In AWAKENING, J. D. James shares his Spiritual experiences illustrating we are interconnected, while giving readers a new and different perspective to life’s timeless questions.
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In July of 1961 at Yale University, psychologist, Stanley Milgram, conducted what is probably today the most famous experiment in human behavior every recorded and studied.
Nearly every college-educated person in the world has heard of his research. It has been required reading for almost fifty years in every Psychology 101 class.
Also, there has been more than one motion picture made concerning the contents of the project. For those who are not familiar with the Milgram Experiment, I will give an account of what occurred. It speaks directly to the darkest nature of humanity.
At random, Milgram selected forty Yale students and paid them to participate as teachers in his program. They were told that the experiment was to exam the learning ability of a subject, who willingly, submitted to an electric shock if he incorrectly answered a question that was read to him by the teacher.
In order to assure the teacher that no lethal amount of voltage would be given, before starting, the teacher was administered a mild shock by the equipment that was going to be used in the punishment phase of the experiment.
The teacher was then introduced to the learner, the person that he would be testing. At that time, the learner informed the teacher and the authoritarian experimenter (who was dressed in a gray official-looking lab coat and holding a clipboard), he was happy to participate but that he had a bad heart.
The learner then proceeded to enter into an adjacent room to be strapped into a heavy wooden chair with electrodes attached to his body. The teacher could not see the learner; and in the next room, the learner could not see the teacher. They communicated through an intercom between the two rooms.
Once situated in their respective rooms, the lab-coated experimenter instructed the test to begin. The teacher read a list of paired words to the learner. It could have been something as simple as butter – bread, spoon – soup, or knife – fork. I don’t really know for sure, but this will give you a better understanding of the test.
Then the teacher gave the learner one of the words and asked him to pick the correct matching word from a list of four possible answers. If the learner gave the wrong-paired word as an answer, the teacher was instructed by the experimenter to administer a shock.
With the first incorrect answer, the teacher heard from the learner via the intercom, “That stung a little bit.” If the learner gave the correct response, the teacher would proceed to the next set of paired words, which quickly became more difficult to associate with the right answer by the learner.
With each incorrect answer, the voltage was increased from 15 volts to 30 volts to 45 volts and so forth. The learner could be heard to exclaim, “Oh!” – “That really hurts!” – “Yeow!” and an agonizing scream of pain.
At this point, in most cases, the teacher asked the experimenter to stop the test, but was urged forward by the authoritarian experimenter with, “Please continue.” The second objection by the teacher produced, “The experiment requires that you continue.” To the final admonishment, “You have no other choice. You MUST go on.”
Nearly all of the students continued with the experiment until they had administered the fatal shock of 450 volts, when loud screaming and banging on the wall produced utter silence after the learner screamed and said, “My heart! My heart!” During the ensuing silence, most of the students assumed that the learner was dead.
Out of 40 students who participated as teachers, 26 of them administered the lethal voltage of 450 volts. Only one student refused to administer the shock below the 300-volt level. No student entered the room to see the status of the learner in order to ascertain whether or not he was all right.
The reality of the experiment was that the learner was a paid actor, who never had a live electrode attached to his body. After some time, he entered the control room where the student sat, visibly upset by the proceedings, and assured him that he was fine and the real purpose of the experiment was to see how far the average person would go in administering punishment, even to the point of death.
The data indicated that with an authoritarian person present urging them on, 65 percent of the participants will administer enough punishment to result in death.
The test was repeated throughout the world and included women, and the results were always nearly the same, 65 percent of the participants would ultimately give the deadly voltage.
Not long after the experiment, this type of student participation was banned from university studies. It seems that quite a few students were traumatized by the project.
There was another equally disturbing experiment conducted at Stanford University in 1972. It has been labeled the Stanford Prison Experiment.
Here a group of students agreed to act as prisoners and guards. Those, who agreed to be prisoners, were taken to the local police department, charged with a fictitious crime, booked and fingerprinted.
They were held in jail until their student guards picked them up and returned them to a mock prison set up in the basement of the psychology building.
The new guards were dressed in brown khaki shirts and pants purchased at a local army surplus store to give them a sense of authority.
Once in the basement prison, the student prisoners were stripped searched and placed in make shift jail cells. At this point, a strange metamorphosis took place.
The students designated as prisoners assumed the roles of locked-up convicts and the guard students became actual prison guards determined to dominate and exercise complete control over their wards.
Armed with batons, they proceeded to administer severe beatings to their prisoners for the slightest infractions. Prisoners’ blankets and mattresses were denied to them, and they found themselves sleeping on the bare floor.
Food was rationed and offered at the guards’ discretion. Toilet privileges were denied, and the students had to move about in their own filth; and even stranger, the student prisoners accepted this treatment as just being a part of a convict’s life.
One guard was nicknamed John Wayne and was the most brutal guard of them all. He inflicted brutality without cause and for the sadistic pleasure that it gave him.
