White Trash
Vivekananda, the first yogi to visit the Western world, was speaking of the relative, cyclical nature of social evolution to the intellectual elite of England and boldly said that when India was at its height as a civilization the Britons were painting their bodies blue and living in trees.
Only political and materialistic opportunists who promote fear in the ignorant and fearful people focus more on people´s differences than people´s similarities. Nationalism, even in more responsible and rational forms, has always seemed rather immature compared to the perennial idea that we are all microcosmic consciousness evolving and existing in the living and vibrant Macrocosmic Consciousness of the universe.
The subjective Consciousness is the same in all beings. We may have different minds with different cultural conditioning, but the internal "I" is identical in all. It is only in the objective part of our minds that we are different. The objective mind (chitta) is connected to the external world and the physical brain and so it therefore is qualified by external objectivity. If one sees only the external, then all appears different. People are simply conditioned and qualified by different environments and objective circumstances like race, culture and social class. However, if one knows the pure, inner Consciousness, then one realizes that the internal, subjective Consciousness is the same in the divine Macrocosm as well as all individual beings, or "microcosms." All beings share the same inner soul with the infinite subjective Consciousness, or Macrocosm. The microcosm and Macrocosm are essentially united. Really, there is only a Macrocosmic Mind and Consciousness. "Microcosm" is actually a misnomer; it is used to describe a mind qualified by relative, changing objectivity, the part of one´s subjective consciousness that appears to be qualified and changed by the external world. Yet this consciousness is never really modified. It is like a mirror reflecting so many objects. No matter how many objects and colors that are reflected in the mirror, the mirror never changes.
I listened to an interview with Cornel West the other night. I cannot say I have read his works but his interviews have always impressed me. What most illuminated me from this interview were his reflections on how the Neo-liberal Left and the Neo-Fascist Right are controlled by the same big interests in Wall Street and the Military Industrial Complex. Both sides serve the American Empire, only the Left wants to let minorities and women into the game while the Right maintains a more traditional racist attitude. He spoke at length about how people are never introduced, even in universities, to the idea that the U.S. is an empire with a history of colonialism, genocide, and capitalist exploitation.
Reflecting on this interview I begin to think of a person whose image I always try to keep out of my mind, the “Neo-Fascist” leader that West refers to. I only recently heard his voice and listened to this person speak. I feel at one with the world but there are still people whose mental form is so disturbing that I do not want to let them anywhere near my soul by even thinking of them. When we conjure up a person or object in our minds there is actually a connection with the original object or person. Weak and unconscious minds only see their own projections and have very little connection with the original object in their minds. The stronger and purer the mind, the more one is able to connect with the person.
Trump is the supreme and perfect example of “white trash.” “White trash” is a term I stopped using some time ago, at least until now. It seemed rather racist in that it implies that white people can also be “trash,” not just the minorities so commonly discriminated against. Also, its common use to describe rural and simple folk is truly offensive. I cannot even use the term "white trash" for fearful and violent, gun-slinging fundamentalist Christians. These people have inferiority complexes that are exploited by their leaders who inject a false sense of national and racial superiority. I can only call their leaders "white trash." Trump is the perfect symbol of collective ignorance and brutality, the perfect leader for a trash culture in a trash empire. Only trashy, crude, materialistic consciousness could manifest this abomination.
Such distortions of human consciousness that endanger our evolution are always eventually cursed by nature and the Macrocosm itself turns against them. Nature simply unleashes all of the accumulated reactions to the past actions of the collective consciousness with such perfect precision and even uncanny symbolism so as to make it clear to history that what was destroyed was an abomination. Hopefully, now I can remove this form from my mind but I do in some strange way thank Trump for being such a clear and perfect symbol. The American Empire will not be spared the fate of other fallen empires who no longer serve any evolutionary purpose.
I recently dreamed that I was hiking to the North Pole with ex-president Obama. He was asking me some questions about yoga philosophy. I did not want to talk to him. I thought internally that "you might be a decent fellow if you weren´t the leader of the corporate empire, the war machine of the military industrial complex, etc.etc.... I said nothing.
