Thoughts for the fall 1971 Magic Valley Workshop

BACKGROUND OBSERVATION

Whenever a person disclaims agreement with the ideas, ideals, purposes and leaders of any institution, he becomes an alien to that institution. An institution is something which has been instituted by man according to his purposes, ideas, ideals, and standards. Institutions draw their strength from forces generated by agreement. Through collective agreement about what is good and bad, right and wrong, important and unimportant, the supporters of an institution seek psychological security and safety. To protect and uphold the institution, it's leaders must have police power to punish, banish, extract fines and so forth. Since the unity of their agreement is based upon a belief in their definition of reality, they feel that anyone who does not agree with them still knows what is right but thinks and does wrong anyway. Thus, the basis for the very existence of the institution is anti-agape, which is to think in opposites,  judge everyone and everything as good or bad, feel compelled to want everything changed in accordance with their agreement of reality. In their zeal to help everybody be 'saved' from evil, the institution promises that it can provide special benefits which will protect them from future sorrow and guarantee eternal peace and happiness- later. Through the strength of their common agreement, the members look upon the institution as something more important than the individual. At this point, the institution has become a principality--an entity greater than life.

Some of the more common institutions are those of nations, governments, political parties, churches, businesses, marriages, families, communities, and even schools. When a member of an institution comes in contact with certain ideas about the Real World and begins to experiment with them to see if they describe accurately what he can experience, he will find the anti-agape is merely an illusion and not based upon a fact. He discovers that his confidence in the reality of anti-agape was only through agreement. As soon as he makes such a discovery, he is suddenly alien to the institution and the agreements which he formerly lived by and for. He begins to experience a deep change in his life. He is both dying and being born. He is literally leaving his old world just as a seed dies to the seed world and is born into the plant world, or a pupa dies to the cocoon world and is born into the moth world. He is being born into the real earth world as he dies to the world of the womb, where everyone is trying to regain the non disturbed state. In his dying to the conditioned world of anti agape, he starts to be born into the world of agape, which is conscious understanding and true love. 

Once an individual is alien to his old way of thinking, he cannot stop. He must go further, whether he wishes to or not. He can proceed by forming new beliefs, assumptions and conclusions, but if he does, his life will lead to violence, for he will have something to prove and something to defend. On the other hand, he can proceed slowly by experiments, keeping in motion, accepting difficulties as challenges, stimulated by interest rather than needs. This is the way of a wise man. Therefore, it is possible that we may find it worth while to have four basic experiments. (to be continued)