional outbursts, he informed me he met both his father and mother in the light. Until that moment, he had hated his father and disliked his mother intensely. In the light, Jack was able to forgive them both and they accepted his forgiveness and told Jack they regretted how they treated him and they both deeply loved him. As Jack sat crying, he told me they all hugged each other and all experienced total forgiveness. The experience changed Jack’s feelings toward his parents. Jack now knows when he takes his final journey his parents will be waiting to welcome him into the light.

    After working with Jack, I began wondering what healthy people would experience with the imagery. Within a few months, I was asked to present a lecture and a workshop at a local annual spiritual conference. I decided to present a lecture on near-death experience and reincarnation and a workshop on the imagery. The lecture was a packed house and the workshop had about seven participants. This was fine with me because the journey into the light with healthy people was purely experimental. I had no idea what the participants would experience, if anything.

    The workshop was a two-day affair. The first day I gave a lecture and taught the small group how the imagery was to be done, and ran through a practice session. It all ended with questions and answers. The group was very lively with two of the woman very talkative and humorous.

    The next morning I took the group through the imagery and after thirty minutes I brought them back. The two women who had been very talkative were in tears and would not discuss what they had experienced. One of the women did say she met her husband who had died the previous year. The other woman made no comment, she just sat with a glazed look. Two participants, a man and a woman, decided to share their experience with the group.

    The man said his wife was very beautiful in life. She died three years previously of Alzheimer’s. They had a wonderful life together and he stressed they made love all through their marriage until the disease took over. He recalled how when I took him into the light there she was, as beautiful as ever. He said she was so beautiful he became sexually aroused and wanted to make love with her, then suddenly realised where he was and decided that was not the place to make love. He thanked me for uniting them once again.

    The woman had a totally different experience involving her pet cat. She said she was so attached to her cat that when it was time for the veterinarian to put it to sleep, she could not bring herself to be there when it happened. She left the vet’s office in tears, leaving her cat alone to its fate. Afterwards, she felt extreme guilt over her reaction, leaving her poor cat to be put to sleep all alone. While in the light, she met her cat and it forgave her. Meeting her cat once again allowed her to let go of her guilt.

    These experiences with healthy people are similar to those I had worked with up until that point. The question I continue to ask myself: am I actually taking these people’s soul bodies into the light? I have also taken myself into the experience and had a profound awakening. My experience was very different. I found myself in the light and in front of a screen of white light with silhouette figures behind it. Then aspects of my younger life began to unfold before my eyes on the screen. Questions about my life I had meditated on for years were answered. The experience was similar to a life review, but just answers to the questions I had and not my total life’s experiences. I also knew if I crossed the screen of white light I would not return into my physical body.

    Conclusion

    As a modern day psychopomp, I find these experiences uplifting; they have given me an intimate knowing of our next journey. These experiences are similar to what near-death experiencer’s have. I have taken people into the light and brought them back, and they now have an understanding of that final journey. Each journey is shaped by the life experiences of the journeyer. What needs to be addressed in the experience is addressed. In all the cases I have worked with, after the journey there is no fear of death.

    Check out Rev. Gary’s other articles published in New Dawn: “Helping Stuck Souls Crossover” in New Dawn 143 & “Twin Souls Merging” in New Dawn 142.

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    References

    Marcey Hamm, Inward Harmony (Musical composition), www.musicbymarcey.com

    Robert A. Monroe, Journeys Out Of The Body, Doubleday, 1971

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