Ideology and the rational mind

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Ascended Master Gautama Buddha through Kim Michaels, May 22, 2021. This dictation was given during the 2021 Webinar for Europe – Ending the Era of Ideology.

I AM the Ascended Master Gautama Buddha. I know that traditionally I am the one who gives the last dictation at these events. There is of course no natural or cosmic law that says I cannot give the first dictation.

I want you to realize that the reason we can give this conference on Ending the Era of Ideology is because so many of you have been willing to set the groundwork by participating in our previous conferences on Dictatorships, Fanaticism and Elitism. Also, so many of you have used the books and the invocations that have been created based on these previous conferences. By making the calls you have set the stage whereby there is now an opening in the collective consciousness, so that the more creative people (the more constructive people, the ones in the top 10%) are now more open to this underlying topic of ideology.

Ideology is connected to dictatorships, fanaticism and elitism

Naturally, there is a connection between ideology and dictatorships, fanaticism and elitism. There will be some overlap between what we have said before and what we will say now, so that we can complete this very intricate, very complex and very subtle picture of how the fallen beings have used all means available to them to manipulate the people on earth.

Truly, we might say that behind most dictatorships there is some form of ideology. As we have said before, a dictator cannot suppress an entire population through physical means alone. There must be some psychological component, some belief that causes people to submit to the dictator. Likewise, what is it that causes fanaticism? It is in most cases some form of idea, some form of ideology. Of course, what is it that allows an elite to exist and to either control the population in an obvious way, or to control them in a subtle, hidden way? It is again some form of ideology, some form of thought system, some form of belief system.

Now, what then is ideology? Well, the broadest use of the word ideology of course means the study of ideas. However, most people, when they hear the word “ideology,” they think about specific ideologies, specific thought systems, specific belief systems. 

There has for quite some time (several centuries in the western world) been a certain debate among philosophers and thinkers about what ideology is and what it means. There is a certain irony here in the sense that when many people hear the word ideology, the first ideology that comes to mind is communism or Marxism. This is ironic because Karl Marx himself used the word ideology in a derogatory way to refer to a set of ideas that the ruling class used to suppress the masses. The irony of course being that his ideas, the ideas that he brought forth, were very quickly turned into an ideology where the ruling class of the party elite used the ideas of Karl Marx to suppress the population. He might, in his outer mind, have believed that these ideas were given to liberate the population from an elite, but they of course were very quickly used by a new elite, an aspiring power elite, to control the population even more strictly than previous power elites had done. 

You see here that in many cases there is a benevolent intent behind creating an ideology, or even spreading an ideology. It is clear that many of the people who have brought forth a new ideology and many of the people who have believed in it and promoted it, they have not been fallen beings. They have not had an evil, selfish or self-centered intent of controlling, dominating, suppressing or even destroying other people. Nevertheless, you will see from history that in many cases, regardless of the good intentions, ideologies have been used to suppress and control people.

The five elements of an ideology

Now, if you look at various definitions of ideology, you can find some that say that there are five elements to an ideology: 

The first element is a theory or system that seeks to explain certain things about how life works. 

The second element is that there is a program of social change or political change that needs to happen. 

The third element is that the fulfillment of this program is portrayed as a struggle. 

The fourth element is that there is a call for people who have commitment to the cause, to join this cause and to support the cause. 

Then finally, there is an appeal, a broad appeal, to the general population but there is also a portrayal that there is a certain group of people who are the only ones who can really implement the program. This can often be intellectuals, but it can be other types of elites.

Now, I would like to comment here on the first of these elements. There is a theory that seeks to explain something. What is it that it seeks to explain? What is it on earth that needs to be explained? You may look at various ideologies and you might say that Christianity can be considered an ideology because it did, and does, seek to explain how life works, how life was created. You may look at Marxism and say that it also seeks to explain how life works, at least life on earth. There is a certain distinction made by many philosophers between ideologies that are strictly materialistic or political, and that deal only with how the physical, material life works. Then, there are ideologies that have a religious element, and that also seek to explain what is beyond the material world and how the material world was created. Nevertheless, both of these have an element in common that they seek to explain, they seek to explain how something works that relates to people’s lives.

Ideologies seek to explain the cause of dissatisfaction

You may say that many of these ideologies take different approaches, they focus on different things, different elements. Karl Marx focused on the class struggle, Christianity focuses on God and how God created the universe. Regardless of this, there is an attempt to explain something about people’s everyday lives. What is that something? Well, one way to explain it is to reach back to the teaching I gave 2,500 years ago about the Four Noble Truths.

What is the first Noble Truth? Well, it is normally translated as “life is suffering.” The original word that was used was actually “duhkha.” Duhkha can be translated as suffering but it actually has a much broader meaning. If you take it to the broadest meaning and translate that into a modern English word, you can say that life is “dissatisfaction.” Life is not satisfying.

