Power Elite 7: How the power elite can use religion to control the people

NOTE: These teachings are taken from Lord Maitreya’s book Master Keys to Spiritual Freedom.

Excerpts from Key 23

Understanding how the blind leaders approach religion

We can now see exactly how those who are partially or completely blinded by the duality consciousness approach religion. These beings have either fallen from above or they have fallen here below by becoming blinded by the duality consciousness. Obviously, they do not see this and many of them truly believe they are doing God’s work or even that they are God’s true representatives on Earth. Thus, we will call them the blind leaders. These people have the following beliefs about the role of religion in human life and about their own role in religion:

  • The blind leaders believe they are superior to God in knowledge and intellect, meaning that they have no respect whatsoever for divine revelation, spiritual teachers or for the representatives of God in embodiment. That is why they killed Jesus and many other people who attempted to change the status quo. That is why they are completely convinced that they have the right to take God’s revelation – such as a religious scripture or the teachings of Jesus – and change it as they see fit. They also feel they have the right to impose an outer doctrine upon a scripture that goes beyond or distorts the original revelation. In short, they feel they have the right to create their own religion on Earth and that they should be the supreme judges of what is a true religion. They literally feel they own the Earth and that God has no right to interfere by giving humankind new revelation and sending prophets to awaken the people.
  • The blind leaders fundamentally disagree with free will and believe people on Earth should be saved through control by themselves as superior beings. They disagree with the goal of a non-dualistic teaching, namely to make people spiritually self-sufficient by connecting them with their higher beings and spiritual teachers. They believe they are the true leaders of humankind and that people should be forced to follow them. This is, of course, only for people’s own good, since the blind leaders know better than God how the universe should work and how people should be saved. These beings believe religion should be a force for controlling people, herding them as sheep into the orthodox fold and then keeping them there indefinitely.
  • The blind leaders believe they know best, so it is in people’s best interest to be kept ignorant of any viewpoint that contradicts or goes beyond the doctrines defined by the leaders. That is why they seek to use religion as a way to control people’s minds by keeping them ignorant of anything beyond the mental box created by themselves. They feel completely justified in suppressing all alternative knowledge through any means available, whether it be burning books, killing people or torturing their own followers.
  • The blind leaders are always trying to create the perfect religion, which they see as a religion that forms a completely closed box. Once people are in, they have no way of escaping the control of the blind leaders, they have become unreachable for God and the true spiritual teachers. The blind leaders do this by all means, but primarily through deception and intimidation. That is why so many religions have an obvious culture of fear. Any religion that does not make an all-out effort to raise people beyond fear is influenced by the blind leaders.
  • The blind leaders have an insatiable desire to prove that they are right and God is wrong. In their blindness, they believe this can be achieved when all people on Earth follow the religion they have defined. They are actually trying to set themselves up as being infallible on Earth, or at least set themselves up in positions where their word is law and cannot be questioned or gainsaid.
  • The blind leaders are essentially trying to set themselves up as gods on Earth and they have no compunctions about having people worship them as if they were gods. That is why you have seen certain civilizations where the leader was worshipped as a god or as the only representative of God on Earth. That is why so many religions have a hierarchy in which the leaders are seen as infallible or at least as above being questioned. They claim this hierarchy represents God, but it is a creation that springs entirely from the duality consciousness and thus comes between the people and the true God.
  • For the blind leaders religion is simply a means to an end, namely the attainment of all of the goals described above, including power and privileges for themselves. For them religion is completely disconnected from the reality and the truth of God. God’s truth has no place in their religion, only the “truth” they have defined based on their dualistic world view—that places them at the center of the universe.
  • The blind leaders believe they have a right to be doing what they are doing, and when they are challenged, their default reaction is anger, often even a rage that goes beyond all rationality or proportion to the challenge. That is why the Jewish leaders were so angry with Jesus and so quick to kill him. That is why Jesus said about them:15 Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. 16 Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? (Matthew, Chapter 7)
  • The essence of the fallen consciousness is a refusal to self-transcend by serving all life instead of serving the separate sense of identity. Thus, the blind leaders are always seeking to create a state of control that will be permanent and can never be overthrown. In doing this, they are going against the very essence of life itself, which is self-transcendence, the process of becoming more until the void is filled with light and all self-conscious beings have attained full God consciousness. The consequence is that the blind leaders can never succeed and that their creations will eventually be broken down by the force of life itself. The blind leaders are on an impossible quest, and if only humankind would realize this, people could free themselves from spending lifetime after lifetime on this treadmill—while never getting closer to fulfilling their reason for being.
    The true teachers of humankind are always seeking to give people teachings and examples to show that all human beings have the potential to attain the Christ consciousness. The blind leaders are always seeking to counteract this effort, and they do so by elevating the example to an exception, thus turning the person who was sent to set people free into an idol. This is what the blind leaders have done to the example of Jesus. Thus, the stark reality is that mainstream Christian churches are not following the true Jesus – who is a member of the Ascended Host – but a false Jesus. The blind leaders have used the example of Jesus to create a religion that is largely based on the mind of anti-christ, meaning that most mainstream Christians are actually following anti-christ rather than the true Christ.