He was so beastlike in his treatment of the prisoners that, at the urging of a faculty member, the experiment (which was scheduled for two weeks) was terminated at the end of four days.
Keep in mind, these students were play-acting; but at some point, the play became real.
Now comes the truly scary part. If you are young enough, those student experimenters could easily be you; or if you are older, the experimenters could be your or my grandchildren; or, finally, you or I.
Abu Ghraib, My Lai, genocide of the Native Americans, the Holocaust are not the exceptions but are the rule. We are taught to be violent, murderous people and will obey any order as long as it comes from a person that we perceive to be in authority.
We are killers and inflictors of pain by nature and, worst of all, by choice. We have created a culture and civilization that not only condones mayhem but celebrates it.
If you watch your local or national six o’clock evening news, nine out of ten times, the lead story is about a murder on the local station and acts or war or bombings on the national network. As they say in the media, “Blood sells!”
Our favorite past time is no longer baseball but professional football; a sport of extreme violence that speaks to what we are all about. How many times have you or a friend screamed (almost on the verge of an orgasm), “Ohh-h-h, did you see that hit! He tore that…head off!”
It reminds me of the Romans at the coliseum. We indoctrinate our children from pee-wee football to the pro ranks and teach them that this violent sport is the best game in the world.
Go to the movies. The ones that sell out depict the most violent bloody action that the special effects people can create.
Jason, Michael and Freddy have killed people in more imaginative ways than anyone could think of. Then we wonder why our children kill each other in school and on the playgrounds scattered across our cities.
Our children play one violent video game after another, where they are chopping people’s heads off, blowing them to bits, or yanking out their bloody still beating hearts. Whatever happened to Pac-Man and Space Invaders?
And now, we have our young men, sitting in bunkers outside of Las Vegas, playing video games of real death, operating predator drones and killing the enemy 7,000 miles away in the Middle East with some bird colonel giving them the authority to make the kill. How much different is this from the Milgram Experiment?
Some will say that they are the enemy and we are at war, which justifies their deaths. I say that I can remember when the Japanese and the Germans were our enemies, and we firebombed the Germans and nuked the Japanese.
Yet today, they are our friends and allies. I am not saying that we alone are the only culprits in the world. I know that we have lots and lots of company; but, if there is ever going to be hope for mankind, we have to learn how to stop this senseless killing.
We are taught “thou shall not kill.” What this really means is that you are free to kill only when your leaders give you permission to do so and to whomever they designate.
We are taught that the most valuable commodity on earth is a human life; yet we managed to kill hundreds of millions of people in the last century alone. If human lives were money, then we would all be bankrupt.
We are initially taught to obey our parents, who in turn, turn us over to a school system where we are first taught to obey our teachers.
Then the teachers indoctrinate us with the Pledge of Allegiance to our flag and teach us to love our country. We enter the military and are taught to obey orders under penalty of death or imprisonment.
We enter the job market and are taught to obey our supervisors, no matter how stupid and childish they might be, and work under a constant subtle threat of termination for disobedience.
And finally, we are taught to obey our political leaders. The majority of people follow them, even when most of us know they are dead wrong.
There is a solution, and it comes directly from the Creator One. The One demands that a new paradigm be taught.
First, the truth needs to be known about the gods of Abraham, Christians, and Muslims. They have been portrayed as gods of vengeance and retribution (made in the image of man who loves vengeance and retribution) by false rewriters of the Scriptures. They are none of these things.
People must know that the reason their god works in their life is because the power of the One, through the guiding Soul of each man and woman, assists in creating their god for them, supported by the other collective Souls of that particular faith. Remember, what the collective mind wishes for is what they get.
Once you understand who you really are and your relationship to the Universe and the Creator One, you are then prepared for the next step.
All must understand that all are equal in every aspect. The rich man is no better than the poor man. The smart man is no better than the ignorant man. The elected official or dictator is no better than the lowest man in his society. One country is not greater than any other country. There is no such thing as a great country.
If you must judge the greatness of a country, use this standard: A country’s greatness is judged by how it treats the least of its citizens.
I need to repeat this statement: A country’s greatness is judged by how it treats the least of its citizens! Military might, financial powers, wealth of the upper class means absolutely nothing.
A nation’s true history must be taught to its people without a watered-down revisionist explanation of what happened. The truth must be told so that the mistake will not repeated again.
The history of a country should not be told only from the perspective of the power elites, but also from the stories of the little people on the streets. That is where the true history of a country is written in their blood and sacrifice.
Once the people of the world realize that every country was founded in the blood of the innocent, they can then start the conversation of eliminating nation states altogether.
The European Union is a perfect example of the beginnings of what can happen. After centuries of killing each other, they found that they had more in common than uncommon.
They quit waging war on each other after World War II. They finally came to the conclusion that the cost of war was too high of a price to pay when they looked at the rubble of their destroyed countries.
They used their scarce resources, not for implements of destruction, but to edify and build up their nations. They have set rules into place that pretty well insures that one country cannot achieve an economic or social advantage over another.
