Seven Truths for a New Age
The Aquarian Manifesto
by Lawrence John Brown
Smashwords Edition
Copyright July 2011 by Lawrence John Brown
The photo on the cover was created by the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI/NASA). The image in the lower right corner is of Hodge 301, which is, according to the Hubble website, “a bright cluster of brilliant, massive stars” that “is blasting material from supernovae” into the Tarantula Nebula.
This book is dedicated to the people in the world who live under governments that do not respect their rights and especially to the women in the world who are tired of being treated as the property of men. It can be downloaded for free at smashwords.com.
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Table of Contents
1. No one can own our Mother Earth.
2. God is present in the world and there is no evil.
3. All things are conscious and are created with rights.
4. The physical universe was designed by non-physical beings.
5. The main purpose of government is protecting rights.
6. There are too many people on Spaceship Earth.
7. Power corrupts everyone who holds it.
If I could speak before the United Nations, I’d say:
The world is facing three major crises.
Our most urgent crisis is environmental. Not only do we have to reduce our CO2 emissions to slow global warming, but we also must cope with global warming’s far-reaching effects—the melting of ice caps and glaciers, the rise of sea levels, the increase in droughts and floods, more powerful storms, extremes of temperature and precipitation, crop failures and lower crop yields, the deaths of coral reefs, and the extinctions of species. Pollution, water shortages, desertification, soil erosion, the decline in fish populations, and the destruction of rain forests and other precious natural habitats can be added to our list of environmental challenges.
Our second major crisis is economic. A billion people do not get enough to eat and many more people struggle to maintain a decent standard of living while ten percent of the people in the world control over eighty percent of the world’s wealth. I believe that this inequality of wealth can only be eliminated by replacing our economic system, which is built on greed and competition, with a system that is based on sharing and cooperation.
Our third major crisis is spiritual. Many people in the world do not have beliefs that can sustain and guide them in these rapidly changing times because their religious truths are out of date. I will give you two examples from Judeo-Christianity’s Old Testament:
In the Book of Genesis, God tells man to “fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” At the time that the Old Testament was written, man’s footprint on the Earth was very small and it may have helped him to settle the Earth if he believed that God gave him dominion over it. But today, the two main reasons for our environmental crisis are our population explosion and our belief that we own the Earth.
The Old Testament was written by men who believed they were God’s Chosen People. Not surprisingly, their Book of Joshua contains numerous instances of genocide that God supposedly orders them to commit. At the time, it may have been useful for your nation’s development to believe you were special in God’s eyes and other people were evil. But if we are to live in peace with each other in today’s crowded world, we must stop believing that our group or nation is superior to other groups or nations and start believing that there is good in the hearts of all men.
Today I will present to you seven truths or beliefs that can help us overcome our three crises and also provide the world with a foundation for a new age of peace, harmony with the Earth, and equality for all.
1. No one can own our Mother Earth.
How can anyone claim they own the land, the water, or the sky when the Earth was here for billions of years before our civilization came into existence and may still be here billions of years after our civilization has passed into history? Billions of people have lived on the Earth in communal and tribal societies who did not think the land, water, or sky was theirs to do with as they pleased. Instead, they saw themselves as caretakers of the Earth and humble participants in the web of life. As the Indian Chief Seattle said many years ago:
The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky, the land? The idea is strange to us. Every part of this Earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, all are holy in the memory and experience of my people. We are part of the earth and it is part of us.
We are just travelers on this sweet Earth, experiencing the pleasures, pains, and wonders of the journey, but passing through nevertheless in a short time by the standard of the age of the Earth. For us to believe the Earth is our private property is like a tourist who thinks he owns the city he is visiting.
How would Parisians feel if I flew to Paris and said I wanted to replace the Eiffel Tower with a shopping center? They would be outraged, wouldn’t they? Future generations will be outraged by our belief that we can do whatever we want to the Earth without regard for the consequences to others.
To use another analogy, to claim we own the Earth is like saying we own our mothers. Our mothers may tolerate such behavior when we’re young, but not when we’re adults with many brothers and sisters. In “Letter From The Earth” in my book My Country Is Called Earth,1 Mother Earth rebukes modern man with these words:
I am Gaia, your mother, and I have feelings and rights as you do. I give of myself freely, but you may not own me. I belong to all my children.
In your race to conquer the world, you trampled on the rights of native people. You looked down upon them, yet they understood these important truths your culture denied: That the gods dwell within nature. That man is part of the earth. And that man must share this planet with other forms of life.
The recognition that no one can own the Earth should lead to the realization that we have a moral duty to pass on a healthy and diverse Earth to future generations.2 This recognition could also be the justification for the economic system based on sharing and cooperation that I spoke of earlier.
1 My Country Is Called Earth, first published in 1994, is a story about a man who is worried about the kind of world he will be leaving to his children. One day in 1992 he falls asleep and wakes up in the year 2076 to a world very different from the one he left. He spends two weeks in that future and then returns to his time to tell how the problems of 1992 could be solved. The book can be downloaded for free at smashwords.com and at other online bookstores.
2 And it should help us understand that no one has the right to throw people off land their families have been living on for generations, as is happening to poor farmers in some African nations today. See “African Farmers Displaced as Investors Move In” by Neil MacFarquhar in The New York Times on December 21, 2010.
