In 1872 Bucke had a mystical experience of his own, which he later recorded:
I had spent the evening in a great city, with two friends, reading and discussing poetry and philosophy. We parted at midnight. I had a long drive in a hansom to my lodging. My mind, deeply under the influence of the ideas, images, and emotions called up by the reading and talk, was calm and peaceful.
I was in a state of quiet, almost passive enjoyment, not actually thinking, but letting ideas, images, and emotions flow of themselves, as it were, through my mind. All at once, without warning of any kind, I found myself wrapped in a flame-colored cloud. For an instant I thought of fire, an immense conflagration somewhere close by in that great city. The next, I knew that the fire was within myself.
Directly afterward there came upon me a sense of exultation, of immense joyousness accompanied or immediately followed by an intellectual illumination impossible to describe. Among other things, I did not merely come to believe, but I saw that the universe is not composed of dead matter, but is, on the contrary, a living Presence; I became conscious in myself of eternal life. It was not a conviction that I would have eternal life, but a consciousness that I possessed eternal life then.
I saw that all men are immortal; that the cosmic order is such that without any peradventure, all things work together for the good of each and all; that the foundation principle of the world, of all the worlds, is what we call love, and that the happiness of each and all is in the long run absolutely certain.
The vision lasted a few seconds and was gone; but the memory of it and the sense of the reality of what it taught has remained during the quarter of a century which has since elapsed. I knew that what the vision showed was true. I had attained to a point of view from which I saw that it must be true. That view, that conviction, I may say that consciousness, has never, even during periods of the deepest depression, been lost.
(Source: William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, New American Library, 1958, pp. 306-307)
Zeteo • Jul 29, 2024 Mehdi unpacks all 30 chapters of Project 2025—the handbook for Trump’s authoritarian overhaul of the U.S. government—in just 120 seconds.
interjection: An expression of surprise, dismay, annoyance, etc.
ETYMOLOGY:
From French sacrebleu (sacred blue), from sacré bleu, minced oath for sacré dieu (holy god). The term is no longer used in contemporary French. Earliest documented use: 1869.
The Lord of Truce marks a period where we are able to rest and recover, after a difficult time in our lives. It will appear after trauma – the breakdown of a relationship; a troublesome and worrying time financially; an operation or major illness.There will always have been conflict and stress beforehand, this card marks the kind of breathing space we often need in order to clarify our view of the situation, to gather our strength and to decide how best to move forward. When this card appears in a reading, the first thing it tells us is that it is time to rest, time to stop worrying about the things that have happened.However, it must be noted that Truce is not peace. This is a respite – a down time in which we can catch our breath, ease our tension and relax for a brief time. But once that has been done, we need to recognise that there is still more to be done – the battle isn’t over yet. So when acting under the influence of this card, bear in mind that first you must take it easy, but then you must begin to plan your next step.If we fail to do that, then when the effect of the Lord of Truce passes away, we shall be left high and dry, with no route planned for our future. And in that case the turmoil which preceded this card may well manifest again.Sometimes, when the card comes up with a ‘person’ card, it indicates that a rift can begin to be mended between two people who have been at loggerheads previously. In this case, again, it is important to stress that this card does not indicate peace – as before, much more work will need to be done before the damage is entirely healed. We need to be on our guard, too, for other people running personal agendas which may mean that the ‘truce’ is more convenient than sincere.
Company after company is swallowing the hype, only to be forced into embarrassing walkbacks by anti-AI backlashSat 27 Jul 2024 03.00 EDTShare564
Earlier this month, a popular lifestyle magazine introduced a new “fashion and lifestyle editor” to its huge social media following. “Reem”, who on first glance looked like a twentysomething woman who understood both fashion and lifestyle, was proudly announced as an “AI enhanced team member”. That is, a fake person, generated by artificial intelligence. Reem would be making product recommendations to SheerLuxe’s followers – or, to put it another way, doing what SheerLuxe would otherwise pay a person to do. The reaction was entirely predictable: outrage, followed by a hastily issued apology. One suspects Reem may not become a staple of its editorial team.
This is just the latest in a long line of walkbacks of “exciting AI projects” that have been met with fury by the people they’re meant to excite. The Prince Charles Cinema in Soho, London, cancelled a screening of an AI-written film in June, because its regulars vehemently objected. Lego was pressured to take down a series of AI-generated images it published on its website. Doctor Who started experimenting with generative AI, but quickly stopped after a wave of complaints. A company swallows the AI hype, thinks jumping on board will paint it as innovative, and entirely fails to understand the growing anti-AI sentiment taking hold among many of its customers.
Behind the backlash is a range of concerns about AI. Most visceral is its impact on human labour: the chief effect of using AI in many of these situations is that it deprives a person of the opportunity to do the same work. Then there is the fact that AI systems are built by exploiting the work of the very people they’re designed to replace, trained on their creative output and without paying them. The technology has a tendency to sexualise women, is used to make deepfakes, has caused tech companies to miss climate targets and is not nearly well enough understood for its many risks to be mitigated. This has understandably not led to universal adulation. As Hayao Miyazaki, the director of Studio Ghibli, the world-renowned animation studio, has said: “I am utterly disgusted … I strongly feel that [AI] is an insult to life itself.”
Members of Safe Street Rebel, an activist group, place a cone on a self-driving taxi in San Francisco, California, in July 2023. Photograph: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images
Some members of the anti-AI movement have reclaimed the name “luddites”. I come from tech circles, where luddite is considered an insult – but this new movement is proud of the designation. As Brian Merchant, author of Blood in the Machine, points out, the original luddites did not immediately turn to rebellion. They sought dialogue and compromise first. The new luddites, too, seek dialogue and compromise. Most realise AI is here to stay; they demand not a reversal, but an altogether more reasonable and fair approach to its adoption. And it’s easy to see how they might be more successful than their 19th-century counterparts. The apocryphal Ned Ludd did not have social media. Downtrodden workers used to be easier to ignore. The internet is the greatest tool for organising in history.
Anger at AI companies is leading to some unlikely alliances. When the Recording Industry Association of America recently sued two AI music-generation companies for “copyright infringement on an almost unimaginable scale”, musicians and fans took to the internet to voice their support. “Amazing. AI companies have me rooting for the damn record labels,” said one composer. Old arguments are being set aside as the new threat of AI is addressed. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, as they say.
Some will have you believe AI is all opportunity, all upside, the next great technological revolution that will free humanity from the dark ages we’re living through. Speakers at the Tony Blair Institute’s Future of Britain summit, held a few weeks ago, outlined why building strength in AI is “the only option for a forward-looking British government”. There is some truth in this – AI does, of course, hold promise. That promise is mostly an article of faith right now, with AI leaders promising technologies that are years away at best, unrealistic at worst. But there is reason to think there is some realism in the more optimistic predictions around AI. It may, as the AI visionaries would have you believe, truly change the world.The video player is currently playing an ad.
The backlash, though, points out that we cannot ignore real harms today in order to take technological gambles on the future. This is why companies such as Nintendo have said they will not use generative AI. It is why users of Stack Overflow, a Q&A website for software engineers, rebelled en masse after the platform struck a deal to allow OpenAI to scrub its content to train its models: users deleted their posts or edited them to fill them with nonsense. It is why people have started attacking driverless taxis on the streets of San Francisco, shouting that they’re putting humans out of work.
There is often a group of protesters outside the offices of OpenAI in San Francisco, holding “Pause AI” banners. This sentiment will only grow if AI is left unregulated. It may be tempting for countries to treat AI development as an arms race, to rush ahead irrespective of the cost. But polls show the general public thinks this is a bad idea. AI developers, and the people regulating the nascent AI industry, must listen to the growing AI backlash.
