OUR INITIATION

Passing Through the Underworld

‘Hope, when bold, is strength. Hope, with doubt, is cowardice. Hope, with fear, is weakness.’

G I Gurdjieff

During the six months of winter-spring 2010-2011 I was busy writing what would eventually become my book New Revolutions for a Small Planet: How the Coming Years Will Transform Our Lives that was published in 2012 (Watkins Publishing). I had spent six months of full-time writing on a book that I felt was my most complete (and longest) work yet. The book was released and … immediately sank without a trace. There was no publisher promotion or support; in fact, the publisher neglected the book entirely. I later learned that my book was a victim of publishing wrangles as the company owner at the time (Stuart Baird Publishing) was about to collapse and they sold Watkins to an American publisher (Osprey Publishing) and my book fell through the cracks during the turmoil. Well, that is what I was told. And that’s just another publishing tale from within the industry (and there are many more similar tales). Despite only a handful of people having read the book (my thanks go to the five of you! 😊), I still come back to it time and again for how prescient it now appears. Here are the first two paragraphs from the opening introduction:

Humanity is in the midst of great transformation across the globe. This is now apparent to even casual observers of some of the changes happening on the planet at this time. Most of what we see in the daily news reports informs us of dramatic Earth changes due to climatic disruption: earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, etc. We are also witnessing a surge in people protest as decades of corrupt or inefficient social systems are taking their toll. Yet within this outward surge of turmoil and disruption other shifts are occurring; such as the transition from the modern mind of the industrial-globalization model of the last two centuries into a life-sustaining, ecological-cosmological worldview. We are seeing a change towards fostering values that will be inherited by the world to come. During the current and upcoming years, humanity, on both an individual and collective level, will have an obligation to re-adapt itself to a world in revolution.

The revolution we are currently undergoing is not only of the physical kind, with struggle, strife and exertion. There are also revolutions now in our perceptions and worldviews – revolution in our collective psyche. Yet it doesn’t stop there, as a revolution not only suggests a change or substitution in socio-cultural systems, a change in conditions, but also implies a complete orbit or rotation as well. I suggest in this book that life on planet Earth is undergoing all three types of revolutions: physical, psychic and cosmological.

I had recently moved into my new home in Andalusia, southern Spain. I had acquired a rustic house in March 2010, surrounded by uncultivated gardens, mud, and an orange grove. Whilst working on developing the grounds and planting vegetables, I was busy writing what I thought at the time was an important book. So, there I was, adapting to a life in rural Spain, learning the lingo, and writing about humanity’s dark night of the soul. Part Two of the book begins with Chapter Four – ‘The Dark Night of the Soul: The Death Throes of the Old’ where I began to explain how the next 20 years cannot be the same as the last 20 years: ‘Change is upon us rapidly, even if we are not aware of its pace. The world is now more starkly divided between regions that are resource sinks (importing energy) and resource sources (exporting energy) as our civilizations push towards overshoot.’ In the next chapter, ‘Caught in Plato’s Cave: The Final Trick on the Old Mind,’ I suggested that ‘before humanity comes out from this darker patch (our metaphorical initiatory period), the vestiges of our “old mind” will attempt to increase its grip on power and our social lives. In this chapter I examined the ‘increasing global (in)security and surveillance, and the creeping systems of social control in modern societies.’ And in Chapter Six – ‘End of an Era: A New Cycle in Gestation’ – I explored the notion of cyclic change and renewal, looking at cosmological influences. Here is a short extract from Chapter Five:

In today’s more modern social setting this has been replaced by fluid and pervasive control environments that permeate most aspects of our lives and integrate with our own behaviour patterns. As philosopher Michel Foucault noted, the mechanism for creating and sustaining power should be able to exist independent of the body exercising the power; i.e., the people under the sway of power should be caught up in the situation so that they render themselves as bearers of the power structure. Thus, the ultimate dystopian future, for example, could be described as:

It will not be a universal concentration camp, for it will be guilty of no atrocity. It will not seem insane, for everything will be ordered, and the stains of human passion will be lost amid the chromium gleam. We shall have nothing more to lose, and nothing to win. Our deepest instincts and our most secret passions will be analyzed, published, and exploited. We shall be rewarded with everything our hearts ever desired. And the supreme luxury of the society of technical necessity will be to grant the bonus of useless revolt and of an acquiescent smile.[1]

We should be careful, therefore, to note that the illusion of liberty can be used as a powerful form of control and domination. For example, the democratic ‘right’ to free and fair elections is provided as an illusion of our liberty; yet the ‘free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves’.[2] This is all part of maintaining the illusion; of keeping society under control as cracks rise and the façade begins to break down.

Many writers before me have alluded to the allegory of Plato’s cave. Whilst this reference is not new, our current times make it seem more relevant than ever. I referred to this allegory as the ‘Shadow Fire’ that serves to maintain our illusions. This is what I wrote back in 2010:

This is the illusion – the shadows from the fire – that is maintained as the ‘reality’ we should ascribe meaning to. And the illusion of distraction will gain momentum as the cracks in the material system begin to manifest in more obvious ways. People will be increasingly persuaded that everything that is happening – the collapse of financial markets and currencies; increasing political and corporate corruption; interventionist wars; terrorist fears; mounting surveillance; and the loss of civil liberties – are all part of the essential and ‘natural’ growth of social infrastructure in the modern world. Information will be carefully manipulated to present inconvenient truths as convenient lies. The control over the flow and content of information will become essential to the maintenance of power within technologically dependent societies.