2. God is present in the world and there is no evil.
Can I prove that God exists and that God is here and not in some far off heaven? No, I can’t. On the other hand, it is not possible to prove that God does not exist or that God is not present in the world. So believing there is a God or there is not a God is a choice, not an acknowledgement of fact. And believing God is present in the world or is not present in the world is also a choice you can make.
During her lifetime, the mystic-philosopher Jane Roberts produced enough material for more than forty books. Most of the material was dictated through her while she was in a trance state by a teacher named Seth. Seth lives in a non-physical dimension, but he had many lives on Earth before he began communicating through Jane Roberts. (If you believe channeling is nonsense or the work of the devil, then look at the Seth books as Jane Roberts’ philosophy.)
In Chapter Eighteen of Jane Roberts’ book The Seth Material, Seth says that God, or what he later refers to as All That Is, “is not one individual, but an energy gestalt.” He also says that because God’s “energy is within and behind all universes, systems, and fields, it is indeed aware of each sparrow that falls, for it is each sparrow that falls.”
In my second book, Prelude To A Golden Age,1 the protagonist Paul Heart says this concept of God being within the world appears in different cultures and religions and in the words of mystics and philosophers:
God is in the world. This is not a new idea. It can be found in the spiritual beliefs of the American Indians, the aborigines of Australia, and other native cultures; in the teachings of the three Eastern religions—Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism; and even in the New Testament. For example, the Hindu Upanishads say, “Then He realized, ‘I indeed am this creation for I have poured it forth from Myself.’” And the Apostle Paul said in his speech to the Athenians, “In Him we live and move and exist.” This idea can also be found in the words of mystics and philosophers such as Pythagoras, Plato, Jesus, Spinoza, Emerson, Thoreau, Joseph Campbell, and Jane Roberts.
If you make the choice to believe that God is in the world as I and many others have done, then your relationship with the world will fundamentally change because the world will become sacred, a Holy Land.2 And if the world is sacred, then the world is good and there is no evil.
I know that many people will disagree with the idea that there is no evil because they see evil everywhere. Those people are seeing what they expect to see. If they would look for the positive from the point of view of the big picture, they would see that men are almost always of good intent and any terrible things that they do are usually done in the belief that they are doing good. (It will also help if those who see evil everywhere would be more humble and recognize their own failings and their own role in creating the world as it is today.)
For example, I have no doubt that the leaders of the Inquisition and the men who carried out the tortures and executions believed they were serving God. And similarly, George Bush and Dick Cheney and most of the American military and CIA personnel who tortured and abused Muslims believed they were saving lives and serving their country.
In saying there is no evil, I do not mean that the world is perfect, but that since God is in the world, the world cannot be evil. In fact, I believe that there are many injustices in the world that should be opposed and corrected. These injustices are unfortunate and sometimes horrible, but not evil. Again, most of what is called evil is a misguided attempt to do good. There are very few people in the world who could live with themselves if they thought they were evil.
Seth said we are born many times as members of different races, nationalities, and sexes and in different states of health and wealth. Seth’s reincarnation is not the same as the reincarnation known in East Asia with its punishment for negative karma and reward for positive karma. The Seth philosophy teaches that we choose the circumstances of each of our lives, so no one is punished or rewarded for past deeds.
Seth’s reincarnation should not be seen as an opportunity to escape from responsibility for our actions, however. He said that lessons not learned in one lifetime will be learned in another. For example, murderers and people who have misused power will often reverse roles in another life and play victims. This decision will not be made by the “you” that you think you are but by your higher self or soul. Our concept of the self is really limited, according to Seth, who said we exist in many times and places at once and as part of larger entities.
I think the following sentence contains Seth’s most important concept: “You create your own reality.” He said that we are here to learn to use our energy responsibly, because our energy, expressed through our thoughts and beliefs and propelled by our emotions and imagination, causes our reality and, en masse, the reality of the world.
The three main concepts of the Seth philosophy—that God is in the world, that we live other lives, and that we create our own reality—could be the spiritual basis for a new age of peace, harmony with the Earth, and equality for all.
1 Prelude To A Golden Age follows the journeys of two men at the time of an android invasion of Earth. It can be downloaded for free at smashwords.com and at other online bookstores.
2 As Joseph Campbell has pointed out, since the whole world is Holy Land, there is no reason to fight over a piece of real estate in the Middle East.
3. All things are conscious and are created with rights.
The American Declaration of Independence declares that “all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
However, from its very beginning on July 4, 1776, the United States of America failed to live up to its ideals. For on that day in America, hundreds of thousands of black men, women, and children were being held in slavery. In fact, one-third of the signers of the Declaration of Independence kept slaves, including its main author, Thomas Jefferson.
Besides the existence of slavery, in 1776 men who were not landowners (except in the state of Pennsylvania) and most women were being denied the right to vote. Men were discriminating against women in other ways, such as by denying them opportunities to go to college and to work in certain professions. And married women could be required to hand over their property and their wages to their husbands. But perhaps the biggest violation of the principles of the Declaration of Independence involved the Indians, who were being killed and driven off their lands as part of what today would be called genocide.
