XXXV

                                                                   THE MACHINE MAN

THE MACHINE MAN is the unhappiest being that exists in this valley of tears.

"NOSCE TE IPSUM" "MAN KNOW YOURSELF." This is an ancient GOLDEN MAXIM written on the undefeated walls of the temple of Delphi in the OLD GREECE.

The man, that INTELLECTUAL ANIMAL who mistakenly qualifies as MAN, has invented thousands of complicated and difficult machines and knows very well that in order to use a MACHINE, he sometimes needs long years of study and learning, but as soon as it is of HIMSELF he totally forgets this fact, although he himself is a more complicated machine than all he has invented.

There are men who is full of totally false ideas about himself, the most serious thing is that he does not want to realize that he really is a machine.

The human machine has no freedom of movement, works only by multiple and varied internal influences and external shocks.

All movements, acts, words, ideas, emotions, feelings, desires of the human machine, are caused by external influences and by many strange and difficult inner causes.

THE INTELLECTUAL ANIMAL is a poor talking puppet with memory and vitality, a living doll, who has the silly illusion that he can DO, when in reality nothing can really DO.

Imagine for a moment, dear reader, an automatic mechanical doll controlled by a complex mechanism.

Imagine that this doll has life, falls in love, speaks, walks, desires, makes wars, etc.

Imagine that this doll can change owners at every moment. You must imagine that each owner is a different person, has his own criteria, his own way of having fun, feeling, living, etc., etc., etc.

Any owner wanting to get money will press certain buttons and then the doll will be dedicated to business, another owner, an hour later or several hours later, have a different idea and put his doll to dance and laugh, a third will put him to fight , a fourth will make him fall in love with a woman, a fifth will make him fall in love with another, a sixth will make him fight with a neighbor and create a police problem, and a seventh will make him change his address.

Actually the doll of our example has not done anything but he believes that if he has done, he has the illusion that he DOES when in reality nothing can really DO BECAUSE he does not have the INDIVIDUAL BEING.

Out of all doubt everything has happened as when it rains, when it thunders, when the sun warms, but the poor doll thinks he DOES; he has the silly ILLUSION that he has done everything when in fact he has done nothing, it is their respective owners who have had fun with the poor mechanical doll.

This is the poor intellectual animal dear reader, a mechanical doll like our illustrative example, believes that DOES when in fact nothing DOES, is a puppet of flesh and blood controlled by LEGION OF SUBTLE ENERGY ENTITIES that as a whole constitute that which is call EGO, the PLURALIZED EGO.

THE CHRISTIAN GOSPEL qualifies all those entities DEMONS and its real name is LEGION.

If we say that the "ego" is a legion of DEMONS that control the human machine, we are not exaggerating, that's the way it is.

THE MAN-MACHINE does not have any INDIVIDUALITY, he does not possess the BEING, only the TRUE BEING has the POWER TO DO.

ONLY the BEING can give us TRUE INDIVIDUALITY, only the BEING makes us TRUE MEN.

Who really wants to stop being a simple mechanical doll, must eliminate each one of those entities that as a whole constitute the Ego. Each one of those ENTITIES that play with the human machine. Who really wants to stop being a simple mechanical doll, has to start by admitting and understanding their own mechanicity.

THE INTELLECTUAL ANIMAL is a machine, but a very special machine, if this machine comes to understand that it is MACHINE, if it is well conducted and if circumstances allow it, it can stop being a machine and become a MAN.

First of all, it is urgent to begin to understand thoroughly and in all levels of the mind, that we do not have true individuality, that we do not have a PERMANENT CENTER OF CONSCIOUSNESS, that at a certain moment we are one person and in another, another; everything depends on the ENTITY that controls the situation at any moment.

What originates the ILLUSION of the UNIT and INTEGRITY of the INTELLECTUAL ANIMAL is, on the one hand, the sensation of its  PHYSICAL BODY, on the other hand its name and last name, and finally the memory and a certain number of mechanical habits implanted in it by EDUCATION, or acquired by simple and silly imitation.

The poor INTELLECTUAL ANIMAL cannot stop being a MACHINE, it cannot change, it cannot acquire the REAL INDIVIDUAL BEING and become a legitimate man, as long as it DOES NOT have the courage of ELIMINATING THROUGH THE BACKGROUND UNDERSTANDING and in successive order, to each one of those METAPHYSICAL entities that together constitute what is called EGO.