***

The blind leaders have no compunction about starting a new religion that is based on their own world view and which often sets themselves up as gods on Earth or worships gods that are fashioned after themselves. Even in modern history there are examples of such religions, and there are many more from earlier ages. Such religions have generally been of localized reach and have been relatively short-lived. The reason is simple. In order to maintain a religion, it must be infused by spiritual light, or it will quickly be broken down by the contracting force of the Mother. The blind leaders and those who follow them do not have this light, so it must come from those who still have some connection to the spiritual realm. Yet such people also have at least some Christ discernment, and thus they are not likely to be converted to a religion that is entirely based on the duality consciousness.

Obviously, the blind leaders cannot see beyond the dualistic state of mind and thus cannot – on their own – come up with teachings that are beyond duality. For this reason, the more sophisticated blind leaders have used the tactic of seeking to distort or pervert a teaching that was inspired or revealed by the Ascended Host. In other words, they have taken a teaching that was sponsored by the Ascended Host and have distorted some of its beliefs, thereby gradually pulling it into the dualistic struggle.

This can be done in various ways, but in this context, I will focus on the falsification of scripture. There are no religious scriptures on Earth that fell from the sky, even though many modern Christians seem to think this happened with the Bible. The reason is that the law of God states – as I have explained earlier – that there must be plausible deniability on Earth. Thus, a religious scripture is brought forth through one or more persons in embodiment—meaning that people can always deny the scripture by discrediting the messenger, as many Jews did with Jesus.

Scriptures can be revealed through various processes, but they all go through the mind of the person who serves as a prophet or messenger or whatever people choose to call it. The law states that the Ascended Host are not allowed to give forth a truth that is higher than what someone in embodiment has internalized. We can multiply the contents of a person’s consciousness, but we cannot give forth ideas that are beyond the messenger’s state of consciousness and spiritual attainment. Thus, to receive a non-dualistic teaching, the messenger must have risen above duality, at least to some degree. This obviously puts certain limitations on what can be revealed, and it is possible that a messenger can have certain personal or cultural beliefs that put an overlay on a teaching from the very beginning.

Yet this demand also has the advantage that a teaching will be expressed in such a way that it is adapted to the cultural background of the messenger, making it more easily accessible for other members of that culture. Always remember that the purpose of a spiritual teaching is to reach a certain group of people and take them to a higher state of consciousness. So even if a teaching is affected by the consciousness of the messenger, it can still take people higher—if they are willing to use the outer teaching as a stepping stone for a direct inner experience.

The danger is, of course, that once a new spiritual teaching begins to gain widespread acceptance, it can become influenced by the culture in which it is given. Thus, instead of allowing the teaching to raise their consciousness, people can – both unwittingly and deliberately – pull the teaching down and use it to justify the state of consciousness they refuse to transcend. People interpret the teaching in such a way that it seems they do not have to change their ways or their consciousness (obviously, a change in consciousness is the purpose of any true spiritual teaching). The blind leaders are very skilled at exploiting this tendency by making – often subtle but sometimes very blunt – changes to religious scriptures that were brought forth as a result of genuine revelation.