Ed Newton-Rex is the founder of Fairly Trained, a non-profit that certifies generative AI companies that respect creators’ rights, and a co-founder of Jukedeck, which provides AI that can compose and adapt music
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask if you would consider supporting the Guardian’s journalism as we enter one of the most consequential news cycles of our lifetimes in 2024.
We have never been more passionate about exposing the multiplying threats to our democracy and holding power to account in America. In the heat of a tumultuous presidential race, with the threat of a more extreme second Trump presidency looming, there is an urgent need for free, trustworthy journalism that foregrounds the stakes of November’s election for our country and planet.
Yet, from Elon Musk to the Murdochs, a small number of billionaire owners have a powerful hold on so much of the information that reaches the public about what’s happening in the world. The Guardian is different. We have no billionaire owner or shareholders to consider. Our journalism is produced to serve the public interest – not profit motives.
And we avoid the trap that befalls much US media: the tendency, born of a desire to please all sides, to engage in false equivalence in the name of neutrality. We always strive to be fair. But sometimes that means calling out the lies of powerful people and institutions – and making clear how misinformation and demagoguery can damage democracy.
From threats to election integrity, to the spiraling climate crisis, to complex foreign conflicts, our journalists contextualize, investigate and illuminate the critical stories of our time. As a global news organization with a robust US reporting staff, we’re able to provide a fresh, outsider perspective – one so often missing in the American media bubble.
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I had been in the US barely a week to attend graduate school. After class I was chatting with a girl. Time flew. We didn’t realize how long it had been. Then she looked at her watch and said “Oh, fudge! I have got so much homework today!” She picked up her backpack and made her way to the lecture hall exit.
When I returned to my apartment that afternoon, I was still thinking about the fudge. I knew about fudge the candy, but that sense didn’t fit here, so I did what I always did when I had a question. I called the library.
“Reference, please,” I said.
When the reference librarian came on the line, I said “Does the word fudge also mean something other than a candy?” “How do you use it in a sentence?” she asked. “Oh, fudge! I have got so much homework today!”
There was a pause. Then she said, “I don’t know” and hung up.* She probably thought I was a prank caller.
Eventually I figured out the euphemism by the context and by the similarity of the sounds and common initial letters.
That was some 30 years ago. Things have changed. The F-word is much more common these days. Maybe you use a minced version, such as “fudge” or maybe you prefer it in its original form**, or none of the above.
It’s a free world — you choose how you speak. That said, one should mind the company one is in.
This week we’ll see five minced oaths. Minced oaths are euphemisms: softened forms of words considered offensive in other contexts, such as words related to god, to bodily functions, and to other things considered taboo.
*Fudging that answer notwithstanding, as far as I’m concerned, you can’t pay the librarians enough for what they do and how much they help.
**The word “fυck” has been a part of the language for 500 years. The actual practice, far longer. So, no need to be embarrassed of either.
gee-whiz
PRONUNCIATION:
(jee-WIZ/HWIZ)
MEANING:
adjective:
1. Marked by wonder, surprise, enthusiasm, etc.
2. New; impressive; exciting.
interjection:
Expressing surprise, dismay, enthusiasm, annoyance, etc.
ETYMOLOGY:
Euphemism for Jesus, with the second syllable replaced by whiz, a playful exclamation evoking surprise and wonder. Earliest documented use: 1872.
We are the first digital inhabitants of a universe of pure symbolic media exchange, living in an empty space of virtuality, where subjectivity and objective truth have intertwined together.
At the core of this collective experience, we find a fabricated system of meaning that limits human participation to that of mindless spectator, while a digital hyperreality is slowly born.
Follow The Signs
Images serve as a symbolic system through which people communicate and culture is transmitted. Some images contain a system of symbols and are used for various types of communication.
Societies often share common symbols, and many symbols contain the same basic elements. Taken together, these symbols convey specific meanings.
For example, we are all born into a society with a written system of some kind, made of symbolic shapes called language which refer to spoken sound. None of us were the engineers of this system to begin with.
A study of synchromysticism and numerological exploration can help uncover secret languages encoded inside the realm of reality, and which can be used to decipher meaning in unique ways.
A feature that makes synchromysticism unique to other forms of synchronicity is its focus on esoteric mystical symbolism and the use of communications technology to document, share and compare synchronicities related to such symbols – from ancient traditions to mass media.
By utilising cryptic understandings of symbols, we can decode, map, and predict future world events. How? Symbols channel a form of collective mass unconscious in the human species in which the subconscious realm can be influenced and dictated, hence altering the conscious sphere.
Not only are symbols used to pre-program major world events on our television screens, but they are in fact a present reality in every single element of everyday life. We are living a fairy-tale dream.
We have become so overwhelmed with symbols (translated as ‘information’) in the modern world that objective truth has been blanketed to the point it cannot be identified authentically.
Analyses of objectivation, institutionalisation and legitimation are directly applicable to the problems of the sociology of language, the theory of social action and institutions, and of religion.
A vast, simulated experience has taken over the world, andreality itself is being sucked in with it.
Simulated Reality
We live in a world of signs where almost everything around us has become a matter of signification, connected with explosive growth in media and related to changes in the conduct of everyday life.
Our current society has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs, and human experience has become akin to a simulation of reality.
You may be familiar with the term simulation – no doubt it has been said many times right here in New Dawn. But just exactly what does it mean?
The Baudrillardian concept of‘simulation’ refers to the idea of creating a reality; reproduced and based on a foundation of widely interpreted symbols.1
Simulated reality appears so real that one cannot separate the ‘real’ from simulation.
Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007)
In fact, simulation dominates the real, and never again will the real have the chance to produce itself because simulation is all there is, according to the French sociologist, philosopher and cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007).
Simulated reality is not a singular concept. The simulation itself is made up of infinite imitations of the operations of real-world processes or systems over time. These are known as simulacra.
Simulacra are copies that depict things that either had no reality to begin with, or that no longer have an original. Representations stand in place of a perceived real or are simply the ‘real’ itself.2
Inside the control structure, these simulacra are not merely mediations of reality nor even deceptive mediations – they are not based in a reality at all. No attempt to hide a ‘reality’ is made.
Instead, all we see is a process of how symbolism in culture and media constructs perceived reality, programming false understandings and making lives and shared existences illegible.
Society has become so saturated with simulacra, and lives so saturated with the constructs of society, that all meaning has long been rendered meaningless by being infinitely mutable.
The onslaught of television, media growth and the constant bombardment of images, are now intended to represent reality. From birth, humanity communicates and understands this way.
Importantly, the simulacra are never that which conceals the truth. The truth which is concealed is that there is no truth. The simulacra, or untrue, is the truth.
To better understand what this means, let’s look at key concepts found in studies describing the nature of symbols, simulacra, and interactions with collective perceptions of reality.
Psychology of Illusion
Not only does simulacra refer to ‘copies without an original’ but it can also be used to explain the lack of depth, meaning or ‘realness’ behind signs that penetrate our technological lives.
Philosopher Walter Benjamin, as early as 1936, argued that “the presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity,” and that this was missing from a world of mass-produced commodities.3
However, in a modern, technology-driven digital age, this has developed even further to the point that no original even exists from which to draw the authentic from.
Prof. Frank Webster, author of Theories of the Information Society, once gave the example of when a user downloads a song to their phone. The notion of an original is meaningless as the downloaded song has no physical original – it is a copy of a song downloaded from a digital platform.
In his essay The Ecstasy of Communication, Baudrillard explains that Western technological society revels in its over-exposure to images. He defines this visual overstimulation as “obscene,” when “everything is exposed to the harsh and inexorable light of information and communication.”
