Theos-Talk Archives (May 2006 Message tt00714)

Dear Friends, 

 
The process of "scapegoating"  is an important element to understand the connection between Nazism and the Vatican.  A link  which, in a way, the movie "The Da Vinci Code" helps to explore.     
 
Both Nazism and the Vatican used Jews (and for  some time  Communists) as  scapegoats.  Jews were scapegoats to Vatican for some 15 centuries.  
 
But scapegoating can be used by Communists as they fight Capitalism,  or by New Age groups against rival institutions,   and by Christians and Moslems against each other. 

It  is used within any  unbalanced family.  In fact, scapegoating is a possibility everywhere, any time, for lower selves. 
 
Psychiatrist M. Scott Peck, author of the best-seller “The Road Less Traveled”, wrote a book about human evil called “The People of  The Lie”, in which he examines the process of scapegoating which produces the sense of “enemies”. 
 
Scott Peck writes:
 
“Scapegoating works through a mechanism psychiatrists call projection. Since the evil  [ persons ], deep down, feel themselves to be faultless, it is inevitable that when they are in conflict with the world they will invariably perceive  the conflict as the world’s fault.  Since they must deny their own badness, they must perceive others as bad. They  ‘project’ their own  evil into the world. They never think of themselves as evil; on the other hand, they consequently see much evil on others.  (...)” 
 
“(...)  Strangely enough, evil people are often destructive because they are attempting to destroy evil. The problem is that they mistake the locus of the  evil.  Instead of destroying others they should be destroying the sickness within themselves. As life often threatens their image of self-perfection, they are often busily engaged in hating and destroying  that life  – usually in the name of righteousness.  The fault, however,  may not be so much that they hate life as that they to NOT hate the sinful part of themselves.” 
 
Religious structures --  not only the Vatican -- often use scapegoating mechanisms in order to produce a sense of collective security, or a short-legged “relief from evil” among its followers.  For centuries, the Vatican had to torture and  kill innocent people to keep its centralized power. 
 
In the 19th century, H. P. Blavatsky was also a scapegoat of collective ignorance structures.  Her “death” was emotional and political, though, befo e being physical. 
 
Many an Initiate has had to play this same role, whenever  they come out  to challenge the mechanisms of collective ignorance. The legend of Jesus Christ’s Crucifixion describes the general  lines of such a process, also experienced  by St. Germain, Cagliostro, Giordano Bruno, St. John of the Cross, etc. 
 
In the 20 th century, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and other bloody dictators used Scapegoating as a social and political-military tool which also needed the persecution and killing of ‘weaker enemies’  to maintain its ‘efficiency’.  
 
Nazism and the Vatican have several things in common,. One of them is the process of ascribing absolute perfection to an absolute leader -- the Pope or the ‘Fuhrer’. In order to better serve  and adore  that false “perfect being’, the Absolute Authority, people develop an utter despise for those who do not submit to the centralized power. Then they have a false sense of “sharing that absolute power” and feel themselves strong by vicarious mechanisms. 
 
But scapegoating is also a psychological and emotional device used by individuals and by smaller groups of individuals.  It is an unwillingness to fight one’s one faults and shortcomings. It is a spiritual failure. 
 
Higher self, higher manas, dissolves  this kind of dualistic and conflictive perception, and true martial arts also go beyond it. The book “The Art of War” is inspired by  Philosophical Taoism, and Bodhidharma is said to have invented  Kung-fu, the martial art. 
 
Higher manas develops where there are both contrast and synthesis. It grows where we can find  diversity in unity,  that is,  democracy,  or brotherhood.  
 
Hence the creation in 1875 of the theosophical movement. It has been conceived as a “sangha” which is open  to diversity and contrast, and not attached to uniformity, or to one single authority. It is an universal sangha, a universal community which shows and studies the unity underlying life’s diversity and conflict. 
 
Best regards,  Carlos Cardoso Aveline. 
 
NOTE:
 
(1) “People of the Lie”, M. Scott Peck, M.D., Arrow Edition, 1990, London, 309 pp., see pp. 82-83. 
 
 
ooooooooooooooooo


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