I believe, because of the vast distance between the Declaration of Independence’s ideals and the reality in America in 1776, the only meaningful way to look at the Declaration of Independence is to see it as a model or guideline for future developments in America and the world. In other words, America in 1776 was a work-in-progress, not a finished product to be left untouched by future generations.
It has been a long and winding road from 1776 to the present, but the American people have grown morally and spiritually, and today are much closer to accepting that all Americans have the same rights that the 56 white men who signed the Declaration of Independence claimed to have on that July 4th day 235 years ago.
However, the American people still need to understand that, as discrimination on the basis of race, land ownership, gender, national origin, religion, age, and disability is wrong, so is discrimination on the basis of an individual’s sexual orientation.
And as for the world, it has seen a great flowering of democracy since 1776 that it is still continuing today. But the people of many of the nations of the world and especially of the United States still do not understand that non-citizens have the same rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that citizens have. As a result, it is considered OK to kill and injure foreign civilians during wars and military operations.1
The attitude that non-citizens do not have the rights of citizens is the basis for the military mentality to “shoot first and ask questions later.” It is as if the standard in law of presumption of innocence until proven guilty is reversed for non-citizens. The United States military has even coined a term to whitewash its violations of human rights by calling civilian deaths and injuries “collateral damage.”
The “shoot first and ask questions later” military mentality can be clearly seen in the American night raids in Afghanistan. The Open Society Institute, which is compiling a report on night raids, has documented cases of civilians being shot in the head, civilians being shot while running away, civilians being shot while picking up cell phones, and civilians being shot while going to the aid of wounded relatives.2
To gain public support for wars, leaders and the media often try to dehumanize the enemy. As Joseph Campbell says in The Power of Myth, “When you go to war with people, the problem of the newspapers is to turn those people into ‘its.’”
When George Bush and Dick Cheney were President and Vice President of the United States, they often mentioned Iraq when they spoke publicly about the events of September 11, 2001, even though Iraq had nothing to do with those horrible attacks. This helped to turn all Iraqis into terrorists in the eyes of many Americans and opened the door for the Abu Ghraib prison abuses and other American violations of human rights during the Iraq War.
Accepting that people who are not citizens of our countries have the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that we demand for ourselves is a big step that, we, the people of the world, must make.
But a still larger step awaits us. This step requires that we understand that all of nature—all plants and animals and Mother Earth herself—is conscious and has rights. Because, since God is present in the world, all things have God consciousness within them and are endowed by their Creator with rights.
Plant and animal rights are not the same as human rights. In the web of life of which man is a part, animals eat plants and animals eat other animals, so plants and animals can be killed for food. And plants can be used for making necessary things like clothing and houses.
Hopefully, someday we will be able to live without eating animals, but for now it is important that when we kill animals, we do the killing with as little stress and pain for the animals as possible. And we should keep the animals we intend to eat in natural conditions and not in small cages or pens or crowded together in large groups.
Animals in the wild have the rights to freedom from cages and protection from hunters who kill for sport. Animals with high levels of intelligence or emotion—dolphins, porpoises, whales, elephants, apes, monkeys, and some others—have an unqualified right to life and need to be protected from all hunters and killers.
All scientific experiments using animals are experiments on the body of God and should stop immediately. Some people justify these experiments by saying that they save human lives, implying that a human life is more important than an animal’s life. That is not true. Since God is within all of Its Creation, no form of life is more important than another.
In all cases of our interactions with plants and animals, we should treat them with respect and be grateful to them for their sacrifices so that we may live. This is one of the things we can learn from the native cultures that we often look down upon now.
Mother Earth has rights too. Her rights include the survival of species and the vitality of forests, wilderness areas, wetlands, rivers, lakes, and oceans. Mother Earth’s rights also include the rights of future generations of men and nature to inherit a healthy and diverse planet.
1 At the beginning of the Iraq War, the U.S. military’s rules of engagement required soldiers to shoot at people on foot or in vehicles who did not stop when they were told to stop. In one example of the inhumanity of this policy, a van loaded with civilians was attacked by tank cannons after the driver failed to stop when he was told to. A mother in the van said she watched her daughters’ heads get blown off.
During the war, Iraqis sometimes reported that American soldiers and contractors fired their weapons in all directions when they thought they were under attack. In one incident in September 2007, Iraqis said that contractors working for the security firm Blackwater USA killed 17 civilians when they fired at people and cars in Baghdad’s Nisour Square. The contractors claimed they were responding to gunfire from insurgents.
There have been many careless American aerial attacks during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars that killed and injured civilians. For example, at the beginning of the Iraq War, American forces dropped cluster bombs into residential neighborhoods, killing and injuring hundreds of civilians, some of whom were children who thought the little bombs were toys. And early in the Iraq War, American planes bombed a wedding party. Later, American planes bombed a wedding party in Afghanistan. In the spring of 2011, American soldiers shooting from helicopters killed nine Afghan boys who were gathering firewood for their families.