Researcher Steven Connor summarises Baudrillard’s concepts of simulacra by stating: “All of contemporary life has been dismantled and reproduced in scrupulous facsimile.”4
This refers to simulacra; the reproduction of signs of reality that are, in fact, created.
Connor also discusses how simulation of “the real and referential” then “takes the form of manufactured objects and experiences which attempt to be more real than reality itself.”
For example, violence is disconnected from ‘real’ world destruction and recorded in cyberspace as signs and images to be consumed through mass media, gaming, and digital outlets.
Death as a tragic event has also been eliminated, and any event surrounding this theme is surrendered to media representations of it.
Whatever the event may be, it is experienced as an ‘image event’ and consumed through symbolic exchange. Put simply, the image precedes the real, is consumed, and forms the reality itself.
War images on TV form the actual perception of warfare, while real events on-the-ground – whatever they may be – are masked in a sea of digital simulations.
Simulacra is the psychological concept that drives many other vast deceptions. From 9/11 to shooting events, the COVID scamdemic – symbolic images are programmed daily.
Let’s take a deeper dive into how these messages are transmitted and what is responsible.
In the world in which we now live, the image precedes the real, is consumed, and then forms reality – what is deemed by the mind to be the ‘real’. TV has been the primary generator of images, which are manufactured by unknown operators. War images projected on TV – and all electronic screens – form the actual perception of warfare, while real events on-the-ground – whatever they may be – are masked in a sea of digital simulations.
Symbolic Exchange
We are now more wired to our interfaces. We react to the television news rather than the world, to a computer program rather than social interaction, to email rather than vocal communication.
In all these, we react to simulations rather than the immediate environment. Simulation supersedes ‘real’ interactions and has done so now for generations.
Andrew Murphie and John Potts argue in their book Culture and Technology that the media can never convey the ‘real’, and with the ever-increasing reliance on the internet, simulations are only becoming more prevalent, thus reiterating how simulacra erase and dominate the ‘real’.5
The internet is a simulacra creator, highlighting the importance of symbolic exchange in cyberspace. It is a copy-making machine, a tool that effortlessly replicates things and passes them along. A digital realm in which nothing is authentic and everything is vastly produced.
This ‘creation’ allows for artificial place-markers for real items or events. The uniqueness of objects and situations marks them as irreproducible real, and signification gropes towards this reality.
This process is known as ‘symbolic exchange’ – a form of value exchange that maintains and organises social relations and hierarchies. The difference with other forms of exchange is that the value of an exchanged object does not value the act of exchanging it.6
Let’s think about a designer brand t-shirt vs a regular t-shirt. Is there really any difference between the two? Is the designer brand actually worth $200 of raw materials, or is it simply the marketplace of value symbols (brands) that drives the worth of this shirt?
Symbolic exchanges are not aimed at establishing equivalence (equal value) between two exchanged tokens, as with other forms of exchange. The opposite of a resource-based system.
This psychological game allows for creators of said object to influence and dictate (false) worth, and it is this framework that powers why humans value grand deceptions over critical analysis.
How on earth did humanity get to this point?
It all began with the beginning of ‘modernity’ following the Industrial Revolution.
Here, distinctions between representation and reality began to break down due to the proliferation of mass-reproducible copies of items, turning them into commodities.
The commodity’s ability to imitate reality immediately threatened to replace the authority of the original version because the copy is just as ‘real’ as its prototype.
This continued until the birth of postmodernity in which this process expanded with newer technology to the point the simulacrum now precedes the original, and the distinction between reality and representation vanishes. There is only the simulacrum; originality has been buried.
Baudrillard theorises that the lack of distinctions between reality and simulacra produces several outcomes including (but not limited to) the following:
Contemporary media, including television, film, print, and the internet, blur the line between products needed (to live a life) and products for which commercial images create a need.
Exchange value in which the value of goods is based on money (denominated fiat currency) rather than usefulness. Moreover, usefulness comes to be quantified and defined in monetary terms to assist exchange.
Multinational capitalism which separates produced goods from the plants, minerals and other original materials, and the processes (including the people and their cultural context), used to create them. Think of medicine and plants as an example of this.
Urbanisation which separates humans from the non-human world, and re-centres culture around productive throughput systems so large they cause alienation.
Language and ideology in which language increasingly becomes caught up in the production of power relations between social groups, especially when powerful groups institute themselves at least partly in monetary terms.
Through these primary methods, collective values of a society, object, event, or story are directed and engineered. Disconnection from reality to simulacra until the ‘real’ is forgotten.
Next, let us examine the long-lasting inter-generational effects of this level of mass illusion.
Here we go beyond many authors’ work and adapt this information to the digital age.
The Birth of the Hyperreal
In the modern world, we have moved from the ability to reflect our reality truthfully to the ability to mask and distort this reality, and to masking the simulated reality altogether.
Finally, with the dawn of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, humanity has already begun the transitional stage to an era in which simulation asserts precedence over reality.
Hyperreality refers to a simulation of reality that acts as more real than the real or a created heightened reality. In this hyperreal cyberspace, signs for consumption are constantly in production, and this creates a new reality, as virtual reality cannot be completely known.7
We are already witnessing the building blocks of this era. There is a sharp connection between nature and technology in terms of what becomes an icon for the ‘lost real’ in hyperreality. Almost all forms of online media act as a hyperreal experience.
As an example of social media, Facebook markets itself as a connecting tool; a user posts updates of their life to their friends who can react and comment as they wish.
This platform acts as a digital reproduction of real life – a heightened version of real communication between friends, but it does not reflect real-life interaction.
This is the hyperreal, a digital simulation of reality, where a person ultimately uses Facebook to form an online identity and persona more vivid than the ‘real self’.
Twitter is hyperreality as well, as it bears no reflection to real life and creates a sublime cyberspace where a user, once a rational subject, becomes decentred in online communication.
As subjectivity becomes detached from materially fixed, embodied contexts, it is dispersed and multiplied continuously through digitisation.
In this hyperreal setting, traditional social settings are erased as a real human being is re-signified as a digital representation for Twitter users to consume.
The pure symbolic media exchange of cyber interactivity is understood as the opposite of social.
The subject does not experience ‘increased interactivity’ but instead experiences ‘subtle death’. Interaction dies in this hyperreal cyberspace and becomes merely a simulation of communication.
Chat rooms, for example, allow users to function as floating signifiers capable of becoming anything that is describable. Thus, online, communication is replaced by sign consumption, and subjects become merely ‘floating signifiers’.
If we replace ‘chat rooms’ with Twitter, we may conclude that power becomes a signifier of hatred.
Going beyond this space, the phone itself is a hyperreal product – a product of pure simulated society which acts almost as an extension of ourselves.
Astra Taylor, author of The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age, has explained the ways that “big media,” through search engine algorithms and data collecting, can “absorb who we are” by gathering detailed demographic information, geographic information, behavioural information, and social information.8
Absorbed from the real to a digital representation.
In the future, with the introduction of AR and VR systems such as the Metaverse, enhanced by AI and 5G underliers, almost all observable reality will soon fall under the spell of the hyperreal.
The gamification of society and the introduction of controlling technologies as a trojan horse of mind-numbing pleasure means that humans are wilfully creating the end of their realities.
There is no original that created the rest, no seed planted. Everything will soon be automated, and this automation produces a series of new symbols for humanity to absorb.
Baudrillard stated that representation stems from the principle of the equivalence of the sign and of the real, but “simulation envelops the whole edifice of representation itself as a simulacrum.” Therefore, the concept of a ‘real’ underneath the simulation relies on the principle of the real.
Hyperreality is the absorption of the real – whatever it may have been – into an ocean of simulated, digital representations. Infinitely created and replicated until the real is long forgotten.