You can look at the vast majority of people on earth and you will see that they are not satisfied with their lives. There is something in their lives that causes a certain dissatisfaction. They are not at peace. They feel perhaps that something is missing. They feel perhaps that something is wrong, something is preventing them from living the life they would like to live, something is obstructing them, something is restricting them and perhaps even controlling and suppressing them. Really, the most broad, the most basic, element that any ideology seeks to explain is why life is dissatisfaction, why the vast majority of people are dissatisfied. This is what an ideology addresses and attempts to explain.

The claim to have absolute authority

Now, this means we can look at how this is explained. I would like to start by going to a more universal, a more broad, consideration. What does it actually mean when something is being attempted to be explained? What is an explanation? Where does it come from? What is the aim of an explanation? Here is the crucial distinction. The simple fact of life on earth is that an explanation will do no good if a majority of the population cannot grasp it. In other words, if you bring forth an ideology with the intention to create change in society, then you need an explanation that most people can grasp in their present state of consciousness. This of course – right there – is the crux of the matter, as they say. This is the real turning point, the real key understanding when it comes to ideology.

There are many of the thought systems you see on earth that will claim that their explanation has a supernatural origin. Most religions claim this. Some philosophers even claim the same. It may not necessarily be a revelation directly from God as some religions claim. It can also be that there is, as some philosophers claim, some universal principles or natural laws that their explanation is based on. These are invariable. Whether they were created by God or whether they just arose spontaneously when the universe arose (however that is explained to have happened), there is this claim that there is some infallible authority behind the explanation given by this particular ideology. This is the first thing that people need to begin to question.

 Naturally, you could say that this sounds like a contradiction because I am claiming to be an ascended master speaking through a human messenger. I am claiming that I am a spiritual being living in a higher energetic realm than the material world on earth. I am claiming that I have risen beyond all human ego, all human subjectivity and idiosyncrasy, and therefore I have a distinctly higher grasp of how the world works than human beings on earth. I am claiming that I am speaking these words through a human messenger and therefore it would seem that I am claiming that these words have absolute authority. As we have attempted to explain through this messenger (which is the first time we have been able to do this through any messenger) over the last couple of years, this is not the case. We are not attempting to set forth an absolute teaching that can never change. 

We are in a state of consciousness that is beyond the state of consciousness of anyone in embodiment. We are able to speak fairly directly through this messenger because his consciousness does not color or obstruct our message, or at least it does so very little. Nevertheless, we are not able to say absolutely anything we want because what is our purpose for speaking? It is to reach out to at least the most constructive, the most creative, the most self-aware people and give them something that they can grasp at their present level of consciousness.

The purpose of progressive revelation

If we were to give a message that no one in embodiment could grasp, what would be the point of giving the message? There would be no point, would there? We are not seeking to bring forth a teaching (as indeed some false hierarchy imposters do through various channelers) that basically nobody can understand. We are not seeking to project that even though people cannot understand the message, those who at least are willing to study it and follow it are clearly more advanced than those who are not. This is not our goal. This is not our aim. We have, for a very long time now, been trying to discourage this form of spiritual pride in our students, which we have seen in many spiritual movements, past and present.

What we do is a very carefully calculated release based on our studies of the collective consciousness, our studies of the individual consciousness of most of the people who are the more creative, the more open-minded people. Then, we release something that is measured for this particular level of consciousness, this particular configuration that is there right now. Our aim is to raise that consciousness up so that we can in the future release a higher teaching. As you see, this teaching on ideology is a higher teaching than the teachings on dictatorships, fanaticism and elitism.

This is the entire idea behind progressive revelation. When you understand this, you can of course look back at previous times. You can look back for example at the Christian claim that the Bible, the New Testament, is some ultimate, absolute revelation from God, the “Word of God.” You can see that even if the New Testament had been directly dictated by Jesus or another ascended being, which of course it was not, then it would still not be the ultimate revelation because it could only have been given based on the level of the collective consciousness at the time and the level of the consciousness of those who were able to receive something about Jesus and his teachings.

You can go back 2,500 years to the time of the Buddha, and there are many Buddhists who believe that what I gave was the ultimate spiritual teaching that could ever be given on this planet. This of course is not the case. I gave a teaching based on not only the collective consciousness of the planet, but the collective consciousness in the area where I was in physical embodiment. It was based on how many people there were that were ahead of the collective consciousness and therefore able to grasp a teaching that could stand for a long time.

Now, you understand that when we give a teaching at a certain time, we give that teaching for the most evolved people of that time. Of course, that means that there are many, many people (the vast majority of people at a lower level of consciousness) that cannot grasp the teaching at the time. As time moves on, more and more people will be able to grasp it. A teaching that was given 2,500 years ago or 2,000 years ago has not become obsolete because there are still people who need that teaching. This is why you see there are still people who follow the Buddhist teaching and the Christian teaching and other teachings. They are at the level of consciousness where they need it.

There is of course always the danger that a teaching given can be interpreted in various ways and therefore take on an entire culture that is beyond what was originally given. This is not progressive revelation and therefore is in fact a dead end that can keep people trapped for a longer period of time than is desirable, but that is another matter. The reality here is that there never has been, there is not now and there never will be any ideology, any system of thought and belief that would be an ultimate truth, an ultimate form of revelation.

 

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

 

Copyright © 2021 Kim Michaels