Listen to a recording of this dictation (subscribers only)

Ascended Master Gautama Buddha through Kim Michaels, May 23, 2021. This dictation was given during the 2021 Webinar for Europe – Ending the Era of Ideology.

I AM the Ascended Master Gautama Buddha. I have told you about the five elements that are traditionally seen as being part of ideologies. The first one is that there is an explanation put forth of how life works. Then there is a program for social/political change, change in society and then, as we have talked about, there is … (long silence). What you see here is an example of what I talked about in my last discourse, of going beyond thinking, going beyond the thinking of the linear mind where I caused the messenger’s mind to go blank where there was no thought, just the experience. This is what you all need to be open to in order to escape duality: an experience of the linear mind coming to an impasse, to a point of stillness where the mind cannot continue, the mind cannot continue being linear, step by step by step. You will not escape duality through the linear mind because you used the linear mind to go into duality.

You understand – perhaps – you glimpse perhaps, that in order to truly grasp the message that I am seeking to give here, you need to be aware that whenever a message is given in words, you tend to interpret it through the linear mind. If you only interpret the message through the linear mind, you will not grasp the message. There is an old anecdote that was told in the Summit Lighthouse about the difference between various masters and their approach. The story was that El Morya, as he was called at the time, and Kuthumi were both charged with ascending a mountain to meet a master there, get a message and then bring the message back down. El Morya who was the master of the blue ray of power charged ahead, went straight up the mountain got the message, went straight down. But when he came down, he found that he had not retained the message. Kuthumi took longer to get up the mountain and on the way down he stopped to smell the flowers, to listen to the birds. But when he came back down, he had retained the message. This is an example, an illustration, of the linear mind versus the intuitive, spherical mind.

I know very well that I have started giving these discourses in a somewhat linear way. There are steps, there are elements and if you look at this, this is what the world always does. It wants to give a linear explanation for everything. It seeks to analyze, it seeks to come up with some cause-effect sequence. In doing so, you are tying people’s minds into this linear, rational, analytical approach. This is the approach behind most ideologies, they take you step by step.

Why an ideology cannot explain everything

The first element described was to attempt to explain what people cannot explain themselves or what the old ideology, the dominant ideology, cannot explain. You do grasp – I assume – that when you go into duality, you cannot explain everything because in duality you are taking a particular viewpoint, a particular foundation that you take for granted and say: “This cannot be questioned and on this foundation we build our ideology.” Because you are taking one aspect and not questioning it, it is a guarantee that you cannot explain everything. No ideology has ever been able to explain everything. Now, for that matter no teaching given in words can ever explain everything because you must also experience. That is why we have consistently in this dispensation talked about the need to go beyond understanding and seek a direct, intuitive experience.

The first element is the explanation, then there is the program for change or what must happen—not necessarily only in society, it can even be on a cosmic level as this epic fight between good and evil, God and the devil and the fight for the souls of humanity. The third element is that the implementation of this program is explained as a struggle because some people object to it, some people resist. You have now gradually taken people in a linear way from seeking to explain, setting up this carrot dangling in front of their nose of the wonderful changes that will come about as a result of implementing this ideology. Then, you also have divided those people who accept your ideology into seeing themselves as being in a separate category from those people who resist the ideology.

Ideologies encourage fanaticism

As the next step, the fourth step or element in an ideology there is this: The ideology is not merely seeking to persuade people into believing something; it is seeking to attract some people who are willing to make a greater commitment, a commitment that goes beyond intellectual understanding and mere belief. It is a commitment to a cause, to the cause of implementing the ideology by doing whatever is necessary to overcome the resistance to the ideology. You see that gradually people are being taken by an ideology towards the point where they go through a change, not just in their minds but in their four lower bodies. They literally come to see themselves as having a different form of identity, an identity that is defined by their ideology. You are a Christian. You are a Muslim. You are a revolutionary. You are one of the true faithful communists, the party elite. Then, you have the intellectual level where you have now used the intellect’s ability to filter out information that does not validate your ideology and to focus on information that does validate your ideology. Then, you have people decide that from this point on they do not need to question the ideology because: “It is true, it must be true, it can only be true, so there is no need to question it.”

Then, you have the emotional component where people begin to feel very strongly that they are the right kind of people, they belong to the elite, to the select few that are part of implementing this great program of change that will have some epic importance on earth. Of course, then comes the fact that when you have shifted their identity, their mental mind and their emotions, you will also have shifted their actions. In many cases these people who have made the commitment are willing to do anything they are told, as long as they believe it furthers the cause and that it is necessary in order to further the cause. This of course first of all means that now they are willing to force others, they are willing to even kill others if that is necessary.

