The Beast Within and Without

Buddha pacifies a raging elephant

It is possible to look at the mystery of Life from a variety of perspectives. If we believe in any one of them, it will always look real. An interesting perspective suggests that human thought and reason are a specialisation of Nature in response to the need for survival.

Existence is a huge burden and may even become a living hell when under the weight of fear and the need for defence from an outside threat. When we see what the primitive man had to face at the start of his journey one can almost feel a certain compassion for him. Just look for example at the first part of the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Primitive man is depicted as an animal struggling for survival every day. From every side lurked the danger that threatened the primary directive present in every living being: SURVIVAL. It is from this danger that our fear was born.

The human ability to manipulate conditions, materials, create tools, anticipate potential future threats and taking certain precautions were given to us by Nature as a response to our need for survival.

It is from this moment, in prehistory, that a blind and gross Beast is born and as time progresses it gains more power and ability to shape it's environment, increasing it's chances of survival thus overlapping other species, this is how Man goes to the top of the food chain.

This primitive Man's past seems to have been traumatic and we as his children have inherited much of his world, especially his fear. This inheritance works today as a clot of negative energy or dim memory present in the depths of the human collective consciousness, it's the shadow. This negative presence shapes our attitudes, awareness, personality and working at a collective level shapes the human civilisation behaviour Thanks to a process of causality, this presence, or psychic virus, is transmitted to us from generation to generation through education.

This fear was and remains the main shaping force of human civilisation. All human activity in the past began as a reaction to the need for survival based on this fear. Although it was useful since it served to push ourselves to imagine and create new ways to protect ourselves, and thus survive as a species over the last several thousand years, it has become a powerful enemy preventing us from taking our next step in evolution.

Man passes from nomadic to sedentary, from hunter to farmer, it begins thus to cultivate the soil and store food, to manipulate the environment around him and domesticate animals. This new lifestyle begins a process of food storage resulting in a surplus, thus giving Man more time to develop his intellectual abilities, now that he does not need to constantly be alert and ready to run from danger or to pursue his preys as in his nomadic times.

The cities grow, the population increases, Man thus begins to expand his presence beyond his domains. This expansion and also the storage of goods creates the need for Man to defend himself from other men. Man gains in this way a new enemy, himself. Wars arise, conquests, intrigues, kingdoms and religions. Man kills Man over territories, cultural differences and on behalf of God: the Empire of the Beast is born.

The Emperor

Thanks to political, professional and social stratification, an increased efficiency in human activities and an acceleration of production of goods takes place. This will result in greater comfort, greater scientific know-how, and life expectancy while on the other hand, the population density continues to increase.

It is then that Man, having conquered nature, looks at himself proudly, secure of his ethical and moral values​​, seeing himself as the owner and master of the planet. He reserves for himself the right to exploit and dominate not only the animal kingdom but also primitive native human cultures, expanding in this way his Empire which he considers "civilised" and guided by God. In the name of progress and of God, the civilised man kills, exploits, causes more wars, and engenders more efficient forms of exploitation and mass destruction.

Today we see that human civilisation, its technology, science and culture are spread across the planet. We've reached the absurd figure of 7 billion people. Forests are being knocked down at an exponential rate, the oceans increasingly polluted, and there are more and more species becoming extinct. But still Man remains proud of his technological progress, we want to prolong life, explore new worlds, absorb more knowledge, develop new forms of entertainment and to consume more food than is necessary for our survival. Meanwhile, another part of the human race in the Third World, 80% of the population, lives below the poverty line.