In the dream I was aware it was a dream and was thinking I am dreaming this because in my past, after the Purulia incident, I was always in playful dialogues with very "intelligent" people. I had an eye kept on me but I was an innocent person in the debacle and I felt that the intelligence and military people I dialogued with were genuinely friendly with me. They knew I was no patriot but also understood that I was not an anarchist or violent revolutionary. I took advantage of the situation to give them some subtle moral clashes about being servants of the war machine. I wondered that if they woke up a little spiritually and morally if they would end up renouncing their government and military positions? For example, I once dialoged with a navy officer and West Point professor about neo-platonic ideas and their similarity with the Upanashadic doctrine of the identity of the Atman with Brahman. This is essential the same debate of the Christian mystics as to if the human soul is at one with and identical to God, or if it was a separate entity than the divine essence. He cited John Scotus Eriugena. We spoke about whether the Atman, the individual soul, was equal to Brahman, the universal soul. I said it was true and he asked if it were true in the sense of the two cantaloupes he was holding were identical. Are they identical, or just similar?, he asked. I said that there is nothing exactly similar in the physical plane but in the spirit all is one. It would be as if two cantaloupes could be exactly identical. If they were completely identical then we could not notice their separateness under any scrutiny and they would be entirely one. Such coincidence is impossible in the physical world but in the spirit all is one. However, in the physical world we should see unity in diversity, as finite and diverse creation trying to express the Infinite through the evolution of consciousness, I said.
Anyway, it was my personal little history of being able to see how people inside the both sides of the eternal game of rebels and empire officials really think, as human beings. And so with this in my mind I realized that this was the reason that in this dream I was supposed to guide him to the north pole. Obama in this dream is definitely the most refined symbol of great human intellect enslaved to dirty politics, in the end a false humane and rational face for the most irrational and self-destructive empire.
Continuing with the dream, we reached the tip of the world. The North Pole was directly in the middle of what seemed to be an igloo. On approaching it closer the igloo was really a pool. It was covered from the weather and there was a small door on this roof to enter the waters below. Obama asked me to open it. I saw the waters were deep and connected to the oceans all around this block of ice we were standing on top of. Obama asked to look in and I moved aside. The waters started swirling and the entire pool became a giant vortex. A giant wave engulfed him and I watched him get flushed. The vortex grew and engulfed the entire north pole and I saw the entire human society getting flushed as well. I was wondering why I was not getting flushed but realized I was just a witness without a physical body in this dream.
While I was a university student I spent my summer vacations at a yogi ashram in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri. It was ironic to be at such an enlightened community in the middle of what seemed to be an environment out of the movie "Deliverance" of the 70´s. The community had a children's playground with a cement lizard that had a sandbox underneath and a rope swing that children could use after climbing on top of the lizard´s head. The local Baptist church started a rumor that the strange yogi cult actually worshiped the lizard. That was the lighter, funny part.
Other interactions with the community got a little more heavy. The local KKK would come and attack our community by firing off their rifles and even burning crosses. Many of the people living in the community were monks from India. The racists would shout "sand niggers" before firing off their guns or lighting fires. That is a racist term for Arabs but what does a hick know? For them, "if it ain´t white then it ain´t right." I was put in charge of security at the community. Talking to the police came to no avail and so I decided to fight back. Some people thought we should get a gun but I was against it. It was all good fun on my part. I would climb a giant oak tree and throw rocks at their trucks when they arrived. They did not see me and thought a gun was fired at their truck. I even put giant spikes in a log that dropped across the road when they entered. I once jumped out of the woods at night with a broom stick to pound the side of their car. I was almost naked, just wearing a yogi loincloth, kind of like Tarzan. I was called to duty in the middle of the night when they arrived. It was so funny to see that some poor neo-Nazi with a bald tattooed head screaming like a baby out of sheer terror from some skinny, almost naked vegan who was "attacking" him.
Yet there was also a lighter, friendlier side to the local people. It relieved me that untamed human nature free from modern civilization could also have a good side as well. I became friends with a hillbilly family. They thought I was so nice that I must be a Christian. I was just a free thinker who practiced yoga and hung out with some monks on vacations. However, I liked some passages from the bible and I shared this with them. They began to defend me from the prejudices of their church. One day, while visiting them, their preacher arrived. He had a really bad vibration, full of hatred and prejudice. They said "this is our friend Bill and he is a good Christian.
My friends back at the community began to joke with me and call me Bill, the Christian hill billy.
A few years ago I visited a remote community in Chiapas with a psychiatrist who was working with local communities. We were discussing the nobility of humans when they are free of modern civilization but were also recognizing the obvious dark sides of humanity. I told her about the Ozark hill billys and we recognized that things were not so different here. As a Texan who has lived in Missouri and now in Chiapas I can say that the redneck is a universal human phenomenon. They come in all forms and colors. Wherever there is xenophobia, fear of outsiders and a desire to defend oneself from imaginary threats, then there are rednecks. Yet here in Chiapas there does seem to be a little more friendliness.. I think there is a little more inclusion in their communities and a little less intentional cruelty than with the Ozark hicks. However, I have also heard of some pretty savage communities here as well. My friend and I both agreed that it was very important to treat these people well so that their innocence does not convert into crude, divisive ignorance.
