Introduction

This article was inspired by a letter from Steve,who is a member of a local 9/11 Truth Alliance group active in the US NorthWest. 

It deals with some of the most difficult aspects of the 9/11 Truth movement - working with the variations, distortions, and ramifications of Consciousness, as it relates to the organizational project. The article titled "9/11 Truth, Psychology and the science of Consciousness" follows below the letter - it's intended for slow reading. Your feedback is much appreciated.

The Letter

"Hey…let's keep an eye out for…
articles that address the psychological issue pertaining to 9/11 Truth acceptance, the topic that was brought up in the Alliance meeting last night. 

I hear people's initial efforts to convey the truth to those in denial generally focus on WTC 7, 3 bldgs down at freefall speed, the implausibility of a 767 having made the "hole" in the Pentagon, no remains at either the Pentagon or Shankstown sites, etc.  I am envisioning a similar hierarchy of the "walls of resistance" people erect for security purposes, and beyond that…who knows?!  I think that if the Truth Movement can begin to show the frailty of the psychological defense strategies in the face of truth/facts, we might start to see a dismantling of the strategic fog the GOP is dependent on for its power-retention.

I have to look more closely at the article about the 5 year goal of info suppression that the GOP employed, but I am sure that in these past 5 years, there are many pieces to this "mindfuck puzzle" that we all have missed, and that might be useful for 9-11 Truth awareness.

Thanks,
Styve"
________

Hi,

Thanks for addressing this difficult subject.

Psychology and the science of Consciousness are definitely important elements in what we do within and around the 9/11 Truth movement. They might even be the most important of all the elements. 

The conflict between false consciousness and clear Consciousness, the conflict between an enslaved consciousness and a free Consciousness that is able to reflect on the Truth, is what makes or breaks the ability of a community to mobilize itself on the basis of truth, and to forge itself into a force capable of political, social and personal change.

Another way of saying it is woderfully articulated by Mia Hamel in her excellent newletter "9/11 Truth Newsletter" - she wrote:

"9/11 Truth is a keyhole into consciousness.
We search our hearts and minds for meaning and inspiration to effectively spread 9/11 truth. As we examine our inner landscape and its impact on the exterior world, the connections offer infinite opportunities for change, and choices of attitude and behavior. We profoundly sense our interconnectedness." - Sept/Oct 2006 issue. {The White Rose Lives!} 

Steve calls it a "mindfuck puzzle" - what an excellent way of phrasing it.

Part of what we face in this problem is the surrounding context: most of the people who are involved in the 9/11 Truth movement are relatively new to politics. Added to this situation are: 
a. Denial of the truth by individuals and organizations in leadership positions in the Left, accompanied by an emotional/political inability to face the 9/11 issue with maturity and clarity. 
b. Worse, the 9/11 Truth community is a hunting-gathering ground by Right wingers who have been actively recruiting with the 9/11 community and promoting hate-speech and an ideology of "resistance" to the global US Empire on an entirely false premise: what they promote is the same kind of "resistance" that was pursued by the German and Italian fascists in the past who seized the state in those countries in order to "save the nation from democracy". Similar agendas today are promoted by Right wing militias all over the US.

So, in this political context, new individuals and organizations who are attracted to the messages of the 9/11 Truth movement become very quickly exposed to overlwhelming material which triggers inner and outer conflict, and they are left with no support whatsoever to process the informational and ideological material so that they can come to terms with it.

The findings and methodologies of Psychology and the science of Consciousness are intimately connected to the questions related to what we do in order to build, expand, deepen and empower the 9/11 Truth movement, what kind of alliances we build, what kinds of strategies and tactics we adopt.
 

More specifically, the findings and articulations of what, exactly, determines a person's attachment to certain ideologies or worldviews, are of prime relevance for our work.  The inverse question is also prime for us: what, exactly, determines a person's mental-emotional flexibility in giving consideration to new, or even troubling, information which ultimately might lead to a change in one's worldview? This question has been the focus of a lot of investigation by activists, forces and researchers involved on both sides of the struggle for social and personal liberty for more than a hundred years. 