The postmodern world in which we live and the approaching post-postmodern hyperreal timeframe are argued to go hand-in-hand with famous science fiction works of our time.
In his book Exploring the Limits of the Human through Science Fiction, Gerald Alva Miller suggests that “science fiction increasingly proves the genre that is necessary to grasp the postmodern world around us.”9
Baudrillard notes that science fiction “is no longer anywhere, and it is everywhere, in the here and now, in the very principle of the surrounding simulation.” In other words, he argues science fiction is hardly fictional at all, it is merely waiting “in its crude state” to emerge.
Are we really ‘waiting’ for this change to come? Or is it already here?
Miller believes this wait is over and the technology of contemporary science fiction now “occurs in realistically depicted versions of the present or even the past.” He calls television “a viral, endemic.”
Baudrillard sees radical action such as destroying the system as no longer a real possibility.
This is because there is no system. It is a simulated, collective experience driven by symbols and images and programmed by those who are controlling those very mechanisms.
We are slowly welcoming the immorality of consuming death as a media spectacle.
Marleen S. Barr discusses the concept of post-postmodernism, which she says exposes “the hitherto science fictional impact of technology on society and culture… when what was once science fictional comprises the very definition of reality.”10
Cyberspace becomes a space of pure symbolic exchange where humanity disappears and subjects become nothing more than a sign or image to be consumed.
Technology has been engineered as a weapon in which the human subject is reduced to a mere sign for consumption. This consumption of a person is represented by reducing a subject to a mere symbol for exchange, and even the event of death is consumed by hyperreal media.
Dehumanisation in the media, or reducing the subject to the object, happens in hyperreality. This is currently perpetuated by online users who are still human beings themselves.
This important analysis of simulacra and hyperreality draws attention to the need to see the human behind the image, to see the subject behind the object, and re-humanise the subject in cyberspace.
We must do everything we can to disconnect ourselves as much as possible from the hyperreal that is currently birthing a world of endless simulated experiences (the Metaverse is an emerging example).
By doing so and looking beneath the surface, we can resist. How? Because we recognise the ‘system’ that controls us does not physically exist at all – it is an illusion.
Almost everything is an unauthentic copy of a copy, masking the fact there is no original base.
Everything we have been told is a lie. Therefore, I recommend you throw away anything you have ever been told about the world and begin to form an independent perspective from scratch.
When you do, and you also take this information into consideration, you will uncover startling truths.
The above is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on the website of TOTT News: tottnews.com.
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About the Author
Ethan Nash is the Editor of TOTTNews.com, an Australian Internet platform dedicated to producing independent, hard-hitting alternative news and media to an audience of like-minded thinkers. You can find more of Ethan’s work on Facebook.com/TOTTNews and Twitter.com/EthanTOTT.
The twentieth-century esoteric philosopher Valentin Tomberg was born in 1900 in St. Petersburg to a Russian father and an Estonian mother. Little is known about his early life; indeed, Tomberg seems to have gone out of his way to draw as little attention to his life as possible. As his editor and translator Robert Powell remarked, Tomberg himself “attached no significance whatever to the biographical details concerning him.”1 In fact, the main reason he is known today is that he is recognised as the author of a remarkable book, Meditations on the Tarot, that was and still is published anonymously. Ironically, the very steps Tomberg took to obscure his identity led to a great deal of interest in it.
Valentin Arnoldevitch Tomberg (1900–1973). Photo: National Archives of Estonia
What we do know about him is that by his late teens he had become deeply interested in Theosophy and the spiritual philosophy of Vladimir Soloviev, as well as in the more mystical aspects of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Russia in the early twentieth century was a remarkable time for a young man with spiritual interests to come of age. Soloviev, Russia’s first philosopher, who has found a new reader in Vladimir Putin, was one of the major philosophical and religious figures of a period in Russian history known as the Silver Age. This stretched from around 1890 to 1917, the year of the Bolshevik revolution, a historical eruption that devastated Tomberg’s family, as it did many others.
As I show in my book The Return of Holy Russia, the Silver Age was a time of deep interest in and almost obsession with religion, spirituality, mysticism and the occult, and it produced a powerful surge of creativity in literature, music, philosophy, and art. For a young man of Tomberg’s inclinations, having his spiritual awakening at this time no doubt made an impression on him that remained for the rest of his life.
A New Cultural Epoch
Although Madame Blavatsky, one of the founders of the Theosophical Society, was Russian, her focus on Eastern sources of wisdom, continued by her successors, alienated many Russians, who were deeply Christian. Tomberg was one of them, and soon after joining the Theosophical Society he left, turning his allegiance to the work of Rudolf Steiner.
Rudolf Steiner
Steiner was immensely popular in Russia in the years leading up to the revolution, his highly Christianised version of Theosophy – which he would soon rechristen Anthroposophy – appealing to the generation of “God Seekers” that characterised the Silver Age. As I show in my book, both Steiner and the God Seekers had great hopes for a new “cultural epoch” to emerge from Russia at this time. In the view of Steiner and others, including Soloviev, Russia was charged with the mission of uniting the scientific knowledge of the west with the mystic intuition of the east, their integration giving birth, it was hoped, to a new creative consciousness that would transcend the limits of its parents.
Sadly, this marriage between east and west was precluded by the revolution and, as we know, something radically different emerged from Russia. Lenin’s adamantly anti-spiritual ideology put paid to any notion of a new “cultural epoch,” and the chaos of the revolution cost Tomberg dearly. His family’s fortunes were lost, as were his father – who had a position in the czar’s government – mother, and brother. One story has it that during the chaos, Tomberg’s mother ventured into the streets. She never returned, and Tomberg later found her and their dog, both shot dead and tied to a tree. Like many who escaped the terror, Tomberg was unquestioningly anti-communist for the rest of his life.
Upstart Anthroposophist
In 1920, Tomberg made his way to Tallinn, Estonia. From there, he wrote several letters to Rudolf Steiner, asking if he could become his student. His letters went unanswered; it is unclear if Steiner ever read them or simply ignored them. Steiner’s silence evidently did not put Tomberg off Anthroposophy; in 1925, the year of Steiner’s death, Tomberg joined the Estonian branch of the Anthroposophical Society, eventually becoming its secretary-general. But friction soon appeared between Tomberg and the society; he was too individual a mind to remain merely a good anthroposophist.
Throughout the 1930s he wrote many articles for Anthroposophical journals, on a variety of subjects; many had to do with what Steiner called “the return of Christ in the etheric,” and the “mission” of different nationalities. Tomberg claimed that these articles were informed by an experience he had in 1931 when he was put in contact with the “angelic world.” This, no doubt, set him further apart from his fellows, and eventually he was asked to leave the society. At around this time he had also tried to find a place for himself at the Goetheanum, the society’s headquarters in Switzerland, but was denied this by Steiner’s widow.
In 1938, Tomberg moved to Holland; after the Nazis invaded in 1940, he joined the resistance. His relations with the Anthroposophical Society in Holland ran into the same problems as before. It seems the essence of the trouble was that Tomberg’s esotericism was even more Christocentric than Steiner’s; if you know Steiner’s work, you’ll know this is no easy feat. After the war, Tomberg moved to Cologne where he earned a degree in jurisprudence and became deeply engaged with Catholicism. It is unclear if he actually converted, but he become alienated from the Russian Orthodox Church because its leadership had seemed sympathetic to Hitler.
In 1948, Tomberg moved again, this time to England, where friends found him work with the BBC as a translator; he was a polyglot and would later monitor Soviet broadcasts. In 1960 he retired, devoting himself to study and writing. He died in 1973, from a heart attack while on holiday with his wife and their son in Majorca. Aside from his early essays, practically all his work appeared only after his death, and one work in particular was designed by Tomberg himself to appear in precisely that way.