2 The New York Times, “Night Raids Curbing Taliban, But Afghans Cite Civilian Toll,” by Carlotta Gall, July 8, 2011.
4. The physical universe was designed by non-physical beings.
I have no problem with the idea that living things have evolved, but I disagree with scientists on how they have evolved. I cannot believe that life on Earth in all its diversity, splendor, and complexity came into existence simply through random genetic mutations and natural selection. (Natural selection, which is often called “survival of the fittest,” is the idea that living things best adapted to their environment will survive and have offspring.) As Paul Heart says in Prelude To A Golden Age:
Scientists criticized the beliefs of men of religion, but can any belief be more incredible than one that says the wondrously complex universe was formed without intent or design? No number of years could have produced by accident the beautiful and intricate creatures of Earth. How could chance create the marvelous cooperation between species? How could chance create men of symmetry, with bodies that repaired themselves, with mental processes capable of activity far in excess of what was needed for survival?
Many scientists claim that evolution is a fact, not a theory. Despite their claims, scientists have been unable to demonstrate how basic chemicals evolved into living matter with a genetic code 3.5 billion years ago. Maybe scientists can say the first life on Earth came from a meteorite or was introduced by aliens, but that idea just postpones the question of how the first life originated.
The theory of evolution is a theory for atheists and agnostics, whose beliefs do not give them the liberty of explaining the existence of life in any other way. Science’s theory of evolution can also be a refuge for educated Christians, who are stuck with a Bible that tells them the universe was created in six days and does not take into account the dinosaurs and other extinct species.
But science’s theory of evolution can seem incredible, unnecessary, or contrived to someone who believes that there is a non-physical reality behind or supporting the physical universe. Because if there is a non-physical reality, then the idea that a non-physical intelligence of some kind was involved with the creation of life becomes a simpler and more reasonable explanation for life than the theory of evolution with its dependence on random mutations.
I will show that there is a non-physical reality behind or supporting the physical universe by presenting evidence of three kinds of psychic phenomena: telepathy, precognition, and clairvoyance.
But first I want to point out that science is, like Christianity, a mythology. As I write in the Introduction to My Country Is Called Earth, being a scientist requires faith, just as being a Christian requires faith. The faith of the scientist is that “non-physical reality either does not exist or cannot affect the physical plane.”
I will start by defining my terms. Telepathy is communication from one person to another without speech or any other physical form of communication. Basically, it is knowledge of what someone else is thinking. Precognition is knowledge of a possible future event. In common usage, clairvoyance is a general term for psychic abilities, but I will use its narrower meaning: knowledge of an event in a place beyond the range of human vision. I want to add that it is sometimes hard to decide whether a psychic experience is telepathy, precognition, or clairvoyance.
Now let’s talk about telepathy. When we think of a friend or spouse just before that person calls us on the telephone, we have probably experienced telepathy. And when we have an idea just before a person we are having a conversation with uses similar words, that is also probably due to telepathy. We even have an expression for this: “You’ve taken the words right out of my mouth.”
Instances of precognition can be found in our thoughts, decisions, dreams, and seemingly chance experiences.
For example, in his autobiography Mark Twain tells of a dream he had that correctly predicted some details of his brother Henry’s death. In the dream, Twain saw his brother in a metal casket. He was wearing Twain’s suit and on his chest was a bouquet of white roses with a red rose in the center. Several weeks later, Henry was killed in a boiler explosion on a steamship and when Twain went to see his body, he found it just as he had seen it in the dream.
This is an example of precognition from my own life: One summer many years ago, I had a series of dreams over a period of several weeks about my home being robbed. Then the dreams stopped and about a week later my home was robbed. (My home has not been robbed since that time, nor have I had dreams of my home being robbed since then.)
Individuals have missed airplane flights that later crashed because they made a decision not to fly on an impulse, or because of a sudden illness, or because of an accident, or for some other reason that came up at the last minute. The experience that caused the individual to miss the flight may have been the result of subconscious knowledge of a possible crash—precognition—and a decision not to die at that time.
Now think about a significant event, or a significant person such as a spouse or a best friend, in your life. Was it a series of unexplainable or seemingly minor decisions that led you to experience that significant event or to meet that significant person? Precognition working through impulses could have encouraged you to make those decisions that led you to that significant event or meeting.
The following, taken from an episode of the television series I Shouldn’t Be Alive, is an example of a significant event that was probably caused by precognition: One day in a remote location in Canada, a beaver trapper lost control of his quad bike and got pinned underneath it. Four days later, when he was nearing death, he was found by a man who had wanted to drive to a place to take his dog for a walk. Afterwards, the rescuer said he had changed his mind five times about where to go with his dog before he came upon the man pinned under the quad bike. The rescuer said he didn’t know why he had made the decisions that led him to the man. (As I’ve said, it is hard to decide sometimes whether a psychic experience is due to telepathy, precognition, or clairvoyance. This event could also be a result of clairvoyance.)
This is an example of clairvoyance from my own life: Seven years ago, I was walking in a crowded pedestrian mall in downtown Seoul, South Korea. Seoul is about two hundred and fifty miles from the city where I lived. Suddenly, I saw in my mind’s eye an image of a friend from my city. A few seconds later, that friend appeared out of the crowd and walked up to me. (I did not know my friend was going to be in Seoul.)
Occurrences of telepathy, precognition, and clairvoyance and other forms of psychic phenomena are not the only reasons to believe in a non-physical reality. I experience every day the truth of the Seth philosophy—that what I think and believe is reflected in my body and in the events around me—so I am constantly aware of the fact that a non-physical reality exists and supports the physical universe. And the miraculous acts of survival and healing that are continually taking place in our world also point to the existence of a non-physical reality.