It's not all just mysteries, puzzles and hypotheses. There's been some significant gains in those fields. Two scientist-activists in particular who have spent decades of their lives focused on precisely those investigations, have contributed a tremendous amount of knowledge to our set of tools: they are Stanislav Grof and Wilhelm Reich.

Their work has been expanded, confirmed and re-articulated by the Feminist and Lesbian/Gay, Bi and Trans -liberation wing of the broader Liberation movement. And confirmed in action (in the context of organization-mobilization) by revolutionary organizations such as the Yippies (YIP! ) and the Weather Underground. In this sense, the desire, the efforts and struggles for a free Consciousness are inseparable from the praxis toward a personal, social-political, spiritual individual and collective liberation - these formulations are way beyond - but inclusive - of the definitions of liberty according to ethnic-cultural identity, language, religion, nation, class. Race, gender and sexual identity are part and parcel of the human identity, and they are intimately related to the social-personal bonds which can both free and enslave us.

Stanislav Grof and Wilhelm Reich have uncovered the precise mechanisms though which as we come into the world, we form psychological bonds of subservience, domination and subjugation. This occurs in our lives from very early on (sometimes even before birth). We form these with our parents at first and then with the "abstract" masters/owners of State and Capital who are the "heads of the human family". These bonds of subjugation are characterised by two prime elements:
- they involve our anatomy-physiology (our neurochemistry, movement, body stance, breath, the function of our senses);
- they involve a personal psychological identification with Authority, ie, the bond is not a simple bond of an enslaved being struggling to be free; the authoritarian relationship involves personal and tender feelings, and the apparent consent - even "love" and "allegiance" - of the oppressed for the oppressor which develops as a form of psychologica protection and survival mechanism (it includes denial, compensation, projection, etc, but its primary feature here is identification).

The strangulation of sexual desire by the family and the institution of rules and regulations against pleasure by physical at first (violent), enforcement, and then by ideological methods during our early years creates a physio-psychological anchor within us (an imbalance of deprivation/overstimulation, deficiency/stagnation in the bodymind) which is then used by all authoritarian powers to dominate and manipulate us all throughout childhood, puberty and adulthood. 

Most of us are literally robotized by a lifetime of holding our bodies and our minds rigidly tight so as not to experience "forbidden" sensations or thoughts. Inside us, we scream to be released from that bond. But since for most people who are trapped in personal, familial and social circumstances (in what we call the mainstream conventional lifestyle) the situations do not allow it, we compensate for this by "putting a lid on" the screaming desire: the lid is an allegiance to, a love for - a psychological embrace, an identification with - those who represent this oppression. Also, we develop an identification with their ideologies and lifestyles. We identify with Authority because the alternative - pleasure, tenderness, revolt, freedom - is unbearable. Unthinkable.

Our pathology is not absulute; it exists in varying degrees from person to person.
Our pathology is curable. 

But until we encounter the right conditions to experience a gradual and cathartic release from that authoritarian armouring and conditioning, social-political events around us are filtered through our rigidified senses, minds and hearts. Experiences, information, etc, are processed through the lens of our authoritarian character structures: we process and register reality through our identification with the family and the state, with corporate tv- generated images of "reality" being the prime model of "normalcy". Any item of information or ideology which threatens that psychological bond with the oppressor is scary; we experience it as dangerous, disorienting, risky. Most often we ignore or repress the disturbing item. 

Issues of pleasure and sexuality, family and community morality are intimately connected with the struggle to liberate Consciousness from authoritarian relationships and authoritarian ideology. It is not a coincidence that on the whole, among racists and nationalists we find the most vehement hatred of gay people and a systematic "righteous" humiliation of women. 