Each Idea, each Passion, each vice, each Affection, each Hate, each Wish, etc., etc., etc. It has its corresponding ENTITY and the set of all these ENTITIES is the PLURALIZED Ego of the REVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY.

All those METAPHYSICAL ENTITIES, all those egos that together constitute the EGO, do not have a real bond with each other, they do not have coordinates of any kind. Each one of these ENTITIES depends totally on the circumstances, change of impressions, events, etc.

The DISPLAY of the MIND changes colors and scenes at every moment, everything depends on the ENTITY that at any moment controls the mind.

Through the DISPLAY of the mind they go through a continuous procession of the different ENTITIES that together constitute the PSYCHOLOGICAL EGO.

The various ENTITIES that constitute the PLURALIZED EGO associate, dissociate, form certain special groups according to their affinities, quarrel with each other, argue, ignore each other, etc., etc., etc.

Each ENTITY of the LEGION called "I", every little I, believes to be the whole, the TOTAL EGO, does not remotely suspect that he is only a tiny part.

The ENTITY that today swears eternal love to a woman, is later displaced by another ENTITY that has nothing to do with such an oath and then the house of cards goes down and the poor woman cries disappointed.

The ENTITY that today swears allegiance to a cause, is displaced tomorrow by another ENTITY that has nothing to do with such a cause and then the subject withdraws.

The ENTITY that today swears allegiance to GNOSIS, is displaced tomorrow by another ENTITY that hates GNOSIS.

Teachers of Schools, Colleges and Universities must study this book of FUNDAMENTAL EDUCATION and for humanity have the courage to guide students through the wonderful path of the REVOLUTION OF CONSCIENCE.

It is necessary for students to understand the need to know themselves in all areas of the mind.

It is need a more efficient intellectual orientation, it is need to understand what we are and this must start from the schools' own desks.

We do not deny that money is needed to eat, pay rent for the house and get dressed.

We do not deny that intellectual preparation is needed, a profession, a technique to earn money, but that is not all that is secondary.

The first, the fundamental thing is to know who we are, what we are, where we come from, where we are going, what is the purpose of our existence.

It is unfortunate to continue as automatic dolls, miserable mortals, machine men.

It is urgent to stop being mere machines, it is urgent to become TRUE MEN.

A radical change is needed and this must begin precisely by the ELIMINATION of each one of those ENTITIES that together constitute the PLURALIZED EGO.

THE POOR INTELLECTUAL ANIMAL is not MAN but he has inside himself in a latent state, all the possibilities to become a MAN.

It is not a law that these possibilities are developed, the most natural thing is that they are lost.

ONLY by  SUPER-EFFORTS can such human possibilities be developed.

We have a lot to eliminate and a lot we have to acquire. It is necessary to make an inventory to know how much we have left and how much we need.

It is clear that the PLURALIZED EGO comes out in excess, it is something useless and harmful.

IT IS LOGICAL to say that we have to develop certain powers, certain faculties, capacities that the MACHINE-MAN is attributed and believes to have but that actually does NOT-HAVE.

THE MAN-MACHINE believes that he has true INDIVIDUALITY, AWAKENED AWARENESS, CONSCIOUS WILL, POWER TO DO, etc. and none of that has.

If we want to stop being machines, if we want to awaken CONSCIENCE, have true CONSCIOUS WILL, INDIVIDUALITY, ability to DO, it is urgent to begin by knowing ourselves and then dissolving the PSYCHOLOGICAL EGO.

When the PLURALIZED EGO dissolves, only the TRUE BEING remains inside us.

                                                                                  XXXVI

                                                                 PARENTS AND TEACHERS

The most serious problem of PUBLIC EDUCATION is not the students of primary, secondary or high school, but the PARENTS and the MASTERS.

If the Parents and Teachers do not know themselves, if they are not capable of understanding the children, if they do not know how to fully understand their relationships with these creatures that are beginning to live, if they only care about cultivating the intellect of their students, how can we create a new kind of education?

The child, the student, goes to the School to receive conscious guidance, but if the Teachers, are narrow-minded, conservative, reactionary, retardant, so will the student.

Educators must reeducate themselves, know themselves, to review all their knowledge, to understand that we are entering a New Era. By transforming educators, public education is transformed.

