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The Rays and the Initiations - Appendix
1. The Crisis of the Ideologies Men are today confronted with conflicting and antagonistic ideologies or schools of thought, and automatically - according to their background, tradition, training and place of birth - they regard some one of these ideas as true and all the others as false and wrong. They are apt to forget that according to the locale of birth, the national mode of schooling and the nature of the national propaganda, so will be the chosen ideology or the imposed ideology. Very few people are free agents, even in the democracies. A man born in Central Russia, for instance, knows nothing but Communism; he cannot imagine another suitable form of government; again, a man born in the United States or in Great Britain boasts and is pleased that he was born in a democracy, but the accident of birth accounts largely for his attitude. Men need to remember these things and not blame each other for the place in which they are born! We have, therefore, ideologies and their opponents, great schools of thought and modes of government, confronted by organized opposition. One basic premise can be laid down: The platform of the leading ideologies is not necessarily wrong or wicked; it is the imposition by force and by a police state of an ideology, and its use by powerful men or groups for their own benefit, plus the keeping of the people in blind ignorance so that no free choice is theirs - which is fundamentally wicked and evil. We have, for instance, the great crisis in the world today presented by the conflict between Communism and the democratic point of view. I mention this first because it is the one which is occupying a prominent position in the eyes of all men everywhere. This presents a dominant spiritual opportunity. The democratic attitude, dedicated as it claims to be to human freedom (however little of that freedom is yet truly attained) is - because of that freedom factor - sponsored today by the Hierarchy. Communism being an imposed ideology, forced on the people by totalitarian authority, is regarded as evil. It is not the [745] communistic theories which are necessarily wrong; it is the technique and the methods, rampant in the totalitarian lands, which are counter to the spiritual plan. Imposed Communism and all totalitarian methods imprison the human soul, and breed fear and hatred everywhere. Should the democratic principles therefore be imposed upon the world or any part of the world by a totalitarian regime, it would be equally wrong. These conflicting ideologies are presenting clearly to the human consciousness certain great distinctions; these distinctions are found in techniques and methods far more than in the various tenets. Many of the people most violently fighting Communism could not tell you succinctly what those tenets are, but they are fighting - and rightly fighting - the totalitarian methods of cruelty, spying, murder, suppression and the lack of freedom. What they are doing in truth is fighting the abominable methods of imposing the rule of a few evil and ambitious men upon the ignorant masses, under the name of Communism. They are fighting the technique of exploiting the ignorant through misinformation, organized lying and limited education. They are fighting against the sealing up of nations within the confines of their own territory, against the police state, the lack of free enterprise and the reduction of men and women to automatons. This is the true imprisonment of the human spirit. The situation is, however, so pronounced and the evil so obvious (and the human spirit so basically and divinely strong) that it will eventually defeat itself; when the present group of totalitarian rulers (behind what you call the "iron curtain") die out a different state of affairs will gradually supervene and a true Communism (in the spiritual sense of the term) will take the place of the present wickedness. On the other hand, the much vaunted democracies have much to learn. Men are not truly free, even in democratic countries; the Negroes, for instance, lack their constitutional rights in parts of the United States; and in South Africa, their educational facilities and their opportunity [746] to work and live as free men are not equal to those of the white race; in the southern states, the Constitution of the United States is infringed every day by those who believe in white supremacy - a supremacy which will be put to a crucial test when Africa awakes. This attitude of the United States and their failure to live up to the Constitution where Negroes are concerned, have greatly weakened the faith of other countries in the wonder of America, and the situation in South Africa is not honored by thinking men. I mention these two situations because there is widespread evil even in the democracies; a true house cleaning is sorely needed.
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