You cannot have democracy without a certain level of higher awareness, a minimum level of discernment. You may not call it higher awareness, you may not even call it anything because you do not understand what it is. But when you look at history you see that a country cannot become a democracy unless there is a certain level of awareness among the top 10% and even a certain level among a majority of the population.
You may see that there are countries who have attempted to become democracies before they had that level of awareness, because it is possible to say: “Other countries have a democratic form of government we want that too, we are going to implement it.” But if you do not have the necessary level of awareness then the experiment in democracy will not be successful.
Societies dominated by selfishness
What is the level of awareness needed? There are patterns that anyone can observe when you look at the history of the world. You can see, for example, that there is and has for all of history been this dynamic of the tension, the struggle, between a small elite and a majority of the population. What you have in an elitist society is a clear focus on yourself and your own interests as you can see and define them with your present level of awareness. In other words, an elitist society is dominated by selfishness, self-centeredness, a focus on yourself as you see yourself. And when you are in this lower state of consciousness, you see yourself as a separate being who is in competition with, in opposition to, other people. You have a very clear distinction in your mind between you and your kind of people and all other people. Perhaps you even have a scapegoat that is the real problem that prevents you from having what you really think you are entitled to have.
What we see here is a focus on self as a separate being. You can clearly see in the elites that you see throughout history, how they have been focused on themselves, had no empathy, no concern, no consideration for the broad population and their suffering. They had no concerns whatsoever about enslaving 99% of the population so that they could live a privileged lifestyle.
You go back 2000 years and what was Jesus attempting to do? He was attempting to set the foundation for the progress that could potentially happen in the coming age. The pinnacle, the ultimate outcome of this age, would be the advent of democracy and the spread of democracy so it became a significant factor on a world scale.
Do unto others as you want them to do unto you
What higher awareness did through Jesus was to set the foundation for democracy, which really is epitomized and expressed in its essence in the saying: “Do unto others as you want them to do unto you.” Or, to quote the negative: “Do not do to others what you do not want others to do to you.” This mindset, this credo is the basic, not the only, but the basic foundation for democracy because what does it require? It requires a certain level of humanity, basic humanity and it is simply this. You realize: “I have certain feelings, I have certain thoughts, I have an inner life in my psyche. I am affected, my inner life is affected, by what happens outside of me including what other people do to me.”
Here is the crucial distinction. There comes a point in the evolution of a given soul where it begins to simply observe that if I hurt other people, they become angry and at some point they might hurt me in return. If I yell at other people they might yell at me in return or somebody else might yell at me in return. You begin to observe that there have always been patterns between human beings. People argue, they fight, they hurt each other. One person hurts another, the other person or the other person’s family takes revenge and as you see in the Middle East, people have been taking revenge for a very long time. Sometimes to the point that they did not remember when this cycle started. Even in the Middle East, there are people who have observed this and they have observed that if I do something to others, somebody is likely to do the same to me.
How do we break this spiral? How can we stop having this society that is dominated by this conflict, these petty struggles? Well, somebody must start. Somebody must start by treating people differently than other people are treating
them. Someone must break the spiral by doing unto others not what others are doing to you, but what you want them to do to you. Or not doing to others, what you do not want others to do to you. This is the basic foundation for democracy because a democracy can only work if there is a voluntary agreement that there are certain things we do not do to each other.
You may say: “But our democracy is based on human rights. We define in our Constitution that certain people have certain rights, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, whatever you define.” You may say: “We define in our laws that you have a right to own some property without somebody else taking it from you and if they do, the law will come after them.” And all of this is true but a democracy could never enforce this through force, through the law, through a police force because if a democracy had to enforce this through force it would be a dictatorship, it would become a dictatorship. There would have to be so much police, so much surveillance, that it would no longer be a democracy.
Basic humanity – the foundation for democracy
The foundation for democracy is that a majority of the population has this (unspoken possibly), but certainly they have this agreement: There are certain things we do not do to each other because when we do not do those things, our society functions the way we want it to function. We can live our lives without being forced or killed by other people. We can live peaceful lives, where we can build our future with confidence that we can keep what we acquire, we can reap what we have sown and our children can reap what we have sown. This is that basic agreement: to not do unto others, and so this is the very foundation.