This is as far as the world goes. It talks about an ideology seeking to attract those who are willing to make that commitment. What is really going on in this process is that an ideology seeks to attract a group of committed people who have been turned into fanatics. You take some of our teachings on fanaticism and you will see that the true followers of any ideology, be it a religion or political ideology or even scientific Materialism, have become fanatics. Not all of them are willing to kill others in order to further their cause, but they have still gone into this fanatical mindset where they are not willing to question the ideology, they do not think it needs to be questioned. It is, as Mother Mary said about fanaticism: “You have an idea that you do not think can ever be expanded upon—it is absolute, it is the final truth, you do not need to question it, you do not need to look beyond it.” This is the broadest definition of fanaticism. A more narrow definition is that you are willing to kill in order to further your cause, but even those who are not willing to kill can still be in the fanatical mindset. This is of course the ultimate outcome of an ideology: to create this group of fanatics that are willing to do anything in order to force the ideology upon a society or upon the entire planet. You can see for example, when you look at Nazism, how they attracted these groups of very devoted fanatical people who became part of the SS, the Gestapo, the Nazi apparatus and they were absolutely fanatical about forcing Nazism upon not only German society but other societies.

The architects behind an ideology

There were other groups of people who were not quite as fanatical but who were still pulled into this vortex of energy that was created by the Nazi ideology. You saw in the Soviet Union how there was a group of people that were willing to do anything to force communism upon not only Russia but other nations. Their ultimate goal was to force it upon the world. What you often see in these fanatical people is that you have two groupings. You have the architects, the ones that are in the leadership, they are often very intellectual and they are the ones who are defining not only what the ideology is but also how it needs to be implemented. Many of these are, as I talked about, the intellectuals who are looking at everything from a distance. They are sitting in their ivory tower, whether it is the Kremlin or the Nazi high command, and they are looking at society or they are looking at a battlefield and they are making decisions.

Now, in a sense they know that this decision might lead to war. This particular battle might cause thousands of their own soldiers to be killed, thousands of the enemy to be killed. Or this particular program of implementing or creating these camps will cause millions of people to die. They know this, they understand this but because they are intellectuals, they are centered in the mental mind, they see it all at a distance. They are not really thinking they are killing flesh-and-blood human beings because they have convinced themselves that the Jews, or those who oppose communism, are not really human beings like themselves. Therefore, they do not deserve the same consideration, they do not even have the same rights. They can set aside what we have called the basic humanity and implement these sweeping programs that they know will lead to the killing of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or millions of people and it does not affect them whatsoever. It is like they are moving chess pieces around on a chessboard and they have no more feelings involved (because their intellects, their mental minds, blocks their feelings) than if you move chess pieces on a chessboard.

The executioners behind an ideology

Now, of course you can clearly see throughout history that these architects of ideology, they cannot implement the ideology, they cannot go out there and do the dirty work of forcing that ideology upon others, so they need another group of people that have made this commitment, this absolute commitment to the cause, and they are the executioners, those who not only execute the ideology but also execute the people who resist the ideology. You see in the Nazi regime how you had these leaders in the party apparatus, some of them were in the military, some of them were not even military leaders. If you looked at these people individually, you would see that many of them were highly intelligent people, they were even quite aware. They were certainly very, very capable of using their intellectual faculties to see the shortcomings of Nazism, the contradictions of Nazi ideology. But they were not using their faculties to do this because they had made the decision that the Nazi ideology had to be true, that Hitler had to be right and therefore they did not need to question this.

Then, you will look at the people who were part of the SS, the Gestapo, the prison guards in the concentration camps, many of the army commanders at lower levels and they were the executioners. They did not have the intellectual capacity to see the contradictions of Nazism but they were not concerned about it. They did not really understand Nazi ideology. They did not really care about understanding it because these are people who were centered in the emotional and physical levels. They did not question the orders. They had made the commitment and for them the commitment meant: “I do whatever I am told from the leaders. I have made a commitment to obey the leaders and execute the orders that they tell me to execute, and execute the people that they tell me to execute, or whatever they tell me to do.” You see here that there is a group of people who do not question the ideology, they are the leaders, then there is a group of people who do not question the leaders. They do not question the ideology either, but primarily for them it is a matter of not questioning the leaders.

We have said before that you and all people have a certain basic humanity. You have a sense that there are certain things you are not supposed to do to other people, such as killing other people. You have the instinct, the instinctual urge, not to kill other human beings. Once people make that commitment to the ideology, those instincts, that basic humanity, is set aside. Not necessarily towards all people but certainly towards the people who resist the ideology. You have here a group of leaders, the architects, who believe they do not need to question the ideology, or question the person who ultimately defined the ideology whether it is Hitler, Karl Marx, Mao or whomever. Then, you have the executioners who believe they do not have to question the architects. Normal considerations concerning what you do to other people do not come into play for either of these groups.

In most cases, certainly the architects have not lost all humanity, and you can see an example we have used before that the commander of the Auschwitz death camp could spend his day at work carrying out the execution of thousands of children. But then, when he was done with work, he would go home to his house in the camp and there he would play like a normal family father with his own children—and he saw no contradiction there. He saw no problem switching from one role to the next.

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