EDUCATING the EDUCATOR is the most difficult because everyone who has read a lot, everyone who has a degree, everyone who has to teach, who works as a school teacher, is what he is, his mind is bottled up in the fifty thousand theories that he has studied and he does not change anymore in no way.

Teachers should teach HOW TO THINK, but unfortunately they only care about teaching them WHAT THEY SHOULD THINK ABOUT.

Parents and teachers live full of terrible economic, social, sentimental concerns, etc.

Parents and teachers are mostly occupied with their own conflicts and sorrows, they are not seriously interested in studying and solving the problems posed by the boys and girls of the "NEW WAVE".

There is tremendous mental, moral and social degeneration, but parents and teachers are full of personal anxieties and worries and only have time to think about the economic aspect of the children, to give them a profession so that they do not starve and that is all.

People study, prepare to be doctors, engineers, lawyers, etc. and on the other hand, he does not prepare himself for the most serious and difficult task, which is to be a Parent.

That selfishness of family, that lack of love for our fellow men, that policy of family isolation, is absurd in a hundred percent, because it becomes a factor of deterioration and constant social degeneration.

Progress, the real Revolution, are only possible by demolishing those  walls that separate us, that isolate us from the rest of the world.

All of us are ONE FAMILY and it is absurd to torture one another, to consider only as a family the few people who live with us, etc.

The SELFISH FAMILY exclusivism stops social progress, divides human beings, creates wars, castes, privileged, economic problems, etc.

When parents really love their children, the walls will fall to dust, the abominable walls of isolation, and then the family will cease to be a selfish and absurd circle.

Falling the selfish family walls, there is then fraternal communion with all the other fathers and mothers of families, with the Masters, with the whole society.

The result of the TRUE FRATERNITY, is the TRUE SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION, the authentic REVOLUTION of the EDUCATIONAL branch for a better world.

THE EDUCATOR should be more aware, should bring together the Fathers and Mothers of the family, the Board of Directors of Parents, and speak clearly.

It is necessary for parents to understand that the task of public education is carried out on the firm basis of mutual cooperation between parents and teachers.

It is necessary to tell the Parents that FUNDAMENTAL EDUCATION is necessary to raise the new Generations.

It is essential to tell the parents that intellectual training is necessary but that it is not everything, something more is needed, it is necessary to teach the boys and girls to know themselves, to know their own mistakes, their own psychological defects.

We must tell the parents that children should be generated by LOVE and not by ANIMAL PASSION.

It is cruel and ruthless to project our animal desires, our violent sexual passions, our morbid sentimentality and bestial emotions in our descendants.

The Sons and Daughters are our own projections and it is criminal to infect the World with bestial projections.

The Teachers of Schools, Colleges and Universities, must gather in the assembly hall the Fathers and Mothers of the family with the healthy purpose of teaching them the way of moral responsibility towards their children and towards the Society and the World.

The EDUCATORS have the duty to RE-EDUCATE themselves and guide the Fathers and Mothers of the family.

We need to truly love to transform the world. We need to unite to raise among all of us, the wonderful Temple of the New Era that at this moment is beginning among the august thunder of thought.

                                                                                   XXXVII

                                                                     THE CONSCIOUSNESS

People confuse the CONSCIOUSNESS with the INTELLIGENCE or the INTELLECT, and the very intelligent or to a very intellectual person, they give the qualification of very conscious.

We affirm that the CONSCIOUSNESS in man is beyond doubt and without fear of deceiving, a very particular kind of INTERNAL KNOWLEDGE APPREHENSION totally independent of all mental activity.

The faculty of CONSCIENCE allows us the knowledge of SELF.

CONSCIOUSNESS gives us full knowledge of what IS, where it is, what is really known, what is certainly ignored.

REVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY teaches that only man himself can come to know himself.

Only we can know if we are conscious at a given moment or not. Only one can know of one's own consciousness and whether it exists at a given moment or not.

The man himself and no one but him, can realize for an instant, for a moment that before that instant, before that moment, he really was not conscious, his conscience was very asleep, then he will forget that experience or he will keep it as a memory, like the memory of a strong experience.

It is urgent to know that the CONSCIOUSNESS in the RATIONAL ANIMAL is not something continuous, permanent.

Normally the CONSCIOUSNESS in the INTELLECTUAL ANIMAL called man, sleeps deeply.

Rare, very rare are the moments when CONSCIOUSNESS is awake; the intellectual animal works, drives cars, marries, dies, etc. with the consciousness totally asleep, and only in very exceptional moments awakens.