There are nations where the vast majority of the people have reached this level of basic humanity. You can see many of the modern democratic nations where the society is functioning in such a way that people are not violating each other. There is in all countries still a small percentage of criminals who are violating the rights of others by taking their property, sometimes even killing them but you see a very, very low level of crime in many of the modern democracies. And you can see that in these modern democracies they are not police states, they do not have a heavy-handed omnipresent police force. They do not punish their criminals as severely as many other states. They do not, for example, cut a hand off of those who steal. You can see that the reason there is low crime is not because of any heavy-handed enforcement. It is really because of this agreement among a majority of the people that it is simply unthinkable that you would do this to others.
Multiplying the talents
What you see in these nations is also that they have a very high level of affluence, people have high pay, they can afford to buy a house, a car, they have good working conditions, short work weeks, they have good social services. They become ill, they can go to the doctor or to the hospital without going bankrupt and so forth. What you can see when you observe this is that when there is that level of humanity, a nation prospers and people prosper. And why is that? It is because of another foundation that was expressed through Jesus 2000 years ago namely, the parable of the servants who received different amounts of talents by their master who then went away. And when he came back, he demanded an account of what they had done with their talents. Two of the servants had multiplied them and they were given more and one had not multiplied them and was given less, and it was taken away from him what he had been given because he had not fulfilled the law to multiply what you are given.
What is this law? It is that, when you are doing unto others what you want them to do to you, you are multiplying the talents and when you multiply the talents in how you treat other people then the universe, natural laws, higher awareness, or whatever you want to call, it will multiply what you give and therefore you will have more. To him who has, more shall be added. These are simply principles that were expressed at the very beginning of the past age and they set the foundation for the modern democracies.
Many people will not recognize this because the modern democracies are also secular societies but nevertheless, it is there. The reality is that some of these modern democracies may have the lowest church attendance of any nation with a Christian church but their actions are more Christian than in some other countries where they go to church on a regular basis and do all the outer things required by the church, without actually treating other people the way Jesus told them to treat each other. The reason is that the teaching Jesus gave was a universal teaching. It was a universal teaching as universal as the law of gravity. You jump off a cliff, you fall down. You treat others well, you receive more from the universe. These are universal laws. What really was meant to happen was that Christianity was meant to become something similar to how Buddhism is seen at least by some people not as a religion with doctrines and rituals and institutions but as a philosophy. Christianity was meant to be a philosophy for constructive living. If that had been maintained, the modern democracies would not have had to become secular because societies would not have become religious in the first place. Naturally, you saw that with the formation of the Roman Catholic Church, societies in Europe became religious societies and they were elitist societies.
Christianity as a universal non-elitist philosophy
When Jesus walked the earth, when this teaching was given forth through him, there was opposition to it. You can see this in the scriptures. You can see how, not only the scribes and Pharisees but the Sanhedrin, the secular rulers of Jewish society, the Romans, there was tremendous opposition to this. And what has generally not been understood by Christians is why there was this opposition.
From an overall perspective of course, the manipulators who are in the consciousness of anti-christ, did not want anyone demonstrating the consciousness of Christ but there was even another layer of this opposition. What Jesus actually taught was a non-elitist philosophy. Jewish society at the time was an elitist society. There was a power elite, not only the secular king but also the religious authorities, scribes, Pharisees, Sanhedrin and they had a firm grip on the Jewish population.
Here comes this preacher walking around with long hair and beard, often covered in dust from the roads and he is proclaiming that every person has access to higher awareness within his or her heart and does not need to go through the religious authorities. What blasphemy! What an outrage! This cannot be allowed! Let us grab him and nail him to a piece of wood and shut him up in every way we can! This is what Christians today fail to see. Why do they fail to see it? Because of seventeen centuries of programming by the Catholic church, which for seventeen centuries has portrayed Christianity as an elitist religion. Constantine did not want a populist universal religion where the people could access higher awareness on their own. He wanted a state-controlled religion where the people could only have access to God and salvation through an institution that he controlled.
Just look at history, such as the Nicene councils, and you will see this very clearly if you have eyes to see. After three centuries of the Christian philosophy kicking around in the collective consciousness, it was turned into another elitist religion that suppressed the people, ushered in the entire dark ages of the Middle Ages, created a secular elite with the divine rights of kings and the noblemen with blue bloods fundamentally different, created differently from the people, created to rule the people.
