The most subtle aspect of fanaticism 

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Ascended Master Gautama Buddha through Kim Michaels, June 10, 2019. This dictation was given at a conference in Amsterdam, Holland.

I AM the Ascended Master Gautama Buddha. Sometimes people say that you save the best for last. In our case, we have saved the most difficult for last, in the sense that what I will try to expound upon in this discourse is the most subtle, the most difficult to grasp, aspect of fanaticism.

The question I will begin with is to have you look at the many, many people, both today and throughout history, who have gone into this fanatical mindset. They have defined some kind of cause based on some kind of worldview, some kind of “ism,” some kind of religion. They have been absolutely convinced that they were right, that their viewpoint had some absolute truth or some absolute authority, being given by God himself, or whatever people have used to give their viewpoint the particular sense of authority that made them feel it was epically important to get the world to conform to their viewpoint. Even in many cases, to the point where they were willing to kill other people and felt that it was justified by God that they killed these other people.

How is it possible that people can be so convinced about this? We have said before that today you can look back at some of the beliefs people had in previous ages and you clearly see the limitations of them. Therefore, you should be able to project that in your own time here, many people have these absolutist viewpoints and it is likely that in times to come, they will be seen as also being incomplete or primitive. It will be obvious to people why they are not absolute viewpoints, whereas to the people who are now trapped in the fanatical mindset, they are completely unable to see that their viewpoint is not absolute.

How is it possible that human beings can take a viewpoint that truly is not absolute but they elevate it to the status of being absolute? This is something that very few people, at least in the western world, have considered. You can see that if the democratic nations are to really move beyond this era of fanaticism that has dominated the earth for all of known history, then they need to come to an understanding of how this can be. How is it possible that human beings can convince themselves that an illusion is an absolute truth, that an incomplete understanding or view is some ultimate, final understanding?

Thinking an illusion is an absolute truth

If you look at western philosophers, going back to Aristotle and Plato and all the ones in between, very few have actually even considered the cause of this. I gave a teaching 2,500 years ago that can at least be a starting point. It is to be found in the Dhammapada today and it is the concept of the pairs—that there are always two pairs, two opposites, what we today call two dualistic polarities. I also gave the concept of the Four Noble Truths and the idea that life is suffering, that there is a Sea of Samsara that causes suffering. What I really wanted to say with these concepts, but which was difficult to express in words so long ago, was that the reason so many people experience life as suffering is that they have gone into a particular state of consciousness. This state of consciousness is dominated by these pairs of dualistic opposites. It is this state of consciousness that causes suffering, but how does it cause suffering? Well, it causes suffering because it causes people to go into a state of illusion.

Now, we may say that if you have a car, this is a particular piece of technology that is developed to make your life easier. It is developed in order to make it easier for you to get from point A to point B, however long the distance is. If the car is working well and if you are operating it correctly, using your car will be an easy experience—a comfortable, pleasant experience that will get you from point A to point B. However, if you are not operating your car correctly because you are in a state of ignorance of how the car actually functions, then your car can give you a very frustrating experience. If, as we said, you put the car in reverse and expect it to go forward, then it can be rather frustrating to get to work at rush hour. If you are driving backwards against the currents of all the other cars, then it is not going to be a whole lot of fun to try to get to work on time.

The reality here is that the earth, the material universe, can be considered as a piece of machinery. I am not saying it is a piece of machinery but for the sake of analogy, it can be considered as a piece of machinery, a piece of technology. We have talked before about the earth being a reality simulator. The earth is a piece of technology, it is designed to work a certain way. Now, you know that your car may not always function the way it is designed to do, but I can assure you that the material universe, planet earth, the physical realm, always works the way it is intended to work, the way it is designed to work. In other words, there is no fault possible on the part of the machinery.

I know that there are many, many people who have come up with the idea that something has gone wrong with God’s plan for the universe. They have used this to justify the fanatical mindset because these people have to help God make his universe work by killing other people. Regardless, I am telling you the absolute fact here: There is nothing wrong with the machinery on earth. It works the way it was designed to do. It is just like a computer, it can only operate based on its programming, it cannot deviate from the programming. Nothing has gone wrong here. The earth works the way it was designed to work.

