Manipulation, Control, and the Spiritual Mind

Conscious Transparency: Control and manipulation

In my next few series of posts I am going to write about some of the ways that developing Integrated Intelligence, or INI  and conscious transparency can assist in your personal evolution, and that of society in general. Conscious transparency is the greater awareness of information both within and beyond one’s own mind, including the workings of the human ego (which tends to be deceptive). Each post will deal with a specific problem in work, education or living in today’s knowledge economy.

In this first post I am going to deal with an obvious feature of today’s hyper-capitalistic world: the manipulation and control by governments and corporations.

Within the knowledge economy, individuals are extensively and continually controlled and manipulated. There is an agenda to shape individuals to fit into the societal machine. As late educator James Moffett pointed out in The Universal Schoolhouse, this manipulation process often contradicts the desires and needs of the individual, and especially the calling of his/her spirit. Thus, the State and/or corporate power structures may suppress not only ego-centered drives, but spiritual ones also. While selfish behaviours (ego) might be considered negative, the latter spiritual urges may be seen as assisting in the overall evolution of consciousness in the society. There is therefore in modern societies an unintentional muffling of greater human and social development due to the system’s requirement for short-term control of the human ego

Education has become part of the consumerism and materialism of the modern age. The ‘corporate takeover’ of education can be traced back to a wider social problem. Critics have pointed to the powerful controlling influence of mainstream establishment culture David Loye equates this “Establishment” with the paradigm of the “Pseudo-Darwinian Mind”:

Arising during the twentieth century, this is the control of the masses and a widespread, passive, and compliant academic elite through the possession of television, publishing, and practically all other media by an economic and power elite, which finds in old-style survival of the fittest, selfishness uber alles Darwinism the legitimizing or excuse it proffers from and pays for in science (David Loye, from The Great Adventure).

Researcher B. Franklin, in a journal article entitled “Discourse, rationality, and educational research” (Review of Educational Research, 69(4), 347–364), after an examination of the same journal, found that the idea of social control has been central in the development of educational curricula in the United States. At around the time of World War One, educational administrators attempted to create a scientific method of curriculum development in the name of social efficiency. Those curriculum designers have attempted to use the curriculum as an instrument of social control, Franklin argues. Public schools and their curricula have been used to establish control amidst the social problems of industrialisation, urbanisation, and immigration. In Franklin’s understanding, this agenda was effectively masked via the scientific language of psychology and learning.

As shown in the first figure, below, the Establishment must spend energy in attempting to suppress the ‘voice’ of the higher levels of the system – the evolutionary pull of “Spirit”, as those higher “callings” often contradict the needs of those in power. For example, ecological activists protesting at WTO or G20 meetings. The forces of reaction (state-trained police) are used to restrain them. In the classroom, control of the students becomes an essential function of the system. Much time and energy have to be spent on this maintenance of control and order within this system.[i]

The significant point is that such social control has placed no value upon the spiritual growth of the individual, nor upon personal empowerment, the latter of which is a threat to the power of institutions and the state. There is no question that individual access to spiritual knowledge and transpersonal experiences has suffered. This is because such experiences require inner and non-ordinary states of consciousness, and these have been absent from the educational processes of state control, and the critical/rational ways of knowing which have dominated Western society for several centuries (and now, increasingly, other developed and developing societies).

I can attest to this, having taught for twenty years in education systems at all levels in Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, mainland China and Hong Kong. I have not used the word “spiritual” or “spirit” once in all that time in front of a student. As parapsychologist Dean Radin has pointed out, there is an effective “psi taboo” across broader society and culture, and this taboo is even greater in classrooms and lecture halls. Surely, it is something of a tragedy when a man, like myself, who has spent decades practicing and studying the spiritual mind is forbidden from making reference to it while teaching.

