PART EIGHT
Reality-Politics for Ordinary Men and Women
Characteristically, human beings in this "late-time" (or "dark" epoch) have, both collectively and individually, renounced their real and true politics. Generally speaking, human beings everywhere have renounced both collective and individual responsibility for their truly human lives. In general, human beings are not freely and rightly establishing and preserving the truly human character of their individual lives—and the collective of humankind is not organized to establish and to preserve the truly human character of human life in general.
In this "late-time" (or "dark" epoch) of global anti-civilization, human beings do not, generally, assume cultural, social, and political freedom of right association, right commitment, and (altogether) right life—but they assume, instead, that they have to subordinate themselves to the ideas and the plans of power-seeking bureaucrats, benighted intellectuals, materialistic scientists, religious fundamentalists, and disturbed political revolutionaries, who (because they are yet ego-bound) work to effectively prevent the truly human politics of intimate, cooperative society. And this universal failure of right life reflects (and results from) every human individual's frightened (and, altogether, egoic) suppression of the universal Unifying Life-Principle and of the life-positive vitality of ego-transcending bodily existence.
Because present-day human individuals are everywhere socially indoctrinated to be afraid of their own inherent life-impulse toward unity with all-and-All, there is the present-day world the "late-time" (or "dark" epoch) of a benighted, ego-bound, and universally misled humanity. Present-day humankind is a global mass of mere individuals, who—because they cannot freely "connect" with one another (and with Reality, or Truth, Itself)—live as slaves of their own minds and egoically separate selves. For the most part, human beings in this "late-time" (or "dark" epoch) are an unconscious mass, "Narcissistically" enslaved by their own egoic motives, and (inevitably) controlled by other egos who are shrewder than themselves.
In their true human freedom, men and women are (naturally, and at heart) oriented toward intimately felt human unity and the Oneness of Truth (or of Reality Itself). Such human individuals positively participate in the cosmically extended Pattern of the universally Self-Evident and All-in-all-Unifying Life-Principle. However, ever since the advent of the modern dichotomy between other-worldly religions and this-worldly utopian idealisms, people have, paradoxically, assumed in their egoic double-mindedness) that the inherent unifying impulse of life is supposed to be negatively (or at least puritanically) manipulated, suppressed, and (thus) made unconscious, while, at the same time, they assume (or falsely hope) that life in this world is, by means of double-minded human effort, to become an eventual utopian paradise. As a result of this cultural double-mindedness, modern people are deeply troubled about the vital impulses of their natural lives, and about the Ultimate Purpose (and the Inherently egoless Ultimate Truth) of life itself. Therefore, the global human society in this "late-time" (or "dark" epoch) is built around the manipulative suppression of the life-force and the simultaneous manipulative exploitation of the materially oriented mind.
Inevitably, double-mindedness becomes "dark" control. Therefore, at last, everything and everyone become emptied of Reality and Truth. The modern doctrine is that people are supposed to work. That is the asceticism of the common man and woman. You are supposed to be a mere salt-of-the-earth worker, and you are not to be fundamentally and ecstatically (and, thus, egolessly) involved in Intrinsic Delight. You are not expected or permitted to be fully and freely conscious—and Consciousness (Itself) is not valued. You are supposed to work, buy junk food and television sets, and always stay tuned (and subordinate) to the propaganda of the daily "news"—and you are not to allow yourself to be aware of anything "Fundamentally Curious" that might cause you to become ecstatic and profound.
Some anthropologists say that what makes human beings unique is that they make tools. In any case, that is only a secondary and debatable unique feature of humankind. Truly, human beings are unique in that they interiorize the problem of survival. The sense of existence itself as a problem, as a dilemma, is characteristic of the un-Enlightened (or merely natural) human condition. And, through the tool of desire, human beings constantly create new solutions.
Human beings tend to seek a condition of release that exceeds the limits of gross experience and death. Thus, human beings invent an interior mental (or even mystical) process, through which they can step out of both ordinary mind and ordinary body, into the illusion of another world. Also, by virtue of having a mind, human beings are capable of entering into transformative (or, at least, manipulative) relationship to the functional processes in their own case and in the world. Thus, human beings create sciences and technologies, as practical tools for dealing with the material conditions of existence. However, both of these possibilities—both interior (or mental, or even mystical) and exterior (or technological, or even utopian)—are extensions of the ordinary game of problem-solving.