The Roman Catholic church was the basis of a new elitist religion
Where is that in the scriptures? Where is that in the words that Jesus spoke? He did say to “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and unto God that which is God’s” but in the Roman Catholic church they do not render unto God that which is God’s for they have replaced higher awareness with the Peter consciousness, who denied Christ three times and they have denied Christ 3 billion times since 325 CE or 381 CE, whatever you count as the start of the Roman Catholic church. Had this not happened, Christianity would not have become this big, powerful religion but then we would have avoided the Crusades, the Inquisition, the witch-hunts and other such nonsense and that would not have been so bad at all would it? And had this not happened, had we not had these infallible doctrines of the Catholic church that pitted it against the early scientists, then modern democracies would not have had to become secular nations because they would have had a philosophy that was embraced by the people, not by any particular institution and not by any state.
Does that mean that democracy could have happened earlier? Well certainly, why not? What delayed democracy? Well, more than any other single factor, the Catholic church. Is the Catholic church a democratic institution? Do the congregation vote? Do they elect their local priest, the bishop, the pope? There is not a sliver of democracy in the Catholic church. Had there not been this institutionalization, elitistization of Christianity, then certainly democracies could have happened earlier. They could have happened in Europe because you might not have had kings that believed that they had a divine right to rule. You might not have had these manipulators who waged war against each other and in order to justify this set their people up as enemies. Whereas, if they had seen themselves based on the Christian worldview, the Christian view of people, how could the French and the British and the Germans be enemies? Yes, if you had a manipulator who was the king in France and in England, then they could be enemies. But the people, why would they be enemies? If they were all Christian and followed this Christian ethos to do unto others, how could there be hostility? How could there be war?
Challenging the consciousness of Satan
This is, in a sense, the most basic level of Christhood, of higher awareness. This, of course, is again not understood, not recognized by the Christian religion. Why not? Because it became an elitist, exclusivist religion that said that only the pope and the church hierarchy have access to higher awareness. Whereas, nobody outside of that hierarchy should dare to talk to spirit on their own. And if they do, they will be labeled as witches and burned at the stake or as heretics and burned at the stake, or tortured in other ways.
Higher awareness is that you recognize that other human beings have the same rights as yourself but what you really recognize is that it is in your own best interest to treat other people the way you want to be treated. And why is that? Why is it that this is the level of Christ discernment? What is Christ discernment? Take the situation in the Bible where Jesus starts telling his disciples that he has to go to Jerusalem and will suffer many things of the elders. Peter says: “Be it far from thee Lord, that is just not going to happen.” And Jesus says to him: “Get thee behind me, Satan” because at that moment, Peter, the Peter consciousness, represented Satan. What is Satan? It is the prince of this world, the consciousness of this world, that says: “Everything in this world should conform to the dominant consciousness of this world.” In other words, you are not allowed to be the Christ, to have higher awareness in this world. You are only allowed to have a lower awareness.
What is the Christ? The Christ is the higher awareness that comes to challenge the prince of this world, challenge the consciousness of Satan, the lower awareness. Challenge the mindset that most people are in, the level of ignorance, the level of spiritual blindness, the level of selfishness where they do not see what is in their own best interest. Christhood comes to challenge this consciousness, the consciousness of selfishness, self-centeredness. And what does it take to recognize the Christ? It takes a certain level of higher awareness.
The basic level of higher awareness
Christ or higher awareness says: “If you do unto others, your life will be better.” From a logical, rational, human perspective why would anyone believe what the Christ says? Because you can observe that: “Hey I treated that person nicely but he did not treat me nicely so why should I believe what the Christ says?” Well, what is it that Christ is saying? Is higher awareness saying that if you treat other people nicely, it is guaranteed that they will also treat you nicely, that the person that you help across the street, will also be nice to you?
No, that is not what higher awareness is saying because the Christ is recognizing that people are people and people have free will, and people are at different levels of consciousness, different levels of selfishness. Higher awareness simply says: “If you treat people the way you want to be treated, this will come back to you. Not from that particular person, but it will come back to you from the universe and through certain other people. And the more people in the society who treat each other that way, the more will come back to them. The more they will multiply their talents, the more they will increase their affluence and suddenly there will be enough for all, or at least for most.”