The work in question is Tomberg’s magnum opus, Meditations on the Tarot, subtitled “A Journey into Christian Hermeticism.” This was first published in French – the language in which it was written – in 1980, seven years after Tomberg’s death and nearly twice that long after the work’s completion, which Tomberg noted as 21 May 1967, the “Festival of the Holy Trinity.” German and English translations soon followed, but it was not until 2002 that a full English edition appeared through a mainstream American publisher, bringing Tomberg’s work to a wider reading public, albeit still a marginal one with a taste for the arcane and esoteric. It was also at this point that it became known Tomberg was the author of this work. And although by now his authorship is well known, as mentioned the book is still published anonymously, as was Tomberg’s wish.
Letters From Beyond the Grave
Meditations on the Tarot consists of twenty-two “letters to the Unknown Friend,” sent “from beyond the grave,” dispatched, that is, well after Tomberg’s death. The reason for these tardy communiques is that Tomberg wanted to mute any personal element in them, to have the reader of these letters focus on their message, not on the messenger. Tomberg himself insists that he has “said more about himself” in these letters than he “would have been able to in any other way.”2 The unknown friend to whom Tomberg is writing is the reader, and Tomberg’s letters are long, discursive, deeply pondered and occasionally meandering essays on the twenty-two trumps of the Tarot, filled with references to Steiner, Teilhard de Chardin, Bergson, Nietzsche, Gurdjieff, the Corpus Hermeticum, Catholic dogma, and many other writers, philosophers, mystics, and saints. (I should point out that the Meditations run to more than 600 pages.) Tomberg’s letters do not touch upon the divinatory character of the Tarot. Nor does he relate the trumps to the usual astrological or cabbalistic correspondences, as do most books on the Tarot, although both Cabbala and astrology make appearances.3 Instead, the Meditations are illuminating, insightful, and not infrequently baffling excursions into the meaning of the symbols presented in the trumps, which Tomberg tells his unknown friends are arcana.
Arcana
Arcana, Tomberg tells us, are more than secrets, which are merely facts that are hidden from us, or allegories, which are figurative representations of abstract ideas. Arcana are “authentic symbols,” “magic, mental, psychic, and moral operations” that can awaken “new notions, ideas, sentiments and aspirations,” and which require more than an intellectual understanding for their power to be felt.4
One way of recognising authentic symbols, and of differentiating them from mere signs, Tomberg tells us, is that they have the power to “conceal and reveal their sense at one and the same time according to the depth of meditation” one reaches in their contemplation.5 A sign is nothing more than an indicator of what it points to. An arrow pointing to a door shows you the way out, but it does not share in you taking it. A symbol participates in the reality it presents, and its meaning, when grasped, should have an almost visceral effect on us. That is, it should affect us in such a way that it effects a change in our consciousness, our awareness, adding not only an intellectual knowledge but offering an existential encounter with hitherto unknown dimensions of Being. It introduces us to a bit of reality of which we were unaware.
This “transformational” power of symbols lead Tomberg to speak of the trumps as “enzymes” that enable us to be “fruitful in a given spiritual domain.” The trumps “ferment” the knowledge necessary for spiritual experience. This is why Tomberg speaks of them as “spiritual exercises,” whose aim is “to awaken from sleep… deeper layers of consciousness.”6 They are definite encounters with esoteric realities, through which we, the unknown friends, are changed.
In this way, the trumps are similar to great works of art. According to Tomberg, the symbols of the Tarot should have the same effect on us as the “archaic torso of Apollo” had on the poet Rilke when he saw it while living in Paris. In its presence, Rilke knew that he “must change his life.”7 A true encounter with the Tarot’s symbolism, Tomberg tells us, should make us feel the same. His aim is to get us to think Hermetically, to allow the rich symbolism of the trumps to reach into our imagination and trigger our faculty for seeing connections between things which we would otherwise ignore. For Tomberg, the essence of Hermeticism is the ability to perceive “the totality of things,” “the One, the All,” as the ancient alchemists called it, the deep, underlying unity at the heart of the multiplicity of Being.
The French Connection
I should point out that Tomberg is writing in the French tradition of the Tarot – he bases his letters on the Tarot de Marseilles – and that this connection brings in the central theme of the book: to show how Roman Catholicism is an indubitable repository of Hermetic wisdom. Hence the subtitle, “A Journey into Christian Hermeticism.” Understandably, this may be sufficient reason for some unknown friends to forgo that journey. Yet we need not accept Tomberg’s thesis in order to profit from his book.
Valentin Tomberg used the Tarot de Marseilles, a pattern from which many subsequent tarot decks derive.
I can respect the high regard Tomberg has for Catholicism, without agreeing with him that “the more one advances on the way of free research… the more one approaches the Church.”8 After much spiritual searching, the author of these meditations found a home in the Catholic church, but that does not mean that for us to learn from him we must take up residency there too. What strikes me as most important about the Meditations is not the arguments Tomberg makes for, say, the Ten Commandments as instructions in Hermetic philosophy or his belief that the fundamental virtues of the Christian faith – obedience, poverty and chastity – are the sine qua non of any esoteric pursuit, ingenious and thought-provoking as they are. We can embrace these dicta, take them with as many grains of salt as needed, or simply reject them. What strikes me as important about Tomberg’s Meditations for the non-Christian reader is the way Tomberg approaches the Tarot, his understanding of what we can call a Hermetic “way of knowledge.”
Christ and Hermes
Having said this, a look at history shows that Christ and Hermes are not such strange bedfellows as we may think. For a time during the Renaissance, Hermes Trismegistus, the legendary founder of the tradition which bears his name, was seen as a figure of equal importance with Christ, and vigorous attempts were made to incorporate the Hermetic teachings, found in the Corpus Hermeticum, into Catholic dogma.9 In France there is a long tradition of a kind of “Catholic occultism,” reaching back to the nineteenth-century French mage Eliphas Levi, and leading on to characters like the eccentric Saint-Yves d’Alveydre and his disciple Gérard Encausse, who wrote under the pseudonym Papus; all three turn up in the Meditations. It is also true that there is a long tradition of literature on the Tarot in French. Indeed, it was Levi himself who first hit on the idea of linking the twenty-two trumps with the twenty-two “paths” on the Cabbalistic Tree of Life, a correspondence that is at the heart of practically all modern magic.
Hermetic Syncretism
This linkage has subsequently been discredited, and most modern historians of the Tarot accept that there is no historical connection between the Tarot and the Cabbala.10 Nor, for that matter, does there seem to be one with Egypt, which many occultists regarded as the Tarot’s source, seeing it as the so-called “Book of Thoth,” the Egyptian god of magic with whom Hermes Trismegistus is associated.
Yet for all his historical inaccuracy, Levi’s inspired howler has proved remarkably effective for the many occultists who have worked with his ideas. These include the members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and its most notorious associate, Aleister Crowley, as well as their many epigone. This seems to suggest that purists, who eschew such “romantic” notions as Levi’s and reject much that has accreted around the Tarot as nonsense, ignore the syncretic, synthesising character of Hermeticism. This was with it from the start, ages ago, when Thoth met the Greek god Hermes in ancient Alexandria, their fusion creating the “thrice great” one. This syncretic approach continued during the Renaissance when figures like Pico della Mirandola and others developed the notion of a “perennial philosophy,” which allowed for a Christian Cabbala – “culturally appropriating” a radically Jewish tradition – and, as mentioned, even a Christian Hermeticism. In this light, Levi seems merely to have done what Hermetic thinkers had been doing all along.
