War in Heaven - Chapter 13: Soul, Mind, & Consciousness
Q. Even though you've explained how the Theocrats indoctrinate people who attend religious services by conditioning them with a mixture of sensory and telepathic reinforcement, I still find it hard to understand this in terms of what I know about psychology.
For example, how can the whole human race be so brainwashed that they don't even speculate consciously about certain aspects of spiritual reality?
The idea that evil spirits might pose as gods and exploit people through organized religion is an obvious one, yet almost no one ever talks or writes about it.
The whole subject is literally "unthinkable."
The idea that evil spirits might pose as gods and exploit people through organized religion is an obvious one, yet almost no one ever talks or writes about it.
The whole subject is literally "unthinkable."
Also, if religious mind control puts people into conflict with their own human nature, as happens when they are taught that sexual feelings are morally wrong, why doesn't this negative reinforcement cancel out the positive reinforcement of religious ecstasy?
And even more important, most Americans right now aren't Fundamentalists.
The majority don't even go to churches regularly at all; and many of those who do, go to liberal churches that don't practice religious mind control as you describe it.
Since this is so, why aren't all the facts about Theocracy and religious mind control common knowledge?
A. The answer to all these questions is the same: the Theocrats simply know a lot more about psychology than people do.
An electronic computer analogy applies here. People on Earth right now are like the users of a computer system: they can in-put and retrieve data, and they can run the existing programs to process the data in set ways.
Many of them have enough programming skills to modify some of the programs slightly, but they don't understand the basic design of the software very well.
On the other hand, the Theocrats not only understand the software far more completely, but also have much easier access to the special "command mode" used to modify it.
This command mode is the telepathic chain-reaction used in religious mind control.
On the other hand, the Theocrats not only understand the software far more completely, but also have much easier access to the special "command mode" used to modify it.
This command mode is the telepathic chain-reaction used in religious mind control.
Of course, trained human psychics also have access to it, and so do spirits in the Invisible College; but it is still extremely difficult to free people from Theocratic control.
The mind of the average person on Earth right now is run by software designed by the Theocrats to keep people from consciously finding out they exist.
And there's no use just telling people the truth: they simply can't understand or believe it, because the mental programs they use for understanding and believing things were designed by the Theocrats.
Q. Almost all religious and occult literature, and the majority of modern speculative writing that comes close to discussing Theocracy, assume that "gods," "demons," etc., have the power to kill humans who discover "forbidden knowledge," or at the very least, to over-ride the conscious will and keep humans from remembering such things or pursuing such lines of enquiry further.
What are the facts on this?
Especially, are the Theocrats aware of telepathic conversations like this one, and what can they do about it?
A. Obviously, the Theocrats don't have the psychic power to kill people or analyze their conscious minds, or you wouldn't have survived to write this.
They operate through the subconscious, and they keep people from finding out about them by making it difficult to understand certain kinds of spiritual information or draw rational conclusions from it.
An explanation of how they do this is quite complex.
Like the answers to your first set of questions, it depends on a more complete knowledge of the nature of the mind and the soul than you now have, and this is going to be difficult to explain.
Keep in mind, throughout what follows, that much of the terminology from psychology and computer science is going to be misused.
We have to use the words in your vocabulary that are closest to the meanings we need to convey, but they aren't always too close.
We have to use the words in your vocabulary that are closest to the meanings we need to convey, but they aren't always too close.
The first thing we need to clarify is the comparison between the human brain and a computer, and between the mind and the software and data in a computer.
The only similarity between the human brain and present electronic computers on Earth is that both store and process data.
The methods for doing so are quite different.
This is where most of the books about biocomputers and psychocybernetics go wrong.
They take the analogy between the brain and the computer, and between the mind and computer software, much too literally.
They take the analogy between the brain and the computer, and between the mind and computer software, much too literally.
The best example is that the electronic computer deals in absolute or "hard" values, whereas the brain deals in comparative or "soft" values.
