Schizophrenia, and collective schizophrenia, are the diseases of choice for the New Age. A schizophrenic is someone who, at a basic level, rejects the reality of human life shared by all other human beings. In its place he/she constructs an alternative reality within which to exist. Because the persons entire life and self-worth becomes dependent upon that construction, he/she must cling to it, defending it from all onslaughts, and will make up any statement, however unconnectable to verifiable evidence, that will keep his/her world intact.
When the belief system is shared by a segment of the population at any one time through that strange way that ideas have of becoming suddenly popular--allied to unconscious psychic events and our media--the schizophrenia becomes collective. And one’s perception of reality is greatly strengthened by social consensus. This is a form of mass hypnosis similar to what often can happen in hypnotherapy when people “remember” past lives or that they were abused. As I told alien abduction specialist and therapist/hynotherapist John Mack, anyone who goes to a hypnotherapist who specailizes in alien abductions has already been hypnotised before he/she ever enters the office.
What these beliefs have in common is that they are all of something non-physical. No one can prove them with the senses of sight, touch, hearing. Nor can they be disproved. Therefore they are always open to doubt or possibility in our minds. They are different from statements that could be readily verified, such as "a space craft will land in Washington, D.C. this month" or "Mr. P. S. will drop dead within a year" or "I will take you on a visit to the people under Mt. Shasta." But then, if these things were to happen, we would no longer be talking about schizophrenia but a very basic change in our collective idea of physical reality. And the New Age doesn't have the power for that.
What is also true about most of the people expressing these sorts of beliefs is that they tend to only believe themselves. The person from Venus does not necessarily believe in ley lines, particularly if they do not fit into the construct of reality that being a Venutian requires. There are many people claiming to speak to God/ess. But the message that each gets seems to be entirely unique and specialized and often suggests an entire dissimilarity to the messages of all the many others. And each person is totally convinced. For a vision must be whole and self-evident. Total. Why, if a vision is the ultimate truth about the universe and from "the source," is there so much disagreement and non-concurence?
And yet, we might ask, if someone from Venus met someone who lives beneath Mt. Shasta, what would they talk about? What do they have in common? What are they both seeking, trying to express? In their own particular ways?
And we also know of the visionary-prophet tradition, so important in Judeo-Christianity. What distinguishes the holy prophet, who may claim to be the son of God, from the non-prophet? Is it truth rather than disease when it is written down in a book thousands of years old? And is it disease when the person is living among us presently? What if a lecturer or acquaintance claimed to have turned water to wine, or to have spoken to a burning bush, or that an angel had given him sacred golden plates? Would you believe and trust him? Or would you think "this guy's bananas?"
Are there two things: called a true vision and a false vision? And how can we in Circle of the Earth know with certainty that we speak the truth, that we are not just off-the-wall and full of wishful thinking? All of us need to go to spirit optometrists for true vision tests. I know that I do. I know that at times I doubt myself I know that what I think and want and feel must be related to my repugnance with this world. And yet, I know that the first step towards sanity is to doubt one's sanity. I know that what I claim is as strange as the claims of many. To say that I came here 8 thousand years ago from somewhere else, as a part of a group, or that certain things will happen in the distant future are not statements that I can verify with physical evidence. When I say that I SEE the “power that is the real nature of things,” many who cannot think that I am lying or deluded.
If I say that in 40 to 100 years the human species, or much of it, will perish, is that my anger and disappointment speaking? I know that there are many things about my species that I despise, and I fervently work for its change. I pray for its change. Yet, I also know there is a fine line--a balance, a connection--between the forces at work in the universe and the minds of we creatures who are in part the instruments of those intentions. And will those intentions not work, if we do not believe it?
So, for myself, for Circle of the Earth, for claimants in general, we need to establish some criteria of validity. I believe there are criteria, although they must remain somewhat subjective:
1. Does the person making the claim have self-awareness? Insight into his/her own psychological process? Can they be objective enough to question their own personal motives for what they say? Have they doubted themselves, asked "what do I have to gain by saying this?" Any of us living in a universe as immense and mysterious as ours who claims to know absolutely what it is all about is operating from a level of personal subjectivity.
2. Is there any physical, material evidence of power? Or is it fantasy? Do the predictions come true? How precise and consistent are they? Does the psychic deliver as promised?
If I go to a healer whom I do not know well, who makes claims, I always ask: "If you do not cure me, will you give me my money back?" I don't consider this cynical or unfair. Because what I am really asking the person is: How much confidence do you have in your own self as a healer? And, more specifically, do you believe that you can heal me? Healing has a lot to do with belief. If this person does not believe in themselves, I cannot believe in them--a necessity to the healing process. It also may tell me something about the personal motives of the person. Whether it comes from a true spiritual level.
When someone comes to me for a healing, I always ask them: "How much would you be willing to pay me if I could heal you of this? How much would that be worth to you?" Then, if I cannot heal them, I only charge them $25.00. In other words, it is important to the process that the person knows that I am not there to take their money. And it is also important to the healing process for the person to realize how valuable a cure would be to them. To get an image of that in their minds. Money is a very real way of showing what you owe to another person for something. And paying your indebtedness is a part of the healing process. If all healers did this, even mainline physicians, we would have no "quackery” issue. And, with the system of fixed fees for service that we now have, patients never have the opportunity to consider the real worth of their treatment to them.
3. Does the person's vision go to the heart of the human experience, or is it superficial? What is the depth of the mind relating it? How universal is it? Is the person a poet, or a pulp fictionist? If the person tells us a story--and what else is life but a story--is it a really, really good story?
4. And finally, most importantly, what is the non-verbal, existential message behind the person's story? What is the person at heart really saying? Is he/she saying:
WE ARE ALL ONE.
Is that their intuitive knowing? Is that what they SEE?
The New Age is filled with so many separate, disparate, exclusive visionaries there needs to be this way to get from separateness to unity and togetherness. After all, when we speak of a New Age, what do we think we are talking about? What could a New Age possibly be, if it is not a new state of unity?
That is the true vision test. When we hear a person's vision, we must ask ourselves, at the heart of a person's vision, whatever it is, is there a deep, basic understanding that what is real is that
WE ARE ALL ONE?
Is that the person's vision? Is that what they are really talking about? Is that what they are really saying? Then we can all say "yes" to that. We can all understand that. We can all understand what matters.
Because--and this is what I mean to say here--the words WE ARE ALL ONE only stand for something. They are the verbal equivalent of a non-verbal experience. WE ARE ALL ONE is a non-verbal, incommunicable understanding of that total in-the-moment beingness that is SEEING. An understanding that is not thought-out but is known through non-thought, that is felt, that is beyond words. You understand it by being WE ARE ALL ONE. For the experience is what is real. That is the understanding.
There is an important concept in Gestalt therapy called "ego boundary." The ego boundary defines the boarders of an individual--what is inside and what is outside in the environment. "Ego boundary is the definition between the self and the otherness.” The ego boundary expands to include what we identify with: our profession, our family, our country. It is defined further by what we are alienated from, "them": the other party, the enemy, the competitor. We can say that SEEING WE ARE ALL ONE means a condition of heightened awareness in which our ego boundaries expand so that we identify with everything. In other words, to describe SEEING in yet one more way, we SEE the Higher Self of ourselves, other people, plants, animals and inanimate things. And “the Higher Self” is the part of all of these entities which knows and exhibits
WE ARE ALL ONE.
Thus, whatever else we can say here, the most important thing to understand is Circle of the Earth means:
WE ARE ALL ONE.
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