Now that I have demonstrated that there is a non-physical reality, I want to present the intelligent design theory that comes out of the Seth philosophy. But before I do that, I want to present a simplified version of the history of evolution according to science that I included in My Country Is Called Earth:
Three and one-half billion years ago, atmospheric gases energized by lightning, ultraviolet radiation, or volcanic heat combined to form the first organic molecules. By pure accident, some of these molecules later developed a cellular structure, including a primitive genetic code, which permitted them to reproduce themselves. Then a gene of one of these organisms mutated, again by chance, allowing its offspring to have different characteristics than it had. Everything was now in place for the evolution of species: Through chance genetic mutations and natural selection...species after species arose and disappeared. Nature advanced from bacteria to algae to marine invertebrates, fish, insects, amphibians, mosses, ferns, reptiles, trees, birds, dinosaurs, mammals, and primates. And then, just a half million or so years ago, bingo: a man was born.
Now, contrary to the theory of evolution, Seth has said that consciousness existed, in our terms of time, before the physical universe was created, and he says in Seth Speaks that consciousness evolves matter into the form it then chooses to inhabit.1 He says in The “Unknown” Reality that a species can alter its chromosomes and genes “to bring about in the probable future the specific changes it desires.”2 He also says each species has an earth god or spirit that nourishes and protects it and these earth gods or spirits are the driving force behind evolution.3
Natural selection is based on the idea that individuals and species compete with each other for survival. But, according to Seth, all species on an unconscious level cooperate in the planning and creation of the world.4 Seth also said that animals are aware that they are dependent upon other animals and plants for food and that they are in turn food to other animals and plants. Plants realize that they are dependent upon the sun, the water, the air, the soil, and the animal world. On a level below normal consciousness, he said, every animal and plant consents to its death, knowing that it will live through the creature that has eaten it.
I mentioned earlier that the Seth philosophy teaches that we reincarnate many times. So we come into this life with influences, tendencies, and abilities from past lives. The Seth philosophy also teaches that in the between-lives period, we choose our parents for our next life and the challenges we will deal with and we also decide which genes we will turn on or off.
Now that I have briefly presented Seth’s view of the creation of life on Earth, I want to say that I think scientists, as well as most other humans, suffer from narrow-mindedness, from a failure to see the larger picture. This is understandable because we learn in childhood to ignore information from non-physical sources, as our parents and other adults do not respond to that kind of information. But from his position in non-physical reality, Seth sees that non-physical beings are involved in the planning and creation of life on Earth and that all species cooperate on a continuous basis in the creation of the world.
I think that science has bitten off more than it can chew with its theory of evolution. It is one thing to say that random genetic mutations and natural selection can cause a species to change into another. It is an entirely different matter to claim that all of the marvelously complex forms of life we know today are the products of random genetic mutations and natural selection when a simpler and more reasonable explanation for life is available.
Scientists should just admit that there are some things that they cannot explain with the knowledge, theories, and tools they have today. As I write in My Country Is Called Earth:
The history of science is the story of many wrong turns. Today’s scientific truth is often tomorrow’s stepping stone. Many times in the past discoveries have been made that upset the conventional scientific wisdom; there is no reason to believe that there are no major upheavals around the corner.
Scientists have traced the beginning of the physical universe to what they call the Big Bang, which, they say, happened between ten and twenty billion years ago. However, by denying the existence of non-physical reality, scientists are incapable of explaining where the matter in the Big Bang came from, nor can they explain how the laws of the physical universe originated.
But since there is a non-physical reality, the simple and sensible solution to science’s dilemma is to say that God or a non-physical being or beings created the matter of the physical universe and its laws. From there, it is easy to go one step further and say that God or a non-physical being or beings were also involved with the creation of life on Earth. (I think the answer to the question of what created God is beyond our capacity to understand at this time.)
I am completely comfortable with the idea that a God or a non-physical being or beings created and supports the physical universe without having to know all the details. I am not saying that I am not curious about the details, but there is a difference between being curious and demanding to have answers when we may not be able to understanding the answers.
However, having said that, I want to point out that in Seth Speaks a being that has never had a physical existence but says it could be called a future Seth offers some hints about how the physical and non-physical universes were created. I will quote just a few sentences here; you can read the complete text in Session 588: “We are sources of that energy from which you come. We are creators, yet we have also been created. We seeded your universe as you seed other realities.”
I believe that science’s theory of evolution is not only limited in its application, but that it is also detrimental to our psychological and moral development and to the progress of our civilization. In The Education of a Messiah,5 Paul Heart says:
Science’s belief in a universe formed by chance caused men to see themselves living in a universe without meaning, in a universe that placed no value on the individual. Moreover, the theory of evolution gave men an excuse for every crime: “My genes made me do it.” And the theory of evolution’s survival of the fittest or natural selection could be used to justify war and the brutal, every-man-for-himself economic system known as capitalism.
On the other hand, the Seth philosophy finds purpose and meaning in life, encourages respect for all things, and holds men accountable for their actions. Which mythology—science’s theory of evolution or the Seth philosophy—is right for our time? Is there any doubt that the Seth philosophy gives us the best hope of resolving our three major crises and entering a new age of peace, harmony with the Earth, and equality for all?