Higher awareness is not saying there is a one-on-one correspondence at the human level between what you do to others and what others do to you. Higher awareness is saying there is an intermediary; there is something greater than the human level, there is something greater than this world, than the prince of this world and that greater authority will give back to you, according to what you give to others. You multiply the talents, higher awareness will give you more. This you cannot accept through human reasoning and human argumentation. You can only accept it through a certain level of inner knowing, intuition, discernment and this is Christ discernment or higher awareness, the beginning stages of higher awareness. The very beginning stage of higher awareness is that you recognize there is a reality beyond this world.
Now, 2000 years ago people could not really grasp this in the highest possible understanding because there was not the knowledge of human psychology and the mind. They needed to have this image that there is a God. There is a God in heaven and that God is going to reward them for what they do to others. And those who accepted this, they demonstrated the basic level of higher awareness, you do believe there is an authority beyond earth. Speaking of authority, you actually thereby believe that there is an authority beyond any earthly authority. Whether it is the king or the priest or the bishop or the pope or the dictator or the prince of this world, there is an authority beyond anything at the human level, and you are following that higher level. That is why Jesus said: “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and unto God that which is God’s” because sometimes there is no point in resisting the worldly ruler at the time. You instead focus on raising your consciousness and then gradually this will come back to you from a higher authority, instead of you going into a dualistic fight with the manipulators. This is the basic level of higher awareness. There is something that is real beyond the human level. But now with today’s knowledge of psychology we can go much further.
Why people cannot agree on anything
If you took a Stone Age man and told him about reading, he would be unable to fathom it. Well, if you took a person from 2000 years ago and told him about the psyche, the mind, the ego, resolving your psychology, he would have been completely unable to fathom it. The collective consciousness has been raised tremendously in the past 2000 years. Among other things, because of the teachings that were given through Jesus, but not exclusively by that. But the collective consciousness has been raised so people today can understand certain things that they could not understand back then.
What many people are able to grasp today is that the human mind has certain dynamics, certain mechanics for how it works and there are many, many people in today’s world who have looked at this fact that human beings cannot agree on anything. They have different viewpoints, different opinions. They can see how in history they have had not only different religions that have clashed, and people have fought because of religion, there has been political ideologies, there have been theories, there is scientific materialism versus religion, there is capitalism versus communism, there is this versus that. And all of these hostilities between people are driven by the fact that they have different views, different opinions.
There are many people today who are ready to make a slight shift of asking, why is that? Why is it that people cannot agree on anything? Well, it is because they have different viewpoints, yes, but why do they have different viewpoints? What is it that is going on in these people’s minds? Why do you have a Christian who is absolutely convinced that his religion is the only true one and that he is guaranteed to go to heaven? You have a Muslim who is absolutely convinced that his religion is the only right one and that the Christian is completely false, just as the Christian is convinced that the Muslim Religion is false. Why do you have materialists who are absolutely convinced that their religion, Scientific Materialism, is the only true one and that all the others are unreal and that they, the materialists, are guaranteed to go to the materialist heaven where there is nothing, whereas all the religious people are guaranteed to burn in some hell that they cannot really explain where it is?
Why is this? Many people are ready to recognize that it is because the human mind has the ability to become a self-fulfilling, a self-validating, a self-referential system. And the mechanism is very simple. You accept a certain idea as being beyond questioning. It either has some infallible authority because it is given by God himself or it has the infallible authority of science because it is based on scientific discoveries of this universal natural law. Or, it is based on some historical necessity, or whatever you can define. But many people are ready to see that there are any number of examples of how people have elevated one particular thing, saying: “This cannot be questioned, this is self-evident, this is true, this is absolute and therefore anything that questions it must be wrong.”
When people go into this state of mind they are saying, not consciously, but subconsciously their minds are looking for and accepting only what validates their infallible belief and it is ignoring or discounting or disproving anything that goes beyond it, or questions it. In other words, people are looking for validation and because of the human intellect, which can argue for or against any point, they can always convince themselves that they are right and anything opposite to theirs is wrong. In other words, the minds of these people become a closed system that is self-validating because it only looks at and accepts what validates it and it discount anything that does not.