Analogy
Although Tomberg is aware of the historical appearance of the Tarot in the late Middle Ages – he does argue, though, for a kind of “archetypal” link to an Egyptian source; Jung makes many appearances throughout the book – a similar syncretic approach is taken in his Meditations. This makes perfect sense. For Tomberg, Hermeticism itself is a synthesis of magic, gnosis, mysticism, and philosophy, and its aim is not to supplant science or to uncover new facts, but to perceive the facts we already possess from a different perspective, and to infuse them with an additional depth, the kind of depth we discover through our encounter with the arcana of the Tarot.
For Tomberg, analogy is the fundamental mode of acquiring knowledge in the Hermetic tradition, which proceeds through a process of synthesising the known and the unknown. The “open recognition of the relationship of all things and beings has engendered an exactly corresponding method of knowledge,” he writes.11 That method is analogy, through which the “sympathy of all things” becomes apparent, not as a concept, or an idea or belief, but through a perception of it “in action” as it were, through the “fermenting” effect of the symbolic “enzymes” produced by our meditations on the trumps.12
This transformative effect is perhaps best seen in the Magician, the trump that Tomberg says is “the key to all the other Major Arcana.”13 By understanding and performing the “spiritual exercise” the Magician presents, Tomberg tells us that we will be able to work our way through to the knowledge and experience contained in the arcana that follow. As I do not have space to more than touch on some of the insights that the Magician presents, I trust the unknown friends that read this article will be encouraged to accept Tomberg’s invitation to journey with him and perform some of these spiritual exercises themselves.
Concentration Without Effort
The Magician, Tarot of Marseilles
The spiritual exercise of the Magician, Tomberg tells us, is aimed at developing two essential abilities, necessary for any successful Hermetic work. They are “concentration without effort” and “turning work into play.”14
“Concentration without effort” – what he also calls “active relaxation” – is achieved, Tomberg tells us, when we can direct our attention to whatever occupies us, without the constant chatter of the care-ridden ego leading our minds elsewhere. When we can achieve an inner silence, free from the distractions of thought – the basic requirement of any inner work – the kind of concentration that would usually cost strenuous efforts can be reached “effortlessly.”
As an example, Tomberg suggests a tightrope walker – an aptly symbolic choice. He is certainly concentrating on his actions; if he wasn’t, he would fall. But Tomberg asks: “Do you believe that his thought and his imagination are occupied with what he is doing?”15 The tightrope walker does not “calculate” or “plan” his next step because he has shifted his consciousness from his head – the worrying ego – to what Tomberg calls his “rhythmic system,” which possesses an intelligence of its own, the “intelligence of the heart” I have written about elsewhere.16
This shift from head to heart, Tomberg says, is symbolised by the lemniscate, or horizontal 8, that is formed by the Magician’s hat. This is the symbol of infinity, but, Tomberg tells us, it is also the symbol of “eternal rhythm,” the natural “flow” – as the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls it – that our ever-worrying mind interferes with. When we have quieted our inner monologue, we can enter this flow. If we think of the “concentration without effort” we achieve when we are deeply “into” a book we are reading, we can get an idea of what Tomberg means. Our concentration is so focused we forget our surroundings. Yet it requires no effort at all; in fact, we enjoy it.
This is the arcanum of “transforming work into play,” which is a result of achieving this kind of concentration.17 When we enter the “zone of perpetual silence,” we can not only concentrate our consciousness “effortlessly;” any task we may be obliged to perform can become a source of delight.18 Because we can draw from a “secret and intimate respiration,” he “who finds silence in the solitude of concentration without effort, is never alone.”19
He or she is never alone, because the Magician who has achieved this has “attained harmony and equilibrium between the spontaneity of the unconscious… and the deliberate action of the conscious,” the “I” or ego.20 The Magician symbolises a state that is the “synthesis of the conscious and the unconscious,” or, as I have suggested, between our left and right brains.21 Tomberg says this is equivalent to what Jung speaks of as “individuation,” which can result in what Marie-Louise von Franz calls “conscious spontaneity,” a paradoxical state in which one is “consciously active and still spontaneous,” in which the conscious and unconscious minds have an equal say.22
This brief account of Tomberg’s interpretation of the Magician should give the reader an idea of what he may find if he dips into the Meditations. One other trump that I should at least mention is the Devil, the theme of Letter XV. This trump, Tomberg tells us, introduces us to the secrets and dangers of what he calls “counter-inspiration.” It presents a warning about the “intoxication” we experience when we become aware of our own power to “engender demons.”23 The demon before whom the man and the woman stand enchained, Tomberg tells us, is one of their own making. It is a result of their misuse of the powers of will and imagination, the Magician’s tools in trade.
The Devil, Rider-Waite Tarot
The specific demons Tomberg speaks of are tulpas and egregores. Tulpas are part of the esoteric psychology of Tibetan Buddhism. They are thought-forms created by a single individual, through prolonged efforts of visualisation. Eventually, after much mental work, the tulpa can take on a life of its own, much to the dismay of its creator. As I point out in my book, Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump, both the traveller Alexandra David-Neel and the occultist Dion Fortune had experiences creating tulpas, and both write of their difficulties in regaining control of and eventually dissolving them.24
An egregore – which means “watcher” in ancient Greek – is a thought-form brought into existence by a group. As Tomberg tells us, there are no “good” egregores, only “evil” ones.25 They can be “engendered by the collective will and imagination of nations,” Tomberg writes, but the aims of an egregore are always selfish, centred exclusively on gaining power and growing stronger at the expense of its creators. Once brought into existence, an egregore is harder to “dissolve” than a tulpa, given that it is the work of a group. This can be a cabal of occultists, or a political party – hence their inclusion in Dark Star Rising, which looks at the resurgence of a kind of “occult politics” in recent times. This seems to have raised its head during the run-up to the 2016 US presidential election and has remained on the scene since. It has also been at work in Russia.
Should we take tulpas and egregores seriously? A good question. Tomberg certainly did, and as he tells us, the Devil is one trump we should clearly keep an eye on.
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Footnotes
1. Robert Powell, introduction to Valentin Tomberg, Lazarus Come Forth! (Great Barrington, VT: Inner Traditions, 2006) p. ix.
2. Anonymous, Meditations on the Tarot (New York: Tarcher/Penguin, 2002) p. ix.
3. The question of where and with whom Tomberg studied the Tarot is an interesting one. He speaks of a work, The Sacred Book of Thoth – The Major Arcana of the Tarot, by an “engineer” named Schmakov, published in 1916 which was “twice as large as Oswald Wirth’s” book on the Tarot (p. 590). He also says he read Ouspensky’s The Symbolism of the Tarot (1917). He tells his unknown friends that after the Bolshevik revolution, and presumably before going to Estonia, he became friends with members of a group of esoteric students that had been led by a mathematics professor, Gregory Ottonovitch Mebes. Mebes was the author of a book, The Course of Encyclopaedia of Occultism that is said to have influenced Tomberg. In 1926, Mebes was sent to a gulag, where he died. The group had been dispersed by the revolution, but the members he met “transmitted all they knew and recounted everything concerning the work of their group” to Tomberg. (Ibid.) The group seemed to have studied the Tarot in the traditional French way, relating it to Cabala, magic, astrology, etc. Tomberg says that through the “forty-five years” of his own study, he has “surpassed” what he learned from them and that throughout the Letters – aside for one exception – he does not draw on it. Another esoteric thinker who wrote about the Tarot, Mouni Sadhu, is said, like Tomberg, to have been in contact with members of this group, and influenced by Mebes’ book. Some have seen similarities between Sadhu’s The Tarot (1962) and the Meditations, which the link with Mebes may explain.