We are standing before the door to a wonderful adventure, but to pass through that door we first need to open our minds to the possibility that the physical universe is not the only reality. Jane Roberts’ books can help us.
1 Seth Speaks, Session 582, by Jane Roberts.
2 The “Unknown” Reality, Volume 1, Session 690, by Jane Roberts.
3 The “Unknown” Reality, Volume 1, Session 691, by Jane Roberts.
4 The “Unknown” Reality, Volume 2, Appendix 12, by Jane Roberts.
5 The Education of a Messiah is my novelization of the screenplay for Prelude To A Golden Age. It can be downloaded for free at smashwords.com and at other online bookstores.
5. The main purpose of government is protecting rights.
I was born on July 4th, so I hope you will excuse me if I think the Declaration of Independence is the most important political document in history.
After listing the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the Declaration of Independence says, “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed.”
In other words, according to the Declaration of Independence, the purpose of government is protecting the individual’s rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Unfortunately, many governments today think they should be protecting us from ourselves by determining when and how we will die, what liberties we will be allowed to enjoy, and what the proper pursuit of happiness is.
Governments should not be interfering in the private lives of adults as long as adults respect the rights of others. In the words of Thomas Jefferson, government should “restrain men from injuring one another, and leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement.”
Since all men are gods (or God is within all men), who has the right to tell us how to live our private lives? The spiritual and psychological growth of mankind in the New Age requires individual freedom to explore inner and outer reality unhampered by government interference. Or, to paraphrase what a character in my first book says, “All adults have the right to go to hell or to ruin their lives any way they want.”
Laws against the cultivation, sale, or possession of marijuana are examples of government interference in the private lives of adults. Marijuana is, for most users, like alcohol: a way to relax and socialize. It should only be regulated, as alcohol is, for reasons of public safety.
The decriminalization of marijuana can help end the violence associated with its prohibition and will make it possible for the many people who are imprisoned for marijuana-related crimes to be released. And in a time when local, state, and federal governments in the United States are dealing with huge debts and budget deficits, this will save billions of dollars in prison and court costs.
Some other examples of government interference in the private lives of adults are laws that criminalize prostitution, homosexuality, assisted suicide, gambling, pornography, jaywalking, and other victimless acts.
Again, the principle to keep in mind is that government’s proper role is protecting individual rights, not protecting individuals from themselves. Restrictions on individual rights can only be justified if the exercise of the rights interferes with the rights of others.
As I mentioned earlier, America is a work-in-progress, not a finished product to be left untouched by future generations. And as America and the world have greatly changed since 1776, so some rights exist today that did not exist in 1776 and vice versa.
The rights of nature, which I have already discussed, are examples of rights that exist today but did not exist in 1776.
Another example is the right to basic health care. Basic health care in 1776 was affordable for the average family, but today only the wealthy can afford to pay for their own health care.
As some rights exist now that were not rights before, some past rights are not rights today. An example from America is the unqualified right to own and carry guns.
I will discuss gun rights and health care in more detail in a few moments.
First, I want to talk about the relative function of the various levels of government. Protecting rights should usually begin at the local level. If a local government does not or cannot protect its citizens’ rights—and its citizens include nature—then it is the duty of the regional government to act.
If the regional government does not or cannot protect its citizens’ rights, then it is the duty of the national government to act. An example of this is the American federal government acting to protect the civil rights of blacks during the 1950s and 1960s after local and state governments failed to perform their duties.
Another example from the United States involves disaster relief. Although most disasters occur within the borders of a state, disasters can overwhelm local and regional governments. FEMA—the Federal Emergency Management Agency—has been set up to support disaster relief efforts by local and regional governments.
A third example of the U.S. federal government acting because local and regional governments do not or cannot protect their citizens’ rights involves nature. The Endangered Species Act of 1973 was created to give federal protection to animals and plants that are in danger of becoming extinct.
If a national government does not or cannot protect its citizens’ rights, then it is the duty of the UN to act. The slowness of the UN to respond to the Rwandan genocide in 1994 may have cost hundreds of thousands of lives.
Why should the responsibility of protecting rights rest first at lower levels of government? Because it is at lower levels of government that public officials are most easily recalled or removed from office when they do not fulfill their duty or when they abuse their power or for any other reason that the people choose. Of course, what I am saying here assumes that a nation has a form of government which allows its citizens to select their leaders at every level of government.1
There are some areas where a national government should have the first responsibility to act to protect rights. These occur when a situation, danger or crisis requires a national, not a local or regional response.
One example from the United States is the health care crisis. Americans spend more money per person on health care than people in any other country and yet tens of millions of Americans are unable to get medical care except by going to the emergency rooms of hospitals.
I believe that the well-known faults of the American health care system—the high cost of insurance, the difficulty of people with pre-existing conditions to get insurance, and the high costs of health care to those without insurance—demonstrate that for-profit businesses cannot be counted on to provide affordable, quality basic health care to everyone.
But the federal government can keep health care affordable and available to all by maintaining a system that covers all citizens and residents. Most developed nations in the world are already doing this, but the United States and many developing nations are not.
Some other areas where a national government should have the first responsibility to act are immigration, airline safety, consumer product safety, food and drug safety, and gun control.