Potential uses of Integrated Intelligence within this problematique

Despite this problem, there I maintain that there are genuine potential uses for integrated intelligence in modern education. It can assist in the process of building the integrated society, which I referred to in my previous post. The integrated society is an idealistic model of a society where people are able to freely develop and apply integrated intelligence in their lives, work and play. Here I am not going to write so much about the specific process of applying INI, but of its general potentials.

As can be seen from the second figure, below, the integrated society and its Integrated Intelligence permit the emergence of a natural collective goal of humankind – transcendence (some might call this “enlightenment”). This is consistent with transpersonal and mystical experiences. James Moffett argues that the alignment of individual consciousness with a collective consciousness also means that morality and social cohesion will tend to naturally follow. As Moffett states, even though spiritual education does not generate the immediate economic outcomes that are valued by industry and government, it pays in the long term. The pay-off is subtle: a more mature and sophisticated society capable of carrying through with the responsibilities that democracy requires, increased intrinsic capacity for moral behaviour, and an elevated creative potential that a population living to higher purpose implies. This is consistent with Integrated Intelligence’s end state of personal and planetary transformation (as I have argued in my book Integrated Intelligence).

The second figure also shows that Integrated Intelligence and conscious transparency potentially transcends (in part) the knowledge control of the State, and the spiritually numbing forces of consumerism and industrialisation. The individual draws knowledge and inspiration from the highest levels of the system (the Kosmos). These lie beyond the constraints of the lower levels, such as educational and bureaucratic institutions, industry, governments and nation-states. The individual relies less upon the vested knowledge of the teacher and society, and more on the inner wisdom of a psyche attuned with Spirit.

The integrated society and its utilisation of Integrated Intelligence potentially usurps the dominator power structures of the modern knowledge economy. It also has the potential to positively engage knowledge systems at a more mundane level, as shall be discussed in the next section.

Some time ago (link to SARS article) I outlined a perfect example of how I was able to act in an empowered fashion at a time when public information was scarce. This was during the SARS period in 2003, when I was living in Beijing. This was a period of mass panic, when the vast majority of the people of Beijing were, for several weeks, too scared to even venture outside their houses. The streets were almost deserted. I can assure you of that at a personal level, because I was just about the only person there on the formerly congested streets for some time! I walked around the streets, caught cabs (the few that operated), and even went out for drinks at bars – again, by myself.

The reason I was able to do this is because I listened to my intuition. There is a particular way of knowing I call “the feeling sense”, and it can alert you to where there is danger (amongst many other uses). When and where it felt safe, I ventured forth.

You can use this method yourself. A good way to begin is to practice the following exercise for three weeks. First thing in the morning when you wake, move your attention to your solar plexus area. Then image a beam of consciousness or energy moving out from your chest and connecting with the day ahead. You can imagine that energy connecting with specific events if you like, such as your meeting with the boss, a date, a movie you intend to watch. Imagine pulling that event inward into your solar plexus, and feeling what it is like. Then listen to those feelings. What are they telling you? Is there some action you can take to make the event go better for you (or, maybe you will want to avoid doing that thing altogether).

You can do this anytime during the day, but in the morning is the best way to begin, because the mind is quiet and much less fettered with the mental pollution of the ego.

This is precisely the process I used in Beijing during the SARS period.

Conscious transparency allows you to sense when people are bullshitting, or deluding themselves. This is very, very useful. Most people are easily carried away with the mob when politicians and leaders stir them up. Integrated Intelligence allows you to sense when and why this is happening. Recently in China, for example, there were quite a few anti-Japanese protests after a Japanese fishing boat was detained by a Japanese coast guard ship near the disputed Diaoyu Islands between China and Japan. My strong sense was that the entire protest movement was fermented by the authorities to deflect public attention away from the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, who is in prison for arguing for government reform in China.

This is certainly not the first case where governments have attempted to unite people by demonising an “enemy”. There are countless cases throughout human history. Those well versed in Integrated Intelligence can see though the bullshit. Of course they are not the only ones who can see through it. INI does, however, give you a head start in the BS detection stakes.

And that’s a pretty good heads up on the mob.

Marcus