She told me about a very friendly local man named Hitler. He had no idea who Hitler actually was. His parents just knew he was some famous, powerful man and they liked the sound of his name. Hitler had a dog named Killer, who was actually a nice dog. He did not speak English but heard it was a good name for a guard dog. It was very ironic that a friendly man and a friendly dog had such names.
Most people I know around here relate to me as another person, not as somebody from the U.S. However, some people idealize me because I must be some white and rich foreigner. Their inferiority complexes make them think that foreigners have these really beautiful lives. If they only understood how really terrible it is to have lived in Nazi Germany or the U.S. in current times! In the end the quality of life in racist dictatorships is not much better than in the impoverished, corrupt narco states like Mexico. It is all so absurd that it seems unreal. Yes it is absurd, yet so dangerous that ignorant minds have no idea of what these "good" forces are actually doing to the world.
I always thought that North Korea had the most absurd political mythology. The semi-divine Kim Jong-il even went so far to say that he never had to defecate. Now Trump´s AI diarrhea depicting himself as a Christ figure pushes the U.S. into first place. I always wondered if any North Koreans really believed any of the ridiculous state propaganda or if they were just too scared not to. Yet Trump is an elected leader in a Christian democracy, making it all the more absurd. He maybe one of the wealthiest and powerful men in the world, but he is really just another white trash red-neck.
Rightist, leftist; capitalist, communist: If your philosophy is matter then in the end you really do not matter. Matter is an illusion, people only believe in it when their spiritual heart is not yet open. Universal reason cannot be separated from universal love.
Over the last 500 years it has been demonstrated that the capitalist system cannot survive without genocide, slavery, and a multinational imperialism which exploits human labor and hoards natural resources stolen from other lands. Communism, which was born as the bastard son and counter-reaction to capitalism, has mostly fallen short of its ideals when put into practice. Instead of a liberated proletariat and the dissolution of the state, we find tyrannical central governments that grossly oppress human rights. Capitalism seeks to bind with gold chains while communism binds with heavy iron chains. Neither system helps all of humanity evolve physically, mentally, or spiritually.
If there are parasites that attack the physical organism, then why cannot there exist parasites that attack the mental organism? Just as parasites can root their way into an imbalanced and infirm organism, then why could not a mental parasite worm its way into an infirm mind, or ideologies that create mental imbalances? Perhaps limited, materialistic ideas like capitalism and communism are destined to make both the individual and collective minds insane because they are limited ideologies based on materialism and only recognise the material and social nature of human beings. A human being desires infinite freedom. Not only do we desire freedom, but we are designed to seek it. There exist within us all of the thought forms and emotional structures to seek higher mental and spiritual forms of happiness. The common error is to seek the infinite in the finite. If our infinite desires situate themselves exclusively in creature comforts and egocentric desires, then frustration and unhappiness will eventually destroy this limited happiness as one's higher nature has not been expressed.
These mental parasites are called microvita in tantra yoga. Just like there are positive as well as negative bacterias, there are both positive and negative microvita. Positive microvita stimulate the higher desires of the mind and the endocrine system while negative microvita keep the mind bound to our animal nature. There is always a balance of positive and negative microvita in nature but when negative microvita become overly expressed and positive microvita are not expressed, then great imbalances occur and nature must restore order. A human being that does not participate in physical, mental and spiritual evolution is a waste of energy and will be attacked by negative microvita. The planet must get rid of some dead weight. Ideologies that mold human beings into slaves of matter will eventually be flushed by nature as they do not foster the evolution of spirit.
The mind is the intermediary entity between spirit and matter. "As you think, so you become." The mind becomes like the objects of its attachments. Subtle occupations of the mind make the mind finer while crude occupations degrade the mind. If the ego, the driver of the mind, is weak then negative microvita help make one selfish and mean minded, seek creature comforts and dreams of getting rich, and attaining only mundane ambitions. If one is strong and intelligent then positive microvita helps one to struggle for liberation from all mental limitations and ultimately finds peace in the infinite spirit within. When the mind unifies with spirit it is nirvana, freedom from time and rebirth. The mind no longer exists as a separate entity: it merges into spirit. When one defies one´s true purpose of dharma (the path of physical and mental evolution toward spiritual freedom) the mind unifies with matter. In this union one is also free from human rebirth: the mind disintegrates in matter, the body dies, and one becomes one with the garbage on the streets and the caca in the sewers.
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