9. See my book The Quest for Hermes Trismegistus (Edinburgh: Floris Books, 2011) pp. 154-56.
10. Robert M. Place, The Tarot (New York: Tarcher/Penguin, 2005) p. 73.
11. Anonymous p. 12.
12. Ibid. p. 4.
13. Ibid. p. 3.
14. Ibid. p. 8.
15. Ibid. p. 9.
16. Gary Lachman, Lost Knowledge of the Imagination (Edinburgh: Floris Books, 2017) pp. 52-53.
17. Anonymous p. 11. This is an arcana evidently known to Mark Twain, who makes good use of it in Tom Sawyer. There the wily Tom convinces his friends to paint a fence because he pretends to be enjoying it. Yet the trick is really on Tom because his friends actually do enjoy it; they have transformed work into play, by telling themselves it is play.
18. See my article “Getting Beyond the Robot” in New Dawn 182 (Sept–Oct 2020).
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid. p. 20.
21. Gary Lachman, The Secret Teachers of the Western World (New York: Tarcher/Penguin, 2015). In this book I argue that such a harmony is at the heart of the western esoteric tradition.
22. Marie-Louise von Franz, Alchemy (Toronto: Inner City Books, 1980) p. 238.
23. Anonymous p. 401.
24. Gary Lachman, Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump (New York: Tarcher Perigee, 2018) pp. 90-92.
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About the Author
Gary Lachman was born in Bayonne, New Jersey, but has lived in London, England since 1996. A founding member of the rock group Blondie, he is now a full time writer with more than a dozen books to his name, on topics ranging from the evolution of consciousness and the western esoteric tradition, to literature and suicide, and the history of popular culture. Lachman writes frequently for many journals in the US and UK, and lectures on his work in the US, UK, and Europe. His work has been translated into several languages. His website is www.garylachman.co.uk.
“The Science of Mind is the study of Life and the nature of the laws of thought; the conception that we live in a spiritual Universe, that God is in, through, around, and for us.” – Ernest Holmes, The Science of Mind
“It is the childlike mind that finds the kingdom. Words are also seeds, and when dropped into the invisible spiritual substance, they grow and bring forth after their kind.” – Charles Fillmore
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” – David R. Hawkins, Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender
As the world’s elite and powerful meet every year in private to discuss the many plans and agendas they have to control our lives, from what we eat to who owns our bodies to how we spend our money, it’s easy to fall into a sense of total disempowerment, of feeling as though we no longer have choices, individuality, or sovereignty because other far more wealthy and influential people are pulling the puppet strings of humanity. We are told we are “bottom feeders” and “useless eaters” who don’t have the brains to decide our own destinies, and that one day we will be made obsolete thanks to transhumanism.
Yet there is a movement that began back in the early 1900s, based upon ancient wisdom teachings thought about in new ways, that tells us this is not true. The New Thought Movement and its teachings and principles are finding a new home in the hearts, minds, and souls of those who know they were not meant to be puppets under someone else’s control. They are spiritual beings having human experiences, sparks of divine intelligence that bow to no external forces or influences, directly linked to the infinite intelligence of the Universe and are, ultimately, co-creators of their own lives.
Over the last few years, we have all become aware of the agendas of the ultra-rich and powerful, of organisations like the Bilderberg Group and the World Economic Forum, and Big Pharma and the complicit mainstream media that lie to us and deceive us into pushing their chosen narrative. It has left many of us reeling for solid ground physically, mentally, and spiritually as we watch loved ones fall prey to propaganda and brainwashing. They turned the truth on its head, telling us up is down, and altering science to fit their woke agenda.
We have watched as our spiritual lives have been sapped of strength as we questioned those we thought were on our side, doctors and researchers who sold their souls to Big Pharma, celebrities that pushed gender mutilation and the belief that men can give birth and menstruate. Media pundits tell us to look the other way when thousands drop dead of “no apparent cause” because they’ve been told to keep the truth from us about vaccine injuries and deaths.
The whole world has been turned upside down and we have lost our footing.
Focusing on these externals has created a sense of fear and anxiety that is unprecedented in recent times, but there is a great truth the elites don’t want us to remember and will do all they can to hide it from us. A truth with ancient roots and a more modern view that tells us we are way more in control than we could ever imagine. A truth that reminds us real power comes not from some arrogant billionaire with a God complex or some corporation that benefits from illness and death. Real power comes from within each and every one of us, if only we would stop looking for it in all the wrong places.
What Is New Thought?
The name is a bit deceiving because New Thought has been around for well over a century. Not to be confused with New Age, New Thought is a spiritual and philosophical movement with roots in many religions and metaphysical teachings. It is ancient wisdom thought about in new ways as most of its ideas, core principles, and teachings are rooted in everything from Christianity to Buddhism. William James referred to as “the Religion of Healthy-Mindedness” and wrote about the movement in his book, Varieties of Religious Experience, alluding to the emphasis on the power of the mind and our thoughts.
New Thought focuses on using the power of the mind to heal, create reality, and prosper in the world because all is mind and all begins in thought. The “founding father” of the movement was Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (1802–1866), an American clockmaker who was also a mentalist and student of mesmerism. Quimby suffered from tuberculosis as a youth, which had no cure, and set about to experiment with his own ideas. He was intrigued by the mind’s ability to control and affect his own pain and thus, the body, and even claimed to use his mind methods to cure his TB.
Mesmerised
Quimby was a follower and devotee of the teachings of Charles Poyen, who came from France to the United States to lecture on “mesmerism,” a form of hypnotism created by German doctor Franz Mesmer in the 18th century which claimed the presence of an invisible natural force possessed by all living things, including humans, animals, and vegetables, and that this force could serve as an attractor, as in animal magnetism. Quimby also followed the teachings of other mesmerists visiting the United States from Europe and began to develop his own practice of working with ill patients, many of whom claimed he cured them.
He was called a quack and fraud by those who did not understand his ideas, but his work served as the foundation of New Thought – how the mind can cure, or harm, by the use of this invisible and mesmerising force.
Some of the key founders and major influencers of the New Thought movement: 1. Phineas Parkhurst Quimby 2. Warren Felt Evans 3. Ernest Holmes 4. Malinda Cramer (below is a bookplate issued by her church)
Mental Sciences
According to an article on NewThoughtWisdom.com, “New Thought also helped guide a variety of social changes throughout the 19th, 20th, and into the 21st centuries. New Thought directly influenced the growing movement of ‘Mental Sciences’ of the mid-19th century, which would later become the New Thought Movement. The mental-healing movement was a protest against old beliefs and methods, particularly the old-school medical practice and the old theology of the time.”
Quimby’s belief that one could cure themself of disease by using their own mind was at the forefront of a revolution in how we thought about illness and suggested strongly that we had more control than even doctors or pills and surgeries.
The ‘Mental Sciences’ are also rooted in the work of Warren Felt Evans who became a student of the movement in 1863 after seeking healing from Quimby. His great achievement was being the first to write about the New Thought healing methods as taught and practised by Quimby. His first book was published six years after Quimby died.
The New Thought movement may have originated in the United States, but it also had some roots in England, where the term “Higher Thought” was used instead of “Mental Sciences.” New Thought ideas spread via lectures, books, magazines, and leaflets in the early days. It was never intended to be a formal or organised religion. New Thought groups and churches were non-judgmental and open to all, unlike more traditional religions with rules, doctrines, and dogma.
Eventually, there arose three major branches within the movement that still exist today:
Religious Science/Science of Mind
Church of Divine Science
Unity Church/Unity Christianity
Religious Science was founded by Ernest Holmes (1877–1960) who wrote the seminal textbook, The Science of Mind. Holmes was heavily influenced by other New Thought pioneers such as Judge Thomas Troward, a founder of Mental Science, and literary legend Ralph Waldo Emerson, as well as the work of Emma Curtis Hopkins, who was often described as the New Thought “teacher of teachers” because of her influence on the movement.