The life of the human being is a dream life, but he believes that he is awake and would never admit that he is dreaming, that he is asleep.

If someone were to wake up, he would be terribly ashamed of himself, he would immediately understand his buffoonery, his ridiculousness.

The life of an uncouncounciousness person is frightfully ridiculous, horribly tragic and rarely sublime.

If a boxer were to wake up immediately in the middle of a fight, he would look embarrassed at the honorable public and flee from the horrible spectacle, at the astonishment of the sleeping and unconscious crowds.

When the human being admits that he has the SLEEPED AWARENESS, you can be sure that he is already beginning to wake up.

The reactionary Schools of outdated Psychology that deny the existence of CONSCIOUSNESS and even the futility of such a term, accuse the deepest dream state. The henchmen of such Schools sleep very deeply in a practically infra-conscious and unconscious state.

Those who confuse consciousness with psychological functions; thoughts, feelings, motor impulses and sensations, they are really very unconscious, they sleep deeply.

Those who admit the existence of CONSCIOUSNESS but flatly deny the different degrees of consciousness, accuse lack of conscious experience, dream of conscience.

Every person who has momentarily awoken, knows very well from his own experience that there are different degrees of consciousness observable in oneself.

First: TIME .How long have we remained conscious?

Second: FREQUENCY. How many times have we awakened consciousness?

Third: AMPLITUDE AND PENETRATION about of what was Conscious?

The REVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY and the old PHILOKALIA affirm that by means of great SUPER-EFFORTS of a very special kind one can awaken consciousness and make it continuous and controllable.

The FUNDAMENTAL EDUCATION aims to awaken CONSCIOUSNESS. What are they for ten or fifteen years of studies in the School, the College and the University, if when leaving the classrooms we are sleeping automatons.

It is not an exaggeration to say that by means of some great EFFORT the INTELLECTUAL ANIMAL can be conscious of himself only for a couple of minutes.

It is clear that in this there are usually rare exceptions today that we have to look for with Diogenes' flashlight, those rare cases are represented by TRUE MEN, BUDDHA, JESUS, HERMES, QUETZALCOATL, etc.

These Great Maters of the Humanity possessed CONTINUOUS AWARENESS, they were great ILLUMINATED.

Normally people are NOT aware of themselves. The illusion of being conscious continuously is born from memory and from all thought processes.

The man who practices a retrospective to remember his whole life, can really remember, remember how many times he got married, how many children he fathered, who were his parents, his Masters, etc., but this does not mean awakening conscience, this is simply remembering unconscious acts and that's it.

It is necessary to repeat what we said in previous chapters. There are four states of CONSCIOUSNESS. These are: SLEEP, STATE OF VIGIL, SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS and OBJECTIVE AWARENESS.

The poor INTELLECTUAL ANIMAL mistakenly called MAN, only lives in two of those states. A part of his life takes place in the dream and the other in the badly named STATE OF VIGIL, which is also a dream.

The man who sleeps and is dreaming, believes that he awakens by returning to the vigil state, but in reality during this vigil state he continues to dream.

This is similar to dawn, the stars are hidden due to sunlight but they continue to exist even though the physical eyes do not perceive them.

In ordinary life, the human being knows nothing of SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS and much less of OBJECTIVE AWARENESS.

However, people are proud and everyone believes they are SELF-AWARENESS; the INTELLECTUAL ANIMAL firmly believes that he is aware of himself and in no way would he accept being told that he is a sleeper and that he is unconscious of himself.

There are exceptional moments in which the INTELLECTUAL ANIMAL awakens, but those moments are very rare, they can be represented in a moment of supreme danger, during an intense emotion, in some new circumstance, in some unexpected new situation, etc.

It is truly unfortunate that the poor INTELLECTUAL ANIMAL has no control over these fleeting states of consciousness, that he cannot evoke them, that he cannot make them continuous.

However, FUNDAMENTAL EDUCATION affirms that man can ACHIEVE the control of CONSCIENCE and acquire SELF-CONSCIENCE.

REVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY has methods, scientific procedures to AWAKEN AWARENESS.

If we want to AWAKEN AWARENESS, we need to start by examining, studying and then eliminating all the obstacles that come our way, in this book we have shown the way to awaken AWARENESS, starting from the same desks 

                                                                         SAMAEL AUN WEOR