If you create a new file in a computer and enter data into it, the information stays there exactly as entered, and you can retrieve it in its complete original form just by entering the correct access code.
If you want to delete something, you can "kill" it instantly and completely by using the correct commands.
Everything you know about the human memory and learning process makes it obvious the human mind doesn't work this way.
Everything you know about the human memory and learning process makes it obvious the human mind doesn't work this way.
Memory storage and retrieval in the human mind is a cumulative rather than an absolute process.
If a person's senses receive a particular set of data only once, fewer of the individual details are recorded in memory than if it is received repeatedly.
Also, information may be automatically forgotten if not periodically retrieved, a phenomenon that behaviorists call extinction.
These two processes are almost impossible to analyze using a computer analogy.
If a person's senses receive a particular set of data only once, fewer of the individual details are recorded in memory than if it is received repeatedly.
Also, information may be automatically forgotten if not periodically retrieved, a phenomenon that behaviorists call extinction.
These two processes are almost impossible to analyze using a computer analogy.
The electronic computer is an artificial construction, designed to do exactly what the human operator tells it to do.
It's also basically binary: a circuit is either open or closed, giving a series of "yes" and "no" answers.
Computer software is designed exactly the same way, to match the hardware.
The internal data-processing functions of the computer can be very complex, but this complexity is always built up out of these simple binary building blocks.
Neither the brain nor the mind works this way.
Q. Doesn't the biological principle of "irritability" put a binary base under the behavior of living organisms?
For example, some microorganisms show positive or negative phototropism:
they approach a source of light, or they move away from it.
A. This analogy doesn't hold up very well, because even microorganisms often show much more complex behavior than this.
Biological behavior is based not on simple "yes" and "no," but on increasing or decreasing orders of probability that an organism will respond in a given way to a given stimulus.
The probability that an organism will show a given response is determined by the quantity and quality of reinforcement it receives for performing that response.
The behavior of the computer is based on "either A or B."
The behavior of the biological organism is based on "degrees of A or B" with the quantitative values of the probabilities being determined by environmental reinforcement of many different kinds.
The behavior of the computer is based on "either A or B."
The behavior of the biological organism is based on "degrees of A or B" with the quantitative values of the probabilities being determined by environmental reinforcement of many different kinds.
The computer model of the mind is still useful, though, because it's the only way even to begin to discuss the subject in the English language right now, poorly as the available terminology fits the realities.
For example, it is much easier to understand the concept of the "subconscious" if you think of the mind as the total data and programs stored in an electronic computer, with many different kinds of files, each kind having different access codes.
In other words, what people call "normal consciousness" is like a computer menu, which gives access to certain files and allows them to perform certain operations.
Various "altered" states of consciousness give access to entirely different menus.
Since the Theocrats have some degree of direct access to the "control mode" for modifying these programs in both the physical and astral mind, they have redesigned many of them to serve their selfish purposes for exploiting human beings both on Earth and after death.
Q. Do they get this direct access during the religious mind-control process, and if so, why aren't people who don't attend religious services immune to it?
A. Religious mind control is practiced in many different places besides religious services.
The Theocrats often practice it on the crowds:
- attending sporting events
- in gambling casinos
- at political rallies
- during musical concerts of many types
- in a number of other places
Whenever many people enter an intense emotional state at the same time and have their collective attention focused on a common objective, Theocratic spirits can use subconscious telepathic manipulation to put them into a religious trance and reprogram their minds with religious mind control.
The Invisible College used the rock concerts, peace demonstrations, "love-ins," and similar events of the Sixties for exactly the same purposes.
Before that we used meetings of fraternal organizations, a variety of progressive political meetings, and even the circuses and carnivals that used to visit every American village and town, as the Theocrats used, and still use, touring revival meetings.
And the Invisible College will continue to practice religious mind control to reprogram people as long as the Theocrats do.
The important thing is to get as many of the facts as possible out into the open and let people decide for themselves.
And it's finally beginning to happen.
References to the truth about Theocracy are beginning to appear in the writings of hundreds of different authors.