***

If you will take an honest look at the history of religion, you will see that many religions have followed a very distinct pattern. They were started by one person who had attained a direct connection to the spiritual realm. This person could serve as a messenger for bringing forth a non-dualistic teaching from the Ascended Host. You will also see that most such leaders were very spiritual or mystical people, meaning that their attention was focused on the spiritual realm and they had little interest in worldly matters, especially in power. So what they started was a mystical movement that was focused on the following:

  • Bringing forth and disseminating mystical knowledge, meaning knowledge from the spiritual realm as opposed to doctrines created through the consciousness of duality. Such a movement always puts God and spiritual revelation before human opinions. And the movement often allows more than one person to receive such revelation.
  • Serving the people they reach. A mystical movement is service-oriented, meaning that serving the people is more important than the organization itself. The organization is a means to an end. Serving the people meant, among other things, to help them attain a direct inner experience of the Spirit of Truth. As a result of this service-oriented focus, the leaders of the movement were usually mystics who had little interest in worldly power and privileges.
  • There have been many such organizations even in known history, but most of them did not survive for long and did not spread beyond a localized area. This was mainly due to the fact that humankind’s consciousness was not yet at a level that allowed the general population to recognize such mystical teachings, a condition that has finally started changing. A few mystical movements did start growing, and at some point they reached a critical mass and a shift started to occur. After a gradual period of transition – sometimes lasting several generations, sometimes just a few years – the organization had been transformed and now had the following characteristics:
  • It was no longer focused on revelation from above. In fact, it was often stated that such revelation was no longer needed since the official scriptures gave people everything they needed in order to be saved.
  • The members were discouraged from developing their inner connection to their own higher beings and the spiritual realm. They were told to follow the outer organization and its doctrines and leaders.
  • The organization was no longer open to changes in its doctrines or structure—neither from above nor from below. It had become solidified and rigid, while at the same time claiming this was mandated by God. It had become a closed box.
  • It was no longer focused on serving the people but on serving the organization itself or its leaders. The organization was no longer a means to the end of serving the people, but the people had become a means to serving the end of strengthening the organization. The survival and expansion of the organization – and the power of its leaders – had become an end in itself.
  • The organization now attracted leaders who wanted power. Some thought they knew better while others clearly used the organization as a way to get power over people or influence in society. Power quickly became paramount and it was centered around a very small hierarchy. The organization no more attracted mystics to its leadership and often deliberately kept them away from leadership positions.
    In short, what started out as a true spiritual movement had now become an outer religion that exhibited most or all of the characteristics of dualistic religions that I described earlier. While the young organization was inclusive, the solidified organization had become exclusive. It had built a culture that can be described with the popular saying, “You have to go along to get along.” Unless you were willing to blindly follow the organization’s doctrines and leaders, you would be excluded from the organization, perhaps even branded as heading straight for hell. If you want a prime example of such a transformation, study what little is available about the early Christian movement and compare it to the organization that formed after Christianity became the official state religion of the Roman empire.

***

What can explain such a transformation? Many religious people have seen this happen to their own or other churches and they have been wondering why. You might find part of the explanation by looking at human psychology, the mechanics of organizations or by saying that sometimes bad things happen despite people’s best intentions. However, the problem with this approach is that it does not explain why religious organizations are so unwilling to correct themselves when the errors become apparent. Why is the Catholic Church, for example, still so reluctant to adapt itself to the fact that modern society is vastly different from the society of the Middle Ages? Why have some religions refused to change even to the point of bringing about their own demise? What is it that prevents an organization from changing?

The key to understanding the real cause is to acknowledge the existence and modus operandi of fallen beings. The simple fact is that when a spiritual movement is new and small, it has little to offer the fallen beings in embodiment—for it gives them no opportunity to attain significant power. That is not to say that such people cannot be attracted to a new organization, for a few of them are often there from the very beginning and they attempt to influence the movement at the earliest possible stage. Nevertheless, when an organization reaches a critical size and begins to have a real influence on the population, it will inevitably act as a magnet for fallen beings who want power and who want to set themselves up in positions of superiority and privilege.

As soon as fallen beings enter an organization, they begin to transform it into a vehicle for their own power and glorification, as I described earlier. Once they have attained power, the overall goal of the organization is to expand or at least preserve the power of the leaders. This explains why an organization cannot transform itself—the leaders will resist anything that threatens their power and they will keep doing so beyond all rationality. As times change, the organization can no longer meet the spiritual needs of its members. Yet the leaders refuse to see this, and thus the organization holds on to the old ways because every new thing is seen as a threat by the leaders who are blinded by their dualistic thirst for power.