Until human individuals begin to develop some basic understanding of their limited (and ego-bound) condition—and, optimally, to directly (and, necessarily, in an ego-transcending manner) participate in the Indivisible and Non-Dual (or One and Only) Self-Nature, Self-Condition, Self-State, and Perfectly Subjective Acausal Source-Condition of every limited condition, state, or being—they are exploitable by individuals and influences that arbitrarily assume a material power that exceeds their own. Therefore, the usual man or woman, who works in a factory or an office and listens to the "news" faithfully, is constantly (and inevitably) exploited by all kinds of shrewd people who are materially in charge of his or her political, social, cultural, and intimate life.
For the usual person, politics is merely a matter of listening to the "news" every night. Politics in this "late-time" (or "dark" epoch) is either a childish or an adolescent reaction to the fact of being controlled by the "news" of the world and by the abstract, all-controlling politics of the State. One individual plays the "system", and the other is a revolutionary. The child buys the "system" and expects it to work, and the adolescent is a perpetual revolutionary, whose childish expectations were not fulfilled. Both types are merely relating to the world as a parent-like "thing" that controls them.
If you stop listening to (or, otherwise, believing in) the "news", and if you simply observe what is really going on, you (inevitably) become depressed by the feeling that your life is not under your control. However, depression is only a very minimal insight. Obviously, everybody is (both naturally and humanly) controlled. The typical response to the observation of the controlling forces of life is to react by joining a revolution, getting drunk, kicking a couple of bad politicians out of office, having a war, getting "high" on popular illusions, becoming "against" a political "something", or becoming "for" a political "something"—but reaction is obviously not the way to rightly transform real politics. What is needed is to establish a completely different principle of human culture and politics. What is needed is a principle of human culture and politics that is not based on reaction to all the bad "news".
Fundamentally, there is only bad "news" in the ordinary, ego-based, un-Enlightened, chaotic world. Instead of waiting for action from "sources" out in the world somewhere—government sources, media sources, interplanetary sources, conventional religious sources, mystical sources, or what-ever it is that you wait for all the time—you must, yourself, become involved in intimate, cooperative community (or real cooperative social culture) with other human beings. In a responsible, mutually dependent, cooperative, tolerant, peaceful, and intimate relationship with other human beings, you must create and protect the basics of a truly human culture and of a truly intimate daily human society.
The only reason the "news" of the world and the abstract (or non-intimate) politics of the State can exploit and control you is that you are in vital (and, altogether, ego-defining) shock—or a double-minded and "self"-defeating reactive recoil from the universal Unifying Life-Principle of Prior Unity. Because you are (thus) alienated from (and emptied of) Reality Itself (Which Is One, or Non-Dual, Inherently egoless, and Inherently Free), you believe that you need a number of things you cannot acquire without playing for or against the "system". However, if you are always already egolessly participating in the Self-Nature, Self-Condition, and Self-State of Reality (Itself), you need not be greatly concerned about any of the "news" of the world of egos. Rather, you can and must create your own politics—the intimate politics of cooperative association with your fellow human beings.
The existence of the big, political "system" does not make any ultimate positive difference in the daily life of the individual. You can and must live a truly free, responsible life, regardless of the "system" or the "news". Of course, it can be done a little more easily if the "system" is relatively accommodating and the "news" is relatively benign. You would have to be more inventive to do it in an absolutist society, or during a war in a bombed-out town. Nevertheless—regardless of the larger politics, or the state of the "news"—the truly human (and humanizing) politics of intimate, cooperative living can (and, indeed, must) be done. And, therefore, the ego-transcending discipline of intimate, cooperative living is the only real and true politics—or the only genuine "realpolitik" (or Reality-politics) for ordinary (or truly human) men and women.
The true change that you must create is not principally in the "system" itself (or in the parent-like world of competitive egos) but in the ordinary, daily associations between yourself and other human beings. People who would be free must live in a non-egoic and non-competitive manner, in intimate cooperation with one another. Human beings must truly understand themselves—in all of their external and internal egoity—and they must, on that basis, adapt to a cooperative and mutually tolerant arrangement of daily life, in which they are each personally responsible for the character of daily existence, and in which they simply live together, intimately and seriously, free of reactive and dependent association with the parent-like abstract world of the "news".
A truly rational and benign politics cannot be enacted merely by investing humankind in a worldwide system of parent-like bureaucracies. The abstract system creates childish dependencies and illusory solutions, and it discourages the general possibility of genuine personal responsibility, or daily "right life" (and the ego-transcending Realization of the Only and Non-Dual Self-Nature, Self-Condition, and Self-State of Reality and Truth). The true politics of the individual is in relation to what is intimate to him or her. Truly human politics is in the sphere of directly effective relationships, experienced on a daily basis—where the individual's voice and experience can be directly heard and sympathetically felt. That, fundamentally, is politics. All the rest is only the vulgar and inherently disheartening daily "news" of the world-mummery of human egos.