But the information is still mostly just isolated fragments, and it's also obvious that most of the people who write them down don't really know what they are, or even that they're very important.
Even though most of the individual facts that make up the model of spiritual reality being presented in this book are already available to the public, very few people are capable of assembling them into a coherent theory, as you are doing here.
This is because the mental programs they use to draw conclusions from information on spiritual subjects were deliberately designed by the Theocrats to be illogical and irrational.
Q. I've wondered about this for a long time, because empirical thinking appears to be the natural way for the mind to operate if you assume that the functioning of the thought-process is determined by positive and negative reinforcement.
A. Correct.
As a general rule, assuming that the truth is true will bring positive reinforcement; assuming that it is false, or that something other than the truth is true, will bring negative reinforcement.
There are exceptions to this rule, but it does operate with reasonable consistency, enough to program people with roughly empirical methods of thinking.
There are exceptions to this rule, but it does operate with reasonable consistency, enough to program people with roughly empirical methods of thinking.
This is what most people mean by "common sense":
drawing conclusions from the available observed information, and being willing to modify those conclusions if they are contradicted by further information when put into practice.
Of course, this can get extremely complicated, especially when one is dealing with other people.
Since the individual usually has rather incomplete information on a given subject, everyone makes a lot of mistakes.
Also, people all tend to be conservative in making decisions: it's easier to keep on doing something the way you've done it before than it is to change just because the circumstances indicate it might be a good idea.
Both of these exceptions are important, but you should realize they are also self-limiting.
The more information you receive that contradicts your present conclusion, the more likely you are to change it.
Also, your basic conservatism or inertia about changing opinions tends to give way when circumstances put enough pressure on you.
When you start receiving significant negative reinforcement for behaving in a given way, it gradually becomes obvious that you should find an alternative.
This is the way the mind operates in decision-making most of the time, especially in dealing with the physical world.
But this kind of natural empirical reasoning is used much less often than one might expect in dealing with other people, and hardly at all in dealing with psychic and spiritual matters.
The Theocrats are responsible for this.
The key to Theocratic power is the nature of what the behaviorists call reinforcement.
As materialists, they think of it as something concrete; but it also has a subjective component, and the Theocrats are able to make use of this fact to manipulate the kind of reinforcement that people receive in response to their behavior.
Q. By "a subjective component in reinforcement," do you mean that a concept like "pain" or "pleasure" is subjective in the sense of being subject to interpretation by the person receiving the sensory impulses?
A. No.
That part of it is objective: the neural impulses we call pain are not the same as the ones we call pleasure; they have different electrical characteristics and travel over different circuits within the nervous system.
Q. Yes, that's verified by what I know of scientific conclusions on the subject. Where, then, is the "subjective component"?
A. The best name for it in English is "the emotional reaction to sensory stimulus."
As sensory stimuli are received by the mind of a person in a normal state of consciousness, they cause the retrieval of ideas and emotions from memory.
This component is subjective because it comes out of memory storage rather than from the outside environment, and in many cases, it has more effect on decision-making than the sensory input alone.
This component is subjective because it comes out of memory storage rather than from the outside environment, and in many cases, it has more effect on decision-making than the sensory input alone.
Let's try a specific example.
Suppose a racially prejudiced white man takes a job where many of his co-workers are blacks.
Suppose a racially prejudiced white man takes a job where many of his co-workers are blacks.
Initially, he tends to interpret everything they say and do in ways that reinforce his existing prejudice:
if they are confident and assertive, they are acting "above their station in life."
If they're friendly, they're being presumptuous and impertinent.
If they sense his prejudice and keep their distance from him or act hostile, this is proof that people of different races are not meant to work together.
And so on.
If they sense his prejudice and keep their distance from him or act hostile, this is proof that people of different races are not meant to work together.
And so on.
His experience should be teaching him that, on the average, black people are no different from white people; but his own subjective reactions to sensory intake tend to prevent him from learning.