This is part of the reason why the quest to confront racism, sexism and homophobia within the 9/11 Truth movement is an essential element for the liberation of Consciousness - it's not at all about some hypocritical tendency to be "politically correct" as some imagine it to be, nor about "censoring" the speech of Right wingers. It is about creating a climate within which people can be (and feel) respected, embraced, supported, encouraged to grow, to question, to become independent thinkers and actors individually and collectively.
 

In the absense of participation in this movement by the Left, and as long as Right wing forces are allowed the comfort to recruit among us and to engage in sloganeering and hate speech, we will keep encountering only individuals who, while they are attracted to the Truth of 9/11 are at the same time also scared shitless by its tremendous implications. The horrible realization of its ramifications - the essence of what it means for Americans - is so unbearable, that most people must mobilize the greatest strength to deny, to ignore, to ridicule the questions and answers of the 9/11 Truth movement. 

New people among us have nowhere to turn to when the political environment among us does not also confront the basic foundations of what enslaves Consciousness. In order to help our selves and others to become and remain free - and to see and think clearly -  we need to create conditions which challenge the enslavement of awareness and Consciousness: confronting racism, sexism and homophobia are not enough by themselves to help a person see the Truth of 9/11, but they are essential to creating an environment which makes it possible. Confronting racism, sexism and homophobia might be ony a "formal minimum" of committment to freedom, for some of us, but who can deny their value in helping to build foundations for respectful and free relations between people? 

If we don't take care to create political/cultural environments among us (in our meetings, spaces, publications, public events) in which people can experience some sense of personal and collective liberty, how do we expect that people who spend their entire lives trapped within authoritarian relationships in the family, at work and school, will respond "with an open mind" to our messages?
 

Religious antisexual morality is very tightly connected to all this: it is the fuel which drives all forms of faith. This applies even for people who claim or appear to be secular, atheists, agnostics, even sexual libertines. Many people are (or present themselves) that way. If you notice that some aspects of a person's ideology are being practiced or promoted as if it's a type of faith, if they profess a strong "belief" as if it's their religion, you are essentially facing the same complex of authoritarian psychological structures, dressed up with a different content. Rigid fear of a subtle and gentle surrender to orgasm feeds all authoritarian religious faith, even the religions which describe themselves in secular terms. Secural religion exists all around us, and can be heard often expressed by phrases like "I believe only in science"; "I believe only in technology"; "I believe only in the objective forces of history".  Their prime identifier is hostility to other faith-systems. 

People who are more open to the message of the 9/11 Truth movement are people whose sexual life, ideology and personal behaviour is not closely monitored, is not accountable to others. 

The closer a person is emotionally to the idealized images of family ("flag on the mailbox, mom and apple pie"), professional success, dogmatic religion, dogmatic politics, fanatic investment in activities that substitute and prevent a free flowing sensuousness of body and mind, the more likely it is that they will have a hard time responding to the 9/11 Truth movement favourably.

Even for a theoretically "healthy and natural" person the ramifications of the events of September 11 are very difficult to process. All of us struggle - constantly - with the horror, the horror of it all. 

As soon as a person begins to consider (the possibility, even!) that elements of the US ruling class and of the present Government consciously participated in a careful, methodical public high-tech slaughter of thousands of "their own" people, at first, and then immediately afterwards proceeded to slaughter more than a hundred thousand other innocent human beings, the mind goes soft and the feet crumble. Who among us has not struggled with the moral and emotional ramifications of all this before coming to those terrible conclusions? Before the mind can accept the 9/11 evidence or its significance, the heart must be comfortable, flexible, willing and capable enough to allow for a realization to occur. 

It's not just about a slaughter. In terms of criminal proportions it is not the biggest or the worst slaughter ever, even by the sickening standards set by the US Government: in Vietnam they slaughtered between two and four million people in the space of only a few years and people are still dying from the chemical atrocities the US implanted on that land. 