Any culture that is moving towards increasing digitization will need to put in place ever-restrictive measures for the effective management of people’s social lives, privileges and identities. To a large degree the manufacture of social control is about the management of information. To this extent there will be an increased dependency upon ‘data-basing’ the individual, with most lifestyle choices (travel, purchases, insurance, health, etc.) being digitally collected and stored. This scenario relies upon various technologies of integrated digital databases; data mining software; biometric security; CCTV cameras; and radio frequency identity (RFID) implants to track objects and people. Already a general array of surveillance mechanisms are in place including the satellite tracking of individual cars, video auto-identification of physical features, monitoring of all electronic communications (including switched-off mobile phones) and data-referencing all credit card transactions.

What I wrote fifteen years ago has not only come to pass – it has now accelerated at a pace few of us could have envisioned.

Within the same chapter, I then went on to explore what I referred to as Terrifying Peace, which is the rise of martial societies (societies under martial law). I wrote:

It appears that there is a maneuvering underway towards an increased militarization of the civil sphere; collapsing the binary notions of ‘friend/enemy’, ‘civil/military’. Our various so-called ‘open societies’ are fast becoming the playground (i.e. operations field) of the military, in which every citizen is deemed a ‘potential terrorist’. In this way a perpetual war can be orchestrated that deems ordinary peacetime to be the battlefield for potential terror. This old-mind strategy seeks to keep the focus upon the need for control and security and, in Plato’s analogy, to keep the heads turned towards the wall and away from the fire. There is no better way to construct societies of control than through the notion of a terrifying peace … A perception of permanent war and terrifying peace allows the creeping emergence of martial societies – i.e., societies where military rule and social/civil law have effectively merged. It also allows for the powerful infrastructures of politics, industry and the military to dominate … the increasing shift towards martial societies, in which the notion of terrifying peace becomes the norm, represents the dark part in our transitional period.

Yet during this ‘transitional period’ we will also see the ‘veil of illusion’ being lifted ‘on our global financial systems, to reveal their duplicity and unworkable schemes. Not only people but nations are going broke.’ And here we shall see the struggle to keep the illusion in place as more and more people begin to gain clarity and to perceive through the shadows:

Yet as our social, political and economic edifice shows further signs of cracking and decay, those in power in the Western nations especially will seek to increase their regulatory control. The edifice of illusion cannot be allowed to fall: or rather, those of us chained in Plato’s Cave cannot be permitted to turn our heads and view the source of the shadows upon the wall – the real fire. The final trick upon the old mind is to keep it focused on the illusion of the old ‘reality’ (the shadow fire) whilst the world around starts to tear apart at the seams. Distractions will be provided to keep the old mind occupied: these will include increased fear and insecurity, media stories that focus on negativity, financial worries, credit debts, global climate politicking and general ongoing propaganda campaigns for continued public passivity. However, this darkened period is, as I have explained, the trial of our passing.

And so, what I was describing fifteen years ago was our coming trial – our metaphorical passing through the underworld – and our re-emergence into the world as renewed through experience and adversity. I had also quoted from a Taoist philosopher:

In adversity, everything that surrounds you is a kind of medicine that helps you refine your conduct, yet you are unaware of it. In pleasant situations, you are faced with weapons that will tear you apart, yet you do not realize it.

Huanchu Daoren, Taoist philosopher, circa 1600

As I was writing these passages, I was myself trying to understand, and to give context, to how periods of adversity are also catalysts for our growth and development, if we respond to them in the appropriate way. Pleasant situations rarely polish our tools of perception, unless we make a conscious and disciplined effort. Yet times and periods that rub against us and make us uncomfortable are able to develop capacities within us that we were largely unaware of. And through this heightened cognition we become aware of nuances and subtleties that previously evaded us. In this state, we may then understand that what we are witnessing are not forms of dominant power but acts of desperation. I ended Chapter Five by writing the following:

In this period of darkening, lower energies are becoming more manifest, not because they are gaining ascendency but because of the very opposite – they are waning. It is, in effect, the years of the last gasp for the once dominant material power structures. The cycle of peak gross materialism is now on the descendent and finer, more subtle energies of human consciousness are beginning their ascendancy. It is for this very reason, I propose, that there is such open and visible material conflict in the world today: material power structures are now openly fighting for their final gasps of air. Such old-energy power structures are attempting to hold back new incoming and ascending conscious energies. A new era is on the rise. We are currently in the gestation of a new cycle; a cycle of rising consciousness and material awareness, as the next chapter begins to explain.

For us, the next chapter does not lie in a book. It lies where it has always been – within us. This is our initiation. This is where we make our choices. This is when we either grow or stagnate.

In autumn of 2023 I returned to some of this material in New Revolutions for a Small Planet to create a musical project. Working with my colleague Moin (Dedfela), we managed to put together a 5-track EP that we called ‘Initiation,’ based upon this idea of the ‘dark night of the soul’ and our experience of the shadow fire of Plato’s cave. Musically, we took inspiration from the ‘dark jazz’ genre, which we felt was fitting for this material. The full EP can be found on most online sites, including here on Bandcamp. To coincide with this essay, I am releasing the full album/EP as a video that comes in at less than 20 minutes. The video can be watched from the link below:

INITIATION - Dr.Dennis & Dedfela (FULL ALBUM VIDEO)

Sit back, and listen to the sounds …

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[1] Ellul, J, The Technological Society, 1964, Vintage Books

[2] Marcuse, H, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society 2007/1964, Routledge, p10