Operating the earth from a state of ignorance

Why is it that people suffer on earth? It is because they are trying to operate the machinery of the earth from a state of ignorance. They are not operating the machinery the way it was designed to work, they are going against the basic design principles as we have described. For example, going against the very biological principles that you can observe by looking at the history of how species have evolved. It is attempting to go against the basic principles of the machinery, operating the machinery in a way it was not designed to operate. This is what causes suffering. This is what causes friction. This is what causes you not to get the results you want to get from the machinery.

This is a simple analogy. We can then build on it and say: “Well, what is it that has caused people to operate the machinery in a different way than it was intended?” It is that they have gone into a state of ignorance about how the machinery works. They do not understand how the machine works, they do not know which buttons to push. Therefore, they are pushing the wrong buttons and the machinery cannot give them the result they want. Why are they pushing the wrong buttons? Because they have gone into, not only a state of ignorance but this particular state of consciousness where they are actually doing the opposite of what the machinery is designed to do. They have gone into this state of what we call the dualistic state of consciousness that is dominated by two opposite polarities.

As a result of this, we could say that the machinery is designed to work a certain way. This is what I called the Middle Way. It is not the midpoint between two extremes, but there is a certain way the machine is designed to work and if you understand that, your experience of being on earth will not be frustrated.

Somewhere in what we might call the Middle Way, there is the correct workings of the machinery. The duality consciousness causes people to go towards two extremes. Again, the Middle Way is not the midpoint between the extremes but the extremes pull people away from the Middle Way. When you are pulled towards one extreme, you are adopting a mental image of how the machine is supposed to work according to your image. You think you know how the machine is supposed to work but you do not understand how the machine actually works. Your dualistic polarity (the pair towards which you have been polarized and including the other dualistic polarity), they do not give you a correct understanding of how the machine operates. Whether you are in this extreme, this dualistic polarity, or the other dualistic polarity, you are pulled away from a clear vision of how the machine actually operates.

Those seeking to deceive humankind

What is the characteristic of this dualistic state of consciousness? Naturally, you who are ascended master students know that we have given many teachings on this, but for the completeness of this book and the tools, I wish to give you at least some basic understanding of this. This is where it can be difficult to understand this without realizing that there is a certain consciousness, a certain type of beings, who are deliberately trying to deceive human beings in order to be able to control them. The reason it is important to understand this is that otherwise people tend to think (as many people do think) something has gone wrong with the machinery.

There must be a flaw in the design. Some cosmic accident happened and God’s intent was not fulfilled. That is why we now have to help God combat the devil by killing the people who are doing the works of the devil. Or you can even have materialists who think there is some kind of flaw in the design of nature. Therefore, they need to do genetic experiments and genetic mutations to improve the body. Or they need to help evolution along by purifying the species of these unfortunate elements. That is why you have the whole concept of Eugenics and selective breeding and purifying the race through the concentration camps and so on.

You see that, whether you are religious, whether you have a materialistic approach or a political approach, you can find ways to justify killing others if you think something has gone wrong. The only way to really free yourself from this idea that something has gone wrong with the actual workings of the machinery, is to realize that there are some beings who have an aggressive intent to pull humanity into these dualistic extremes.

You realize that it is not by accident that people have gone into the extremes, it is by design. Not necessarily intelligent design, I would rather call it unintelligent design, but definitely there is an aggressive intent to pull people into these dualistic polarities that causes the fanatical mindset.

Of course, this raises the question of why? We have given teachings on this that I do not want to go into here because I simply want to make an observation of human history and see that there has always been a small elite of people who are attempting to control and manipulate the broad population. This is an observation that anyone with a neutral approach can make from just looking at history. There is an intent to manipulate. It was not an accident that people stepped into duality. It is the result of a direct manipulation.

This means you can now realize that, even though people who are pulled into a dualistic polarity believe it is an absolute truth, it is truly an illusion. It is a lie. In many cases, it is a deliberate lie that is created in order (in many cases) to set one group of people in conflict with another group of people. If you actually look at history, you will see that in all cases where you have had these kinds of epic battles, epic conflicts, epic causes (such as the Nazi cause, to again use an obvious example here from Europe) you have had this dynamic that the people who were promoting the cause were claiming that it was all done for a beneficial purpose. There was a reason why the Jews had to be killed and it was to benefit the human race or some other cause, some epic cause.

The rest of this dictation, along with an invocation based on the dictation, is found in the book: Ending the Era of Fanaticism

Copyright © 2019 Kim Michaels