A politics based on truly human, cooperative relationships is not likely to immediately originate on a large scale in a present-day city—although, ultimately (if such cooperation is first done by everyone on the more intimate, or local, scale), even that is an obvious necessity. Present-day cities are merely a random collection of subhuman emergencies. People crowd together in modern cities for all kinds of conflicting and subhuman reasons. These are not genuine cities, in any fully human sense. A true city would be a large-scale cooperative social order (or an effectively single community)—an essentially autonomous, fully cooperative, truly intimate, and Reality-oriented (or Prior-Unity-based) order of mutually dependent people who are devoted to the mature developmental culture of truly humanized (and ego-transcending, and Reality-Awakened) humankind. However, that kind of human order does not exist in the cities of today. Today, a city is just a collection of disturbed and fascinated people—not a conscious, positively organized association of truly human (and ego-transcending, and Reality-Awakened) beings.
Without a community of responsible relationships and mature cultural agreements, there can be no right politics. Truly right politics is, necessarily, an expression of right life. Right politics is a functional realization of the collective right relationships between individuals living in free cooperation with one another.
The true cooperative human community (or unified social order) is not merely a utopian commune, in which every ego tries to he perfect, or to he perfectly fulfilled. Such perfection or fulfillment is not possible for the ego (or for the inherently limited and mortal patterns of human life itself). Advanced human "self"-understanding is the principle of life in true cooperative human community. Communities are rightly established when each human participant rightly understands his or her own functional design—not only as mere ego, but, altogether, as a single (or simultaneous) whole, and, ultimately, as an Inherently ego-transcending Reality-Awakened totality. And communities are rightly organized and managed when the problem-solving, creative capabilities of human beings are rightly "self"-disciplined and, altogether, equanimously measured—on the basis of a true culture, founded on the transcending of the ego-"I" and the Realizing of the Inherently egoless Self-Nature, Self-Condition, and Self-State of Reality (Itself). Therefore, fundamentally, human beings must understand and be responsible for their egoity—and, thus, for their tendencies to live life as an inherent (or irreducible) dilemma (or as a state of disunity), or (otherwise) as a perpetual search for self"-glorifying fulfillment of loveless (or separate and separative) inclinations.
In a true cooperative human community everyone knows what every one else has the tendency to become (when irresponsible) and the possibilty to become (when responsible). And all serve one another at the level of that understanding. They all also know the functional character and capability of each one among them, and they amuse and enjoy and serve and employ one another at every appropriate level. Right responsibility for functional life (and, thus, for the positive unifying of the structures of the human individual, and of all the members of the human collective itself) must always be assumed and demanded in a truly human (or truly ego-transcending, and cooperative, and mutually tolerant) community. When it is not, that failure of responsibility (and, thus, of individual well-being and of collective unity) will, inevitably, weaken the community—and, thus, enable (or even oblige) shrewder men and women to exploit and oppress the members of the community, and make them slaves to their own egoity again.
If men and women will enter into true cooperative human community—and, therefore, into intimate cooperative and higher cultural relationship with one another—they will no longer be exploitable by any life-negating (or disheartening and freedom-negating) influences from the abstract social and political realm of the worldly "news". The negatively dominant bureaucracy of the world of egos becomes obsolete only through non-use. And, once its negative and parent-like powers become obsolete through non-use, even the State will be obliged to become the simple instrument of the responsible agreements of the people. If the people become truly intelligent and freely cooperative, then the State will, inevitably, do (or become) likewise. And if the people truly become collectively intelligent and responsible, then individual freedom can never really be eliminated by the state of the "news".
Conventional politics has always been associated with an ideal of one or another sort. In the modern era, the ideal has, generally, switched from a humanistic to an economic one. Nevertheless, all merely idealistic systems tend to depend on temporary, emergency solutions to basic problems. This is because conventional idealism is an abstraction—a basis for a politics of manipulation of people by an abstract State, and not for an intimate, cooperative politics of practical responsibility, on the part of the people, for both themselves and the political union (or State) of their lives. The tactics of abstract State politics always relate to a more or less irresponsible and externally controlled populace—and, therefore, the State tends to be fixed in a view of human life as a dilemma that continuously requires new emergency reactions to solve the constant crisis of new emergency problems. As a result, politics becomes an insane conglomeration of temporary solutions, enforced by a bureaucratic State that is oppressive, rigid, immense, and intolerable.