At this point, their model is not an answer to all of their problems, but it appears to be a significant start in the right direction.
This is a first step that should be taken by all nations. The African countries, the Americas (both North and South), and the Asians should all start to unify their regions.
Once harmonious relationships are established within these four regions, including the Europeans, then the four unions of countries must establish a unified worldwide system of economic and social interchange as equals.
Knowing the frailties of man, there is a danger of creating four super power regions, hell bent on world domination; but the peoples of the world must be taught that such a catastrophic event would only benefit the powerful and not the common man.
The power elites can accomplish nothing without the willing participation of the gullible masses to do their bidding.
The Creator One demands that the seeds of violence be eradicated from every society. No more violent movies, video games, comic books, literature, media stories, military armies, violent sports, etc. The elites and others will say that it cannot be done.
But think for a moment. If it is not done, how much longer can the human race survive? We are at a crossroads. We either change now or perish forever. We have simply run out of time.
We cannot elect caring, trustworthy leaders. No nation can. They are all corrupted by the power of their office. The power elites know that money talks and everything else walks.
They know, as Howard Hughes before his death once said, “I never met a man that I could not buy.”
The political leaders of the world live by this axiom, and they are all for sale. Many, and nearly all, run for office to be bought. Trying to find an honest politician is like the angel of God asking Lot if he could find one righteous man in Sodom and Gomorrah, he would not destroy the cities.
As we know, Lot could not find one. The same can be said for any politician from the highest to the lowest office. You cannot find an honest one.
The students in the Milgram Experiment followed orders because they had been taught by a corrupt system to always obey people in authority, regardless of the consequences to others. They have been trained and conditioned to blindly be led.
Had their parents taught them otherwise, they would have ceased the game at the first sign of undue stress on the learner. Unfortunately, their parents had been raised in an even more obedient society.
They were the young people of the Great Depression, where people dutifully stood in line for bowls of soup and rotten apples, while writing songs about “Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?” where 25 percent of the people were out of work.
Can you even imagine what would happen if 25 percent of the people were unemployed today? You would have anarchy in the streets. Today, people would not collectively tolerate such conditions.
But even this does not answer the darker question of why did they take the learner to what they thought was the death charge of electricity?
Normally, the Soul and Self operate as One in the body, with the Soul taking a quiet passive role that allows the Self to fully mature and develop.
When the screams of the learner started, the Self of the student had to make a decision either to listen to his Soul, which was demanding a cessation of the project because of the perceived harm to the learner, or to obey the authoritarian experimenter, who was urging him to proceed with the punishment.
The student knew that what he was doing was wrong, I am absolutely sure of this, but he did not act. When a conflict between right and wrong, good and evil, rises to this level of intense emotional conflict, there is a disconnect between the Soul and the Self.
The Soul has to fully withdraw or be contaminated by the evil deed that follows. The Soul, the essence of the Creator One, cannot be allowed to be stained by evil because, upon the death of the flesh, it returns to the One with or without the new Self.
If the Soul was allowed to bring evil back to the One, the evil, like a deadly virus, would destroy the One. Chaos would enter the Universe and the construct would fall apart.
We are given freewill to live in the light or to live in the darkness. When a man chooses the darkness, as most seem to do so, his Soul departs and waits from afar. Normally, with the withdrawal of the Soul, the flesh dies.
But these evil Selfs are so powerful, they can sustain their Self and flesh without their Soul’s life-giving powers. The new Self, freed from the moral compass and restraints of their guiding Soul, now proceeds to wreak havoc on everything that they touch.
The first thing that they crave is immense wealth as if money can buy them immortality. Although money cannot buy that, it can buy them the adulation of an adoring world that loves money more than it loves life.
Once they obtain enough money, they are allowed to enter the exclusive club of the power elites. Since money is no longer an issue, their next concern is the domination and control of the masses, which have the power to take their wealth and lives from them at a moment’s notice.
They know that to maintain power, they must keep these masses subjugated at any cost. They become masters of lies, deceit and misinformation.
They learn the art (as George Orwell wrote of double speaking) saying one thing and meaning another. They keep the masses confused and dominated. Remember confusion is the seed corn of domination.
The One wants you to know that these people are truly lost forever. You must learn to think for yourself. The One has come to you in this book to open your eyes and to save you from not having to live no more forever; It wants no one to be lost but It cannot decide for you. You must decide for yourself.
Never play follow-the-leader unless you know where the leader is going. Never ever obey someone, who is intent upon bringing harm to anyone for any reason, because they ultimately will harm you.
They are unable to discern friend from foe and in the end will turn on you too. Seek the company of like-minded people and start to work toward a more civilized and just world. Stay as far away as you can from the evildoers; they are many and powerful.
Fortify yourself with the knowledge that you know who you are and your purpose in life. Rest assured that they don’t have a clue. Live the new rule of living: Do no harm to anyone and help everyone that you can. It is all so simple!
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