Q. The behaviorist literature describes these kinds of reactions, of course, because they are very common, but the psychologists don't even speculate that a deliberate conspiracy is responsible for those elements of human behavior that are irrational or self-destructive. Instead, they take a Darwinian approach.
For example, in the case cited above, they'd say that the prejudiced man learned his prejudice in an environment where he had little personal contact with black people:
he received positive reinforcement from the prejudiced whites around him for showing negative emotional reactions when blacks were mentioned, so he became prejudiced.
When he enters an environment where he comes in contact with black people, these prejudices continue to function until they are extinguished.
This is a process very similar to random mutation and natural selection.
A. This process does account for a lot of human behavior.
However, mental programming from Theocratic spirits has to be added into this equation.
The Theocrats don't want people to learn from experience or adjust to new situations in their environment, so they encourage emotionalism over rationality.
When people make decisions rationally, they are harder for the Theocrats to control.
The Theocrats don't want people to learn from experience or adjust to new situations in their environment, so they encourage emotionalism over rationality.
When people make decisions rationally, they are harder for the Theocrats to control.
Religious mind control is a delicate process, because the religious trance is a rather shallow one.
If people in a religious trance perform rituals that are unfamiliar, or hear preaching that seriously contradicts their existing beliefs, they return to a normal state of consciousness.
Effective religious mind control can be practiced during rituals only when those rituals remain relatively stable.
This is also one of the principal reasons why Theocratic religion is socially and politically conservative or reactionary.
Q. I still don't see how the Theocrats can program the minds of the entire human race so thoroughly that the truth about Theocracy has never become common knowledge.
A. A few people throughout history have, in fact, learned various elements of the truth about Theocracy and written them down in religious and occult literature.
However, these elements were always fragmentary; and more important, neither the people who found them nor the rest of the human race were capable of fully understanding them.
Especially, no one was able to design experiments to discover further elements of this knowledge and work towards a unified theory to explain the whole thing.
Q. Why should the entire human race find it so hard to make the same breakthrough that I'm making, which enables me to discover and accept this kind of information?
I understand, at least partially, how religious mind control works on believers, but why should the minds of everyone else be similarly affected?
A. This comes back to the basic behaviorist theory that human personality is conditioned into people by their physical environment - this includes the mental programs that they use to evaluate data and decide what is true and what is false.
Even if you leave direct telepathic programming during religious mind control out of the picture, people still receive their programming from both their physical and social environments.
Programming from the physical environment usually favors empirical thinking, but that from the social environment favors acceptance of doctrine on faith.
A large part of the customs and beliefs and instinctive emotional reactions that make up this social environment were created by Theocratic religion.
The further back you go into human history, the greater the percentage of people who were devout believers in Theocratic religion and were subjected to religious mind control to a significant degree throughout their lives.
Q. This definitely appears to be true when we look at Western history over the last thousand years, but I can see gaps further back.
For example, it doesn't seem as if either the Romans or the Greeks were very devout during important periods of their civilizations.
A. On the contrary - the vast majority of the population in both civilizations were devout believers in Pagan religions that practiced effective religious mind control.
However, there were periodic weakenings of religious belief among certain segments of the population, which allowed important:
- occult
- philosophical
- political
and scientific works to be written, works based on some degree of empirical thinking.
Remember, the Greek and Roman philosophers were just a tiny elitist group of intellectuals.
The majority viewpoint then was not that of Socrates, but that of the people who condemned him to death.
The hold of Theocratic religion on most of Earth's living population did not begin to weaken until the Modern Era, from about the 1300's down to the present.
And even today, the greater part of the population is still subject to religious mind control.
Modern civilization does program people with personality structures that resist religious mind control, but the Theocrats have been able to counter our efforts along these lines by resorting to electronic mind control.
Q. My research into secret societies and the forces manipulating human civilization has given me the impression that the Invisible College also makes use of both religious and electronic mind control.
A. This is true.
We discuss electronic mind control in more detail in the next chapter.