Religious Science is a spiritual system based on the idea that all religions claim the same divine truth. Holmes wrote, “The varying faiths of mankind are unnumbered, but the primal faith of the race is today, as of old, the One Faith; an instructive reliance upon the Unseen, which we have learned to call God.” The teachings of Religious Science, summed up in The Science of Mind, claimed people could realise their true power and individual goals by believing the Universe was filled with divine intelligence, purpose, and order and that they could access that intelligence within, through the power of their minds and alignment of their thoughts.
The Church of Divine Science originated in San Francisco in the 1880s under Malinda Cramer (1844–1906). She and her husband Frank created the Home College of Spiritual Science in March 1888. Cramer later changed the name to the Home College of Divine Science. According to Divinescience.org, divine science teaches “that the fullness of Spirit is forever pouring Itself through the mind of man, limited only by the way man thinks and feels about life in general and about certain conditions and situations in particular. Therefore, all change begins as an activity in mind and through the law of cause-and-effect mind manifests as a personal experience.”
Charles and Myrtle Fillmore
Unity Church or Unity was founded by Charles (1854–1948) and Myrtle Fillmore (1845–1931) in 1889, with roots in Transcendentalism. Unity describes itself as “for people who might call themselves spiritual but not religious” and publishes a popular devotional publication called Daily Word. Unity has more of a Christian basis but without the dogma and doctrine. Unitychurch.org describes “a philosophy of life that emphasises a positive approach to Christianity and daily living and is based on the principles of Truth taught and exemplified by Jesus the Christ. We welcome all people regardless of religious background and serve their spiritual needs through prayer, education, publishing and being of loving service.”
All were incorporated into the International New Thought Alliance (www.newthoughtalliance.org), which provides educational information as a gathering place (now online) for those who follow the principles and practices.
Key Principles
The principles of New Thought, no matter what group or branch, are as follows:
Infinite intelligence, or God, is omnipotent and omnipresent.
Spirit is the Ultimate Reality.
True human self-hood is divine.
Disease has a mental origin.
Divine thought has power for good.
Right thinking can heal.
There is power in prayer, meditation, and positive thinking.
New Thought regards God as the Source of all, infinite intelligence that is everywhere, and that divine thought is a force for good in the world. God, or this infinite intelligence, exists within and yet is the entirety of the Universe itself, and there are metaphysical laws that govern the spiritual universe just as scientific laws govern the physical universe. We can use these metaphysical laws to consciously create our life experiences.
According to NewThoughtWisdom.com, “New Thought teaches that everything begins in the mind, and that events in the ‘outer’ world reflect the atmosphere of the ‘inner’ world: the macrocosm of human collective consciousness is regarded as inseparable from the microcosm of individual thoughts, attitudes, and beliefs. Through a shift in consciousness, conditions can be altered – for the individual and thus for the collective.”
Wayne Dyer (1940–2015)
In other words, as the late modern New Thought teacher/author Dr Wayne Dyer put it, “If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” Neuroscience tells us that our brains will look for evidence of what we expect and believe. We are pretty much what we think about all day long, as are our experiences.
These concepts can be traced to the more mystical teachings and philosophies of the ancient Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Taoist, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Vedic, and Muslim cultures, emphasising the interaction between the mind/thought and consciousness and its effects in the external world outside of the human mind. Unlike many religious teachings, there is no need for a middleman, an intercessor, a Church leader, a dogmatic doctrine, or a set of fixed rules.
What a dangerous concept in these trying times when we feel so out of control because of tyrannical entities such as the World Economic Forum, the UN, Big Pharma, and our government leaders seeking to take away every remaining freedom we have. If we were to all wake-up and realise we have this divine power within us and that we alone control our minds, thoughts, and beliefs, those who seek to control us and make money off of our backs would be… powerless. This is why a new revolution of New Thought principles and teachings can literally change the world.
But first, we must change ourselves individually. We must achieve right thinking and learn to focus our thoughts and attention on what we want to create, not what we don’t want. New Thought teaches us that we are all sparks of divinity and that, as stated in the Divine Science Statement of Being, “God is all, both invisible and visible. One Presence, One Mind, One Power is all. This One that is Perfect Life, Perfect Love and Perfect Substance.” We are also told that “the transcendence and immanence of God is manifest in all created things.” Imagine knowing that we are a part of this divine powerhouse that takes invisible, unformed substance and brings it into form. Who would need institutions and corporations to create prosperity? Who would need the constant intervention and meddling of medical authorities and Big Pharma when we can learn to heal our own bodies via the power of our minds?
New Thought reminds us that there is visible and invisible, absolute and relative, universal and individual and that it is all God, and we are a part of this. God is within us. Just as Christians are told the Kingdom of Heaven is not some external place, but in us and through us and all around us.
New Thought is called a process that evolves with each individual. Unlike traditional religions, New Thought remains “new” by embracing insights, discoveries, and levels of consciousness that allow the individual and the collective to continue to “become” more.
How Can Evil Exist if God is All Good?
As millions of people die from vaccine injuries, COVID-19, crime, poverty and other causes, one might ask how New Thought views evil. In “Toward the Prophetic: A New Direction in the Practice of New Thought” by independent scholar Liza J. Rankow for Religion Online, God is not personified but regarded as “an Eternal Principle that appears as Law, Being, Mind, Spirit, the Cause and Source of All.”
Rankow explains that the Christian doctrine of God as good is contrasted with “some independently existent evil, in a dualistic context (whether or not that evil is personified as the devil or Satan). New Thought, however, believes in ultimate oneness and that God is all there is, and “evil is regarded not as a fundamental part of the universal order, but as the byproduct of a human consciousness of separation.” Thus it is this sense of separation that is at the root of all evil and despair.
We are, therefore, individualised expressions of and one with the Life of God, spiritual beings in human incarnation. We can choose good or evil within that context and Life will respond to the force and focus of our thoughts. To reach our greatest soul development and for the good of the collective soul, it behoves us to choose good. This was a central teaching of Jesus Christ and other great wisdom teachers who believed in The Golden Rule.
Those who seek to suppress, control, or rule over us, whether individuals or institutions, know that many of us have lost our connection to this truth – that we are divine co-creators, that we have the power within to change our thoughts and minds and therefore our external experiences, and that no one can take away the sovereignty of our minds and freedom of our thoughts. They know we have little to no spiritual life because they have forced us into a relentless fear-based survival mode.
As more of us awaken to these New Thought teachings, their power over us will diminish and vanish. We will no longer be victims of people, things, or situations outside us. We will step into our true nature, one they will do anything to keep from us.
We can then apply the principles of universal and divine oneness of the individual to the greater social condition, creating a profound new understanding of how we interact with others and the Earth itself. If we understand that the essence of all life is unified with Source, and we are all of that Source, then there is no “we” and “them” and only all of us, and harming one harms all. Individual transformation leads to the transformation of the entirety of life itself. The power begins with each of us.
What a truly revolutionary act it is today, amidst censorship and banning and suppression of truth, to learn to reclaim our inner power, our divine connection, and our ability to use our minds to create the lives we desire and to control our thoughts, our lives, and our destinies. This is the gift of New Thought.
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About the Author
Marie D. Jones is the author of numerous non-fiction books, most recently for Visible Ink Press, including Disinformation and You: Identify Propaganda and Manipulation. She has contributed to dozens of magazines and has appeared on the History Channel and over 2,000 radio shows worldwide. Her website is www.mariedjones.com.