The inevitable effect is to create a climate that effectively weeds out the very people who have the potential to transform an organization, namely those who are mystical, intuitive and service-oriented. They simply have no chance of attaining powerful positions, for they will not be willing to compromise their principles and inner beliefs in order to rise in the hierarchy of the outer organization. Once an organization has become polluted by the quest for power, those who will not compromise principles and truth in order to maintain power simply cannot exist in the leadership of the organization. Such people will either withdraw voluntarily or they will be forced out, often through great humiliation and condemnation from the dominant leadership. We might say that as a spiritual movement starts, it attracts people primarily from the top ten percent, but as it grows, it begins to attract those from the bottom ten percent. Those from the top ten percent are then frozen out and the power-hungry people take over the organization. I am not saying this can explain everything that happens to spiritual movements, but it is a very clear tendency that needs to be more widely understood.

***

Why does a religious organization attract people who want power, why don’t they become emperors or generals who can exercise power through brute force? Well, a substantial portion of the fallen beings on Earth have indeed become emperors or generals and they have taken power through force. Yet there are different bands of fallen beings and some of them are more sophisticated – or subtil – than others. The more subtle ones know that brute force is a primitive way to exercise power. When people are being suppressed through obvious force, they will always long for freedom, and sooner or later they will revolt. So it is far better to suppress them in such a way that they do not realize they are suppressed. When people do not think there is an alternative to their current situation, they will submit to it much more readily. That is precisely why religion is so attractive to fallen beings—it gives them an opportunity to create doctrines that have the highest possible authority, namely that of God himself.

The fallen beings are very skilled at using religion to create a culture in which they set themselves up as leaders who have absolute authority over their followers. Their word cannot be gainsaid, for if you speak out against the church, its doctrines and leaders, you are rebelling against God, and that carries the ultimate penalty, namely that you will burn in hell—for all eternity. If you really believe that a church and its leaders have the power to condemn you to eternal torment, you are likely to submit to anything they demand of you. Which explains why the people of the Middle Ages submitted to the overt abuses of the Catholic Church and its leaders. They did not want to make their own decisions, did not want to step up to Christhood, and thus kept following the external leaders.

Another part of the puzzle is, of course, that a dualistic religion also promises you that if you do obey the outer doctrines and rules, you are guaranteed to go to heaven. Between the threat of eternal punishment and the promise of eternal reward, most people will feel that submitting to a certain amount of oppression on Earth is the lesser of two evils. Which explains why the Catholic Church could continue to get away with suppressing people for over a thousand years.

Do you see the subtle psychological mechanism that is being used here? Many spiritual and religious people surely know in their hearts that there is something wrong with their church. But they are more interested in reaping an eternal reward in heaven, and thus they do not take a stand against the church here on Earth. On the other hand, the fallen beings who have taken over a church know they have forsaken all chance of reaping a reward in heaven. So they only want to have the greatest possible power here on Earth, and they have no compunctions about using a religion to get that power—while justifying it by claiming they are doing God’s work.

Of course, fallen beings are always part of an invisible beast, and when a religion begins to become powerful, it actually creates its own beast as an outcropping of a larger beast. As I have explained, a beast is basically like a computer, and a computer cannot change its own programming. From the perspective of the beast, the outer religion only exists to serve it by getting the members to give their spiritual light to the beast. A beast will resist any changes that can bring a religion closer to becoming a true religion which gives its members self-sufficiency. The beast will seek to keep the members in bondage to it by pulling on their mental and emotional bodies through the reward-punishment scenario and other means.

This explains why it can be almost impossible for a large religious organization to change and why it can be so difficult for people to leave a religion. Change can be brought about only by individuals, but in order to create change, they must go against the entire gravitational force of the beast and the collective consciousness of the members who don’t want to change. Most individuals, even groups of people, do not have the spiritual attainment to withstand the force of the beast but are overpowered by it. Or they are frozen out or forcefully suppressed.

Thus, an organization often becomes so rigid that it cannot change with the times, and that will eventually lead to its collapse. The beast behind it does not have sufficient awareness to realize that if it does not change, it will die. This explains why people who are overpowered by such a beast will refuse to change their behavior, even to the point that an entire civilization collapses. People cannot go beyond the beast and the beast cannot go beyond its programming. So if no one cries out that the emperor has nothing on, self-destruction will be the inevitable result. This is simply the ultimate consequence of free will. Those who will not self-transcend will inevitably self-destruct.

 

Copyright © 2009 by Kim Michaels