Now let’s talk about guns. Guns need national regulation in the United States because gun rights are mentioned in the Second Amendment to U.S. Constitution and because of the ability of gun owners to transport guns across state lines.
The American federal government should be protecting the right to life of its citizens by banning the private ownership of semi-automatic and automatic weapons. Some people will claim this is forbidden by the U.S. Constitution, but no one was thinking of these kinds of weapons when the Second Amendment to the Constitution was written because these kinds of weapons did not exist then.2
As there are areas national in scale where a national government should have the first responsibility to act to protect rights, so there are areas international in scale where the UN should have the first responsibility to act. These involve such things as world peace and the inequality of wealth—wealth must be regulated internationally because it can be moved across national borders in a few seconds by computers, cell phones, and similar devices.
The UN or another international body should also be involved in the regulation of the world’s financial system because what large banks and other financial institutions do in one country can affect the whole world.
There is a useful purpose for local and regional governments beyond the protection of rights. It is the providing of services when a monopoly is the most efficient or practical way of getting things done.
For example, the maintenance of roads and bridges, water and sewage systems, and most other parts of the infrastructure are tasks local or regional governments can do best. Local or regional governments should also be involved in public safety and the maintenance of libraries and parks.
Now I want to sum up what I have said here: The main purpose of government is protecting individual rights. Governments should not be interfering in the private lives of adults as long as adults respect the rights of others. Rights have changed since 1776 to include nature’s rights and the right to basic health care. Today, our rights do not include the unlimited right to own and carry guns.
Protecting rights is usually best done at the local level. But when a local government does not or cannot protect its citizens’ rights, then higher levels of government must act. And local or regional governments can perform a useful function by doing things that are best accomplished by a monopoly.
There is also a need for some government regulation to be initiated at the national level when nationwide situations, dangers, or crises must be dealt with. And likewise, the UN should have the first responsibility for dealing with some international situations, dangers, or crises.
If I had to state the proper purpose of government in one word, it would be “service.” Government should only exist to serve us; we don’t exist to serve government. If a government becomes incompetent, corrupt, or acts like it is our master instead of our servant, then that government needs to change or be changed.
An example of government acting as if it is our master instead of our servant comes from the New York City police, who are famous for what is known as perp walks—the parading of handcuffed suspects in front of cameras and reporters.
I can only conclude that the New York City police do this for the purpose of humiliating suspects. They may also be trying to show off their trophies, like the Roman generals who paraded prisoners of war before the people of ancient Rome.
Perp walks, which appear to have the approval of the American people, are a violation of the presumption of innocence until proven guilty principle in law and display a barbarity that should be below the American people.3
The overuse of handcuffs is not only a New York City police problem. Throughout the United States, police put people, including children, in handcuffs for minor offenses. Again, this is a violation of the presumption of innocence principle and can only be justified if the police believe the suspect is a danger to others.4
The transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau wrote the best description of a good state or government that I have ever read. I think his statement should be posted in plain view on the wall of every government office in the world:
There will never be a really free and enlightened state, until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.
1 In Appendix Two, I propose an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that makes the election of the President and the members of the House of Representatives, and the U.S. federal voting system in general, fairer and more democratic.
2 There are many nations in the world where guns are strictly regulated and the people in those nations are much safer from gun violence than people in the United States. See my humorous piece “Guns R Us” in Appendix One.
3 In France it is against the law to publish a photo of a person in handcuffs who has not been convicted of a crime.
4 While discussing the police in the U.S., I would like to say something about the criminal justice system:
In the United States, people who pose no threat to public safety, such as bad check writers and many individuals who have been convicted of drug crimes, are put in prison. California even has a “three strikes and you’re out” law which can send a person convicted of shoplifting or burglary to prison for life if he or she has had two prior “serious or violent” convictions, even if the convictions occurred when the individual was a juvenile. Some other U.S. states have adopted similar laws.
The American “get tough on crime” crusade that began in the 1970s has given the United States the world’s largest prison population and highest incarceration rate at a staggering cost in money and human misery.
It used to be that Europeans would come to the U.S. to study the American criminal justice system, but not anymore. Europeans today look with horror at the U.S. system with its harsh penalties and high incarceration rates. See “U.S. prison population dwarfs that of other nations” by Adam Liptak in The New York Times on April 23, 2008.
6. There are too many people on Spaceship Earth.
Maybe it would be easier for us to understand the severity of our environmental crisis if we think of ourselves as living on a spaceship. So I will say this: Because of the population explosion on Spaceship Earth—our spaceship’s population has more than doubled in my lifetime—our life support systems are in danger of failing. In plain language, we are consuming our food, oxygen, water, material, and energy supplies at an unsustainable rate.
The solution to this crisis requires that we do two things:
First, we must reduce our footprint or impact on the Earth.
This means that we must stop consuming so many of the fish in the oceans, lakes, and rivers; destroying the rain forests and other natural habitats; and killing endangered species. And we need to stop wasting food, water, materials, and energy.1
We must also stop adding CO2 to the atmosphere by shutting down all power plants that use coal or oil and by replacing gasoline-powered cars and light trucks with electric vehicles. All the electrical power we use should come from solar and wind energy and from other environmentally-friendly sources.