Many people are ready to see that this is what has caused the downfall of civilizations and many disasters. But it has also caused much individual unhappiness because it makes people unable to adapt to changes, both in their personal lives, and societies cannot adapt to changes on a planetary scale. Only a slight shift in people’s minds and they will realize this: The mind has this ability. How can we avoid this? How can we go beyond it? How can we free ourselves from becoming closed-minded? We must reach beyond our own minds. We must find something beyond our own minds.
It cannot be something that is defined on earth, because we see that many people thought that they had a religious doctrine that was beyond their own minds and this was the ultimate authority. Or they had a political doctrine that was beyond their own minds, or a scientific doctrine that was beyond their own minds. There must be something else. If there is not something else, then we are doomed. The human race is doomed. We will continue struggling and fighting each other until we destroy each other, as many people fear could happen.
The alternative to the closed human mind
Is there an alternative? And some people, many people, are ready to recognize that there is. They are not ready to recognize this on a theoretical level. They are ready to recognize it on an experiential level because they experience that there is an aspect of their own minds that is beyond their feelings, their thoughts, even their sense of identity. They have what could be called an experience of pure awareness. Something beyond the mind, something beyond their sense of identity, their thought patterns, their beliefs, their emotional patterns; some inner stillness, some inner expansion, something that you cannot make relative, you cannot argue with it, you cannot use it to prove anything in this world. And this is the essence of Christhood or higher awareness. You experience something beyond your own mind as it is right now.
Peter, when he first met Jesus, had the same experience as all of those who followed Jesus. He experienced that there was something about Jesus that was beyond what he had in himself. He experienced that there was an energy streaming through Jesus that was beyond what he had in his own mind. He recognized this. The recognition of this is the essence of higher awareness.
The first and second challenge of higher awareness
The first challenge of higher awareness is to recognize that there is something beyond your own mind. The second challenge is to keep seeking for that experience and not allowing your outer mind to pull the experience into its worldview and perception filter. In other words, what Peter did when Jesus told my disciples he would have to go to Jerusalem, is that he applied his own perception filter, his own belief system, his own worldview to Jesus and said: “No, no, you are not, nothing is going to happen to you that does not correspond to my worldview.” And this is, of course, the consciousness of Satan that wants to pull higher awareness, which is beyond the human mind, into the mindset, the worldview created by the human mind, the closed system. It wants to bring higher awareness (that comes to save you from the closed system, to pull you out of the closed system to give you an alternative to the closed system) into that system so now you have an excuse. Even though you have recognized higher awareness, you still do not need to continue to unravel all of the illusions in your closed system.
Without basic respect democracy cannot function
Recognizing that it is in your own best interest to do unto others is not an intellectual reasoning. It is not an argumentative process. It can only come from this experience: “There is something that is real, there is something that is beyond anything, any idea, any belief we can define on earth. There is something beyond my own mind. There is something to me as a being that is beyond this outer mind.” And when you recognize this in yourself, you also recognize it in others and therefore you have that basic humanity which is a basic respect for other people. You could say you have a respect for yourself and you transfer that to others and that is the foundation for democracy. How can you have democracy without it? Consider this; if there is not a basic respect between human beings, how can you have a democracy? Events have proven this, you cannot force a country to become democratic.
George W. Bush went into Iraq in 2003 to take down Saddam Hussein, expecting that he could force Iraq to become a democratic nation. Well, he did not actually expect to force it. He thought that as soon as Saddam was removed, they would leap at the opportunity to become a democracy. But history has proven that that did not happen because if there is not the respect then how can a democracy function? In Iraq in 2003, why did they have a dictator who was so abusive, at least towards some of the people? It was because there was not that mutual respect, the people were divided, Shia and Sunni, this or that, Kurds and others.
They did not look beyond the outer definitions, the worldly definitions: “Oh, they are Sunni’s. I do not need to respect them. They do not respect me. Why should I respect them?” There was not the recognition that: “If I respect others, even if they do not respect me, then I will be rewarded by God or the universe for doing this, regardless of what the other people do, and continue to do.”
