Theos-Talk Archives (February 2005 Message tt00078)

--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, Jerry Hejka-Ekins <jjhe@c...> 
wrote:

 

> Clearly, the Bush agenda is out to 
> destroy the fundamental principle of the separation of church and 
state 
> so carefully established by our founders. This "Theocracy Watch" 
video 
> does a great job in documenting how this "Christian 
Reconstructionism" 
> came about, who are the players in and out of Government, their 
game 
> plan, how they rally support to their cause, and what bills they 
are 
> passing through Congress. 

 
> Behind all of this political manipulation is the clever use of 
rhetoric 
> in order to re-establish modernist values of blind obedience to 
the 
> political and social hierarchies and destroy the postmodernist 
advances 
> of the last forty years: i.e. racial equality, women's rights, 
etc. 
> Unfortunately, those who have been apathetic to politics either 
through 
> discouragement, or just feel that politics is beneath them, or are 
in a 
> state of denial and dismiss all of this as "conspiracy theories" 
part of 
> the problem, because their apathy (and consequential ignorance) 
are now 
> inadvertently instrumental in enabling the Christian 
Reconstructionists 
> to turn this country into a theocracy and take away the human 
rights we 
> have fought so long for.  


Thanks for your comments Jerry. After seeing the video and reading 
the posts commenting on it here, I am left with a (probably) naive 
question in my mind: what happened to the legacy of Martin Luther 
King, Jr and the Civil Rights Movement, the strong Feminist 
Movement, the Fist Amendment, the Counterculture, among others?

How come a nation that with fierce and courageous struggle enshrined 
the fundamental principle of individual freedom under the law, has 
now become exposed to the rule of a political, economic and 
religious oligarchy that is out to destroy everything America has 
stood for? 

Can you identify the historical turning point that has led to this? 
Or has Christian ultra-fundamentalism always been that strong and 
influential in America? 

It seems virtually impossible for two other traditional democracies 
in the world - England and France, for example - to undergo a 
similar process: a theocratic domination. People would be out in the 
streets in their millions at the very first sign of it and there 
could civil wars. On the other hand, a civil war in the US today is 
unthinkable as a Christian ultra-fundamentalist already has his 
hands on the WMDs codes and controls.

Is it possible that HPB could have foreseen this developments, as 
early as 1889? The following are excerpts from her article "The New 
Cycle" (for the full article see:

http://www.austheos.org.au/topics/thenewcycle.htm)


"We have already said elsewhere, in The Theosophist, that "born in 
the United States of America the Theosophical Society was 
constituted on the model of its Mother Land." The latter, as we 
know, has omitted the name of God from its Constitution, for fear, 
said the Fathers of the Republic, that the word might one day become 
the pretext for a State religion; for they desired to grant absolute 
equality to all religions under the law, so that each form would 
support the State, which in its turn would protect them all."

"We must prepare and study truth under every aspect, endeavoring to 
ignore nothing, if we do not wish to fall into the abyss of the 
unknown when the hour shall strike. It is useless to leave it to 
chance and await the intellectual and psychic crisis which is 
preparing, with indifference, if not with crass disbelief, saying 
that at the worst the rising tide will carry us naturally towards 
the shore; for it is very likely that the tidal wave will cast up 
nothing but a corpse. The strife will be terrible in any case 
between brutal materialism and blind fanaticism on the one hand, and 
philosophy and mysticism on the other - mysticism, that veil of more 
or less translucency which hides the eternal Truth."

"But although the man of today may be a fanatic, a skeptic, or a 
mystic, he must become thoroughly convinced that it is useless for 
him to struggle against the two moral forces today unleashed and in 
supreme contest. He is at the mercy of these two adversaries, and no 
intermediary force is capable of protecting him. It is but a 
question of choice, whether to let himself be carried along without 
a struggle on the wave of mystical evolution, or to writhe against 
the reaction of moral and psychic evolution, and so find himself 
engulfed in the Maelström of the new tide. At the present time, the 
whole world, with its centres of high intelligence and human 
culture, its focal points of political, artistic, literary, and 
commercial life, is in turmoil; everything is shaking and crumbling 
in its movement towards reform. It is useless to remain blind, it is 
useless to hope that anyone can remain neutral between the two 
contending forces; one has to choose either the one or the other, or 
be crushed between them. The man who imagines he has chosen freedom, 
but remains submerged in that boiling caldron, foaming with foul 
matter called social life, most terribly betrays his own divine 
Self, a betrayal which will blind that Self in the course of a long 
series of future incarnations. All of you who hesitate on the path 
of Theosophy and the occult sciences, who are trembling on the 
golden threshold of truth — the only one within your grasp, for all 
the others have failed you, one after another — squarely face the 
great Reality which is offered you. It is to mystics only that these 
words are addressed, for them alone have they any importance; for 
those who have already made their choice they are vain and useless. 
But you, Occultists, Kabbalists and Theosophists, you well know that 
a Word, old as the world, though new to you, has been sounded at the 
beginning of this cycle, and the potentiality of which, unperceived 
by others, lies hidden in the sum of the digits of the years 1 8 8 
9; you well know that a note has just been struck which has never 
been heard by mankind of this era; and that a New Idea is revealed, 
ripened by the forces of evolution. This Idea differs from 
everything that has been produced in the nineteen century; it is 
identical, however, with the thought that has been the dominant tone 
and the keynote of every century, especially the last — absolute 
freedom of thought for humanity."

"For all the past centuries our nineteenth has been the most 
criminal. It is criminal in its frightful selfishness, in its 
skepticism which grimaces at the very idea of anything beyond the 
material; in its idiotic indifference to all that does not pertain 
to the personal self, more than any of the previous centuries of 
ignorant barbarism and intellectual darkness. Our century must be 
saved from itself before its last hour strikes. For all those who 
see the sterility and folly of an existence blinded by materialism 
and ferociously indifferent to the fate of their neighbour, this is 
the moment to act; now is the time for them to devote all their 
energies, all their courage and all their efforts to a great 
intellectual reform. This reform can only be accomplished by 
Theosophy, and, let us add, by Occultism or the wisdom of the 
Orient. The paths that lead to it are many; but the wisdom is one." 


I am afraid.


Pedro