The fundamentals of life must be pre-solved at the local level—at the regional level where the daily, cooperative community exists. Within the cooperative human community, every member should be guaranteed access to the basic necessities and opportunities of life (provided each individual functions responsibly and cooperatively within the community). Generally, the basic solutions to human needs do not (or should not) require resort to any of the resources of an abstract State—but they should be managed locally, in one's own community, and in natural cooperation with other communities. (In other words, first establish intimate, cooperative community and the planned solutions to fundamental needs—and, on that basis, see what kind of agreements are useful in cooperation with other communities and with large-scale cooperative agencies.)
True cooperative politics is a great human adventure, in which human beings are inherently obliged to realize their humanity as an ego-transcending discipline. Human beings do not, in Reality and in Truth, have the option to renounce their humanity or the universal Unifying Life-Principle (or cosmically extended Pattern of Oneness) that sustains them. Rather, human beings must assume the inherent responsibility of human relationships. Human beings must assume all the structures of the human mechanism (both lower and higher) as real conditions of existence—and human beings must become functionally responsible for positively conducting the life-force in every area of their experience. To the degree that they do all of this, human beings are obliged to be committed to right life in the dimensions of time and space—and only in that case are they free to carry on the creative developmental and ecstatically ego-transcending Reality-process of their humanly-born lives.
If human beings do not assume right, ego-transcending, and cooperative collective responsibility for their lives, the daily "news" of the world of egos becomes their inevitable destiny and their dreadful, minimal inheritance. In the world of egos, everybody tends to persist like cattle, grazing on the daily "news", expecting it will all eventually develop into some superior politics or fate. However, truly human politics, or right human destiny, cannot happen unconsciously. Truly human politics begins where consciousness (intelligent, and surrendered, beyond "self"-contraction, into the Non-Dual Reality and Truth That Is the Heart and Light of Consciousness Itself) enters the domain of human existence.
There is no right, or truly human, politics without conscious responsibility. You cannot sit like cattle in front of the TV, dutifully listening to the official "news" every day, and rightly expect or fruitfully require that some bureaucrat "in charge" is going to announce some "Super-Program" that will liberate you from your lowly, ego-possessed estate. Rather, you must take responsibility for yourself. It is not by revolutionary reformation of the State, or (otherwise) by mere "self'-indulgent reaction to the daily "news", but only by consciously stepping apart from your childish ego-dependence on the abstract State and your adolescent reaction to the daily "news", that you carry on truly human politics. Therefore, you must provide your own life-requirements, in personal and local cooperation with others. You must enter into truly intimate (or mutually dependent, energetically cooperative, lovingly tolerant, and liberally peaceful) community with others. You must cooperatively share your functions, your resources, and your vitality with other human beings. That is the only right, and truly human, and truly liberating politics for human beings. And, therefore, the choice to enter into real, intimate cooperative community with other human beings is the only real and true politics for ordinary (or truly human) men and women.
The life of the usual (or ego-bound) man or woman is built on the idea that the Law of life is survival, and that survival is the significance, meaning, and goal of existence. However, in Truth (and, thus, in Reality Itself), the fundamental process of human existence, and even of the very realm of cosmic Nature, is one of right "self'-surrender--or the consistent transcending of all contraction upon separate and separative "self" (or ego-"I"), and the transcending of loveless separation from what is egoically presumed to be "not-self'.
Right "self'-surrender—or inherently ego-transcending participation in unlimited relatedness—is the Law. The usual life is not built upon the ego-transcending principle of right "self'-surrender, but on the ego-fulfilling principle of survival—or the aggressive ego-glorification of the individualized, separate, and separative entity. This is the common illusion, and this inherently loveless game of surviving as a separate, self"-contained, and separative "someone" is what makes human existence the overwhelming chaos of troubles that it has now become for everyone in this "late-time" (or "dark" epoch) of global anti-civilization.
The fact is that all specific "somethings" must ultimately be surrendered (or released, and gone beyond), and, therefore, human existence itself must become an intentionally ego-surrendering (or truly (ego-transcending) affair, in which no condition is aggressively maintained merely for its own sake. The human individual must grow (by right cultural means) to realize that the Law of life is the positive surrender of all temporary forms to the universal Unifying Life-Principle (or the cosmic Reality-Pattern of Prior Unity) and moment to moment surrender of separate and separative "self" to the inherently egoless Self-Nature, Self-Condition, Self-State, and Perfectly Subjective Acausal Reality-Condition of every limited condition, state, or being. Therefore, the human individual must, by right cultural means, be grown to realize that the inherent and ultimate purpose of life is not a matter of mere and loveless "survival", independent of the Inherent Prior-"Unity-Principle of both the conditional reality and the Non-conditional Reality. And only if the individual is (thus) grown to relinquish the ego-principle and to embrace the Prior-Unity-Principle can the individual become politically free. Indeed, to be thus grown is, itself, to be (inherently) politically free.