Now let’s talk about nuclear power. The events at Chernobyl and Fukushima, Japan have demonstrated what can happen when things go wrong at a nuclear power plant.
But even plants thought to be operating safely and out of earthquake and flood zones can pose a danger to the world: A report recently released by the U.S. Government Accounting Office says radioactive water is leaking into the soil at three-quarters of America’s nuclear power sites.2
Eventually, we must stop using nuclear power. As Masayoshi Son of Japan said recently, continued dependence on nuclear power “would be a sin against our children, grandchildren, and future generations.”3
We can end our use of nuclear power by not building any new nuclear power plants and by replacing existing plants with wind and solar farms.
I have read that wind and solar farms have some negative effects on the environment. Perhaps we can concentrate on widespread but small scale solar energy projects in homes, schools, and businesses instead. Or maybe wind farms should be built only in the oceans. I am sure that if we tackle these challenges with the energy that we put into warfare, solutions will be found.
The second thing we must do to end the environmental crisis is to reduce our population.
Studies have shown that generally the more education a woman has, the fewer children she will bear. Also, hundreds of millions of women in developing nations would like to use contraceptives but do not have access to them. By increasing educational opportunities for women in developing nations and by funding women’s health clinics in those nations, we may be able to prevent tens of millions of pregnancies every year.
But that will not be enough. In this century, in order to start reducing our population, probably a billion people will have to voluntarily limit their families to one or no children while most other people will have to limit their families to two or three children.
If these or similar population ideas are not implemented, ten billion people will be trying to survive on our little planet by the end of this century, according to the UN’s own estimates.
It is clear to me that developing a sustainable relationship with Spaceship Earth is necessary for our survival as a healthy and moral civilization.4
1 The UN has estimated that 30% of the food produced every year is wasted. If these UN estimates are correct, the amount wasted in rich countries is enough to feed sub-Saharan Africa. See the article “World wastes 30% of all food” by Ramy Inocencio on the CNN website on May 13, 2011.
2 Associated Press, “GAO: Leaks at Aging Nuke Sites Difficult to Detect,” by Jeff Donn, June 21, 2011.
3 The New York Times, “Japan’s Nuclear Future in the Balance,” May 9, 2011.
4 In the book Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered, published in 1975, E.F. Schumacher suggests that we return to small scale manufacturing that is enjoyable, meaningful, and dignified—“technology with a human face” in his words.
7. Power corrupts everyone who holds it.
Lord Acton wrote in 1887: “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
I believe everyone who holds power is corrupted by it: fathers, husbands, bosses, the police, politicians, priests, public officials, the wealthy—money is a form of power—and all leaders including emperors, generals, kings, popes, premiers, presidents, and prime ministers. Power also corrupts groups such as armies, corporations, governments, institutions, and nations. There may be some saints who wouldn’t be corrupted by power, but I don’t see any saints among the powerful today.
How does power corrupt people? First of all, power gives people opportunities to be greedy.
For example, politicians and public officials are offered bribes—known as campaign contributions when given to politicians in the United States—by corporations and wealthy individuals. Politicians, public officials, and military leaders in many countries can use their positions to line their pockets with public wealth and to award government contracts and offices to their families and friends, who also may use the opportunity to line their pockets with public wealth. In the United States, when politicians and public officials retire, they can take well-paid consulting and lobbying positions with the corporations they were previously regulating, a clear conflict of interest. And in many countries, the police, judges, and other public officials extort money from people and accept money in exchange for special treatment and other favors.
The fact that power opens the gates to wealth for politicians is bad enough in itself, but the greed of politicians also negatively affects the performance of their duties. For example, politicians in America have accepted money from corporations and wealthy individuals with the unspoken understanding that they would support free trade.
Over the last two decades, free trade has cost millions of American factory jobs and has contributed to the decline in the standard of living of American blue-collar workers. Free trade has had an especially devastating impact on black families in America, who had a disproportionate share of the jobs that were lost.
Now that America has shipped millions of manufacturing jobs overseas as a result of its free trade policies, the next danger facing American workers is that, due to advances in computers and telecommunications, millions of once well-paid service jobs—software development and legal work are two examples—will end up overseas.
A second way people are corrupted by power is through the arrogance that they develop when they acquire power. Arrogance or pride is one of the seven deadly sins and almost everyone has it to some degree, but when people combine arrogance with power they can become extremely dangerous to others.
I call this the arrogance of power. The arrogance of power is a moral blindness that leads people to believe they are better or smarter or wiser than others. It can also lead people to believe that they are above the law—that the rules don’t apply to them. In its worst form, the arrogance of power causes people to believe they can do no wrong because they are on a patriotic or divine mission.
The arrogance of power can be seen in the actions of the police here in New York City who search, harass, and humiliate young blacks and Hispanics for no reason except that they are black or Hispanic.
And in many countries of the world, police officers arrest and imprison people who have not committed any crime and beat, torture or otherwise abuse people to get confessions, extort money, or just out of spite. These police officers are acting as if they are above the law and are forgetting that their duty is to protect individual rights.
We can see the arrogance of power in the words and actions of George Bush and Dick Cheney from 2001-2009. Their election to the top two leadership positions in the most powerful nation in the world made it possible for them to believe that they were smarter and wiser than everyone else. In the case of George Bush, he also believed he was receiving guidance from God.
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