But in terms of the Consciousness of an American, the realization of September 11's Truth is a blow from which, even for a psychologically "healthy and natural" person, it is very hard to recover. For an American who might be afflicted with the authoritarian pathology, one who is emotionally identified with the oppressor's lifestyle and ideology, it is impossible to recover from such a blow. Therefore, when they encounter our message, psychological denial and repression automatically become activated to protect that person from their own inner conflict.

How else can a person deal with it if they don't have a supporting personal/political environment to process emotionally and rationally the actions of this ultra-concentrated conscious evil which is operating at the very top of the social-political system that runs the US and the world? This is also connected to the reason why most people around the globe have a much easier time seeing the Truth on 9/11: unlike Americans, they don't experience the sense of parental betrayal which seems to be associated with this criminal abomination. Most Americans, when confronted with the realization that 9/11 is an inside job are forced to come to terms with a betrayal of a much more intimate nature, familial,  much more personal: it seems like a scenario extracted from a perverted version of Isaac's biblical sacrifice, something even worse than Kronos eating his own children, something unspeakable. 

For these reasons, and many others, it is imperative that the 9/11 Truth movement begins to embrace broader elements of the human liberation movement on all fronts, especially in terms of racism, sexism, and homophobia. Even better, it would be very good for all of us if it were to embrace positions and practices (at our meetings, our gatherings, our presentations, demonstrations, marches, etc.) which promote the freeing up of sensuousness, freeing up the motion of minds and hearts. Anything we can do to reduce the rigidity and despair, the abandonment and desolation, the frigid apathy and lifelessness in our communities, the easier it will be for people both inside and outside of the 9/11 Truth movement to be responsive to our message.

Petros Evdokas
petros (at) cyprus-org.net
from the Belly of the Beast
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

Further Readings

"Bunk and Debunking Battles" ~ Scientific American / 9-11 Truth Conference, Chicago
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2006/06/341269.shtml

Wilhelm Reich:

The Function of the Orgasm (1927)
Character Analysis (1933)
Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933, banned by Nazis)
The Sexual Revolution (1936) 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Reich

Stanislav Grof:

The Adventure Of Self-Discovery: Dimensions of Consciousness And New Perspectives In Psychotherapy (1988)
Spiritual Emergency: When Personal Transformation Becomes A Crisis (1989) Edited with Christina Grof
The Cosmic Game: Explorations Of The Frontiers Of Human Consciousness (1998) 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Grof

* * * 

Shiva ~ Centering Practices for Enlightenment

"Two monks were arguing about a flag. One said: "The flag is moving."
The other said: "The wind is moving."
The sixth patriach happened to be passing by. He told them: "Not the wind, not the flag; mind is moving."
 

The title "Centering Practices for Enlightenment" is from a tiny ancient sacred text which presents 112 ways to free up Consciousness. It is presented as a discussion between Devi and Shiva, phrased in terse aphorisms. 

It was published in the West as part of a collection in a book titled:
"Zen Flesh, Zen Bones", by Paul Reps.

The book is an essential source of Zen materials.

"Centering Practices for Enlightenment" is now free on the web:
http://tinyurl.com/obsvy
or:
http://66.249.93.104/search?q=cache:09dwL3epemYJ:www.marinsufis.com
/texts/centering.pdf+%22SHIVA+Centering+Practices+for+Enlightenment
%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1

The same text, as a pdf file:
http://www.marinsufis.com/texts/centering.pdf#search=%22%22SHIVA
%20Centering%20Practices%20for%20Enlightenment%22%22

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 
 

Please feel free to re-publish, re-mail or share this with others as you think might be appropriate - thanks!
Petros Evdokas
member of the Cyprus IndyMedia Collective
http://petros-evdokas.cyprus-org.net/Another-sort-of-Introduction.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 
 

Image information
The painting "Isaac" above, is by Israel Rubinstein
http://www.rubinsteinart.com