That is the whole idea of turning the other cheek and continuing to turn the other cheek. This was not there and because it was not there they had a dictator who did not respect the people. And why was that? Because the people did not respect each other and why did not they respect each other? Because they did not respect themselves. And why did not they respect themselves? Because they had not experienced that there was more to them than the human. They were trapped in the consciousness of Satan, like Peter was but they had not even, like Peter did, recognized higher awareness anywhere, they had recognized no value in the higher awareness. They looked at the Quran only as an external authority, not as internal, which actually can be done as the Sufis have demonstrated.
Inseparable connection between higher awareness and democracy
Where does this all lead to? It leads to the fact that when you realize that higher awareness is a universal term, there is an inseparable connection between higher awareness and democracy. You cannot have democracy without higher awareness. You can have higher awareness without democracy, but you cannot have democracy without higher awareness, at least not what is a lasting democracy.
There are many, many people who have not recognized, with their outer minds, higher awareness, but they can still grasp certain ideas. When these ideas are in the collective consciousness, people can pick them up and start acting upon them. The more aware people can help project these ideas into the collective consciousness.
Anti-democratic alliance of the manipulators
You are living in times where democracy is being challenged because there are certain nations who do not have a democratic form of government, who have no intention or goal of making their nations more democratic, and who therefore feel threatened by democratic nations. Why do they feel threatened? Why do Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping feel threatened by the presence of democratic nations? Because they know that it is very difficult in this age of communication to prevent their own people from realizing that people in democratic nations have a vastly different life than the people in Russia or China. There is the freedom, there is not having to fear your own government, being able to say whatever you want, write whatever you want, post whatever you want on the internet. There is also an economic freedom, being able to start your own business, keep what you earn. And there is, of course, the affluent materialistic lifestyle where the average person in Western Europe, for example, has a much higher lifestyle than the average person in Russia or China.
They know, in a sense, that there is a growing awareness in Russia and China that: “We do not have what people in the democratic nations have.” They feel threatened by this because they know that there could come a point where a critical mass of people in their nations would question: “Why do we not have what people in the democratic nations have? Is it because we do not have a democratic form of government?” They are doing everything they can to prevent people from asking that question but they know they cannot prevent it indefinitely so they feel threatened by democracy. They have decided, even the two of them between each other, to do certain things to take democracy down a little bit, humiliate democracies, portray them as being incapable and challenge them in various ways.
You also have, of course, the fundamental aspects that you see in the manipulators. You go back to the Old Testament, there are certain stories in there that have a certain value and you have the story of Cain and Abel. Why did Cain slay Abel? Why was Cain jealous of Abel? Because Abel was not a selfish person but Cain was. Abel had something that Cain did not have, namely higher awareness. It was not that Cain could not have it, but he could only have it by giving up the lower consciousness and since he was not willing to do that, he could not have higher awareness. By seeing Abel having it, he was constantly reminded of what he did not have, and he did not want this so he wanted to kill Abel to not be confronted with the fact that there was something he did not have.
You have two leaders of two large nations that have that Cain consciousness. They are jealous of what they do not have. They do not want to change, so they know they cannot have it. But if they could somehow take down what they have in the democratic nations, then they could feel better about themselves for not having it. Because there is this peculiar aspect of the lower consciousness that if nobody has it, it is not so bad that I do not have it but if somebody has it, and I do not have it, that is unacceptable to them, unbearable.
There are indeed forces in the physical world, there are people, there are nations who are doing whatever they can think of to challenge democracy. There are even forces beyond the material realm who also would like to challenge democracy. They, of course, will not prevail. They may have some temporary success as they would define it, but they will not prevail. Why not? Because how do you challenge democracy? A democracy is a society, a form of government that is not based on force. How do you challenge a democracy? Only by using force. Of course, those who want to challenge democracy can only think in terms of force.
Again, just take a look at history. Look how many force-based empires there have been. They may have had success for some time. Where are they now? In the dustbin of history. Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Xi Jinping’s China, they are headed for that dustbin. It is just a matter of how long it takes. Putin has accelerated the process tremendously by invading Ukraine. If Xi Jinping decided to invade Taiwan, he would do the same for China.
There is the basic level of higher awareness you need to have in order to have a democracy, but you need a higher level of awareness in order to sustain a democracy.
NEXT: Democracy needs to step up to a higher level of discernment