All this blindness in human activity seems to be the result of this fear in our minds that we have taken from our primitive ancestor: the instinct for survival, the fear of not having enough, the impulse to control, domination, subversion. It's an animal and irrational behaviour, known as the human ego, the Beast within. Today, its action is more subtle but more destructive, we can see it in mass manipulation and control via compartmentalisation of information, advertising, marketing, economics, multinationals, militarisation and so on. We can discover this crazy ego through his contradictory behaviour, both at the individual and collective levels. At the individual level we can see a sad man, overwhelmed by insatisfaction, hypnotised by consumerism, angry, anxious and with a certain hatred of himself, but showing to the outside world a mask (persona) of calmness, normality and acceptance. This incompatibility between interior and exterior creates a huge strain and sometimes leads Man to extreme behaviours at individual and collective levels. Major contradictions in the human behaviour are possible to see at the global collective level: for example science searching for planets similar to Earth while ignoring our own planet which needs so much attention, not for the sake of the planet itself for our own sake; the obsession with the quantum world and the discovery of the origin of reality; an excess of production and variety of consumer products required only for vain and empty egos; a huge spending of resources and money on technology and maintenance of the military machine around the world. I am confident that with some effort and research the readers of this text will discover countless other contradictions. Don't forget to look inside yourself as well.

From primitive man to modern man. Not much changes.

As Man moves away from his past to the present time something remains the same: the impulse of survival and fear. Despite all his scientific and technological development and his social etiquette, Man continues to be dominated by the same impulse that led him to first use a tool to kill another animal, with the difference that today his fear is disguised by a layer of intellectual arrogance that imprisons and keeps him away from his spiritual reality. Today, instead of stone tools, we use the pen, the green paper with numbers printed on, computers, strategies for social and political manipulation, lies, distractions and the list goes on and on. Instead of extracting just enough from Nature in order to survive, we end up exterminating other species and entire ecosystems in exchange for fur coats, fat bellies, fat bank accounts (digits on a screen), phallic metallic nuclear missile toys and human tin soldiers so that some few old fat gentlemen may play war games with other old fat gentlemen.

Human tin soldiers

The Beast born in human prehistory continues its ride towards the abyss. This huge fat hungry blind Beast can not stop on its own, it needs help.

The best a man can do individually is to awaken from this blindness or sleep where he was born, then face this beast within and transform it, cure it. It becomes necessary for us to divorce ourselves from a mental program, human culture, that has been instilled in our heads since childhood, in order to turn us into automatons producers of consumer goods, slaves to a level of consciousness purposely kept at the lowest level to prevent us from seeing reality as it truly is.

Tank Man

After awakening, it is our responsibility to turn ourselves to this collective Beast and do the best we can given our capabilities and possibilities. To be like the Buddha who stopped the raging elephant through the power of his compassion or like the 'Tank Man' who alone faced a military tank parade. Since the beginning of our journey there have been men and women seeking to appease the Beast and awaken and guide others to the reality we live in, through their art, spirituality, intellect, comedy and courage. Once awaken from the dream of the Beast we can see the path of the beast and where it leads to and know what will be our fate if we do not wake up on time as a species.

“All creatures exist for a purpose. Even an ant knows what that purpose is – not with its brain, but somehow it knows. Only human beings have come to a point where they no longer know why they exist. They don’t use their brains and have forgotten the secret knowledge of their bodies, their senses, or their dreams. They don’t use the knowledge the spirit has put into every one of them; they are not even aware of this, and so they stumble along blindly on the road to nowhere – a paved highway which they themselves bulldoze and make smooth so they can get faster to the big, empty hole which they’ll find at the end, waiting to swallow them up. It’s a quick, comfortable superhighway, but I know where it leads to. I have seen it. I’ve been there in my vision, and it makes me shudder to think about it.” - Lame Deer Seeker of Visions

Today more than ever before, through profound changes that are happening at all levels of experience on Earth and human consciousness, we have a unique opportunity to help a greater number of people to wake up and make the Empire of the Beast more fragile and helpless.

Mára (the Beast) owner of the human world (samsara)

We must understand that in reality there is no reason to live under the rule of fear, there is no reason to continue this daily fight for survival, there is no need to lie and deceive others to make a living, to calculate, to acquire more possessions. We no longer have any enemies left to fight in order to survive except human ignorance. The most precious gift there is resides inside and outside of us all, it is that which unite us, it's what we all have in common with each other, with animals and plants: Life itself. We are all living in this dream of Life and at any moment we can change the course of the dream, we just need to make a choice between the Beast within or the Alien within, between continuing to live in fear and following a path of destruction, or the path of awakening, consciousness and compassion.