It was some time later that I discovered the teachings of Manly P. Hall. Since then, I often come back to his lectures, which provide a great sense of stability, imaginative possibility, inspiration, truth and rationality. The following excerpt is from his lecture: ‘Armageddon-War Ends in Peace.’
‘An inscription on the base of the statue of the god Nebula of Babylon probably dated somewhere around 2000 BC states: “That which has been, will be. I am Nebo, the Lord of the Writing Table.” Therefore, the entire concept of antiquity was that prophecy was based not on calculations, astrology, or consulting, but was based on the inevitable sequence of cause and effect. Whatever has been will come again, if the cause comes again. The prediction will not be dated in terms of years but in terms of human relationships, the patterns that are set up in the various complexes of mortal society.
Buddha says the effects follow their causes as the wheel of the cart follows the foot of the oxen. Therefore, wherever there is a causation for catastrophe and that causation is not transmuted, then evil is not corrected in the due course of time, the catastrophe comes. It is unavoidable, and down inside of ourselves we know this but we do not want to admit it. Each individual wants to be an exception to the law of cause and effect, but no one is an exception, and unless the individual builds his life upon integrities, he is going to inevitably come into conflict with law, not man-made law necessarily but the law governing life itself. There are principals in the universe which cannot be violated.
The whole story of the ‘armageddon’ represents the climax of any type of sequence of events in which evil predominates. We find it in our personal lives, we find it the story of the alcoholic, he feels that he is going to be an exception, yet if he continues, and does not correct his faults, he will die of his own shortcoming. The narcotic addict is in the same condition. There is no way of winning against the common laws of truth and reality, which supervise and control all things. Even in business and politics, in all the different professions, we are seeing today a great deal of harvesting. We are seeing every day how mistakes have been allowed to pile up, how individuals have placed their own advantage above the common good and as a result have brought the common good and themselves downs to ruin.
We are aware, that constantly, that which is not true comes into conflict with the inevitable patterns of reality which cannot be violated. Every effort we make to transgress, ends only in a disaster for ourselves. This being the case, and most individuals having somewhere down in their natures, at least an intimation it is true. There comes always the problem that philosophy, culture ethics, all these subjects have dealt with, that as the individual discovers that the integrities within himself are weakening, it is then time for him to make a strong resolution to correct his own fault. In every sequence of disasters there is a moment, when prudence, strength, courage, or integrity could transmute the evil. In every sequence of problems there is a point at which personal integrity could solve the problem. If this is not available, if the individual does not rise to the occasion and permits the kings of this world to gain ascendancy over his life, he will then come face to face with the ultimate conflict, so it is very important, it seems, for each individual to regard the ‘armageddon’ as tied directly to self.
We are not the victims of history, we are not the victims of the earth’s imperfections, we are the victims of our own mistakes. It is not heaven that brings down a nation, it is the works of humanity, misunderstood works, corrupted works, that will bring down the greatest nation the world can produce.
It is all in the last analysis, a problem of man’s own development of integrities. He drifts along, with a few virtues which he is trying to live, hoping that heaven will forgive him for his shortcomings, (although there is no evidence that heaven even judged him for them). The judgment comes from himself, he knows his own shortcomings whether he admits them or not. He may try to conceal them from others and hide them from his own conscience, but he knows he has them. This type of thing produces in life after life, a personal armageddon, in which the individual must face up to his own integrities or suffer the consequences.
Dissipation has its price, corruption has its price, and most of all self-centeredness has its price. Practically every tragedy in history has been born of human selfishness. Individuals have desired and determined to use the skills that have been given to them in a ruthless competition against their own fellow human beings. We have placed profit above integrity, we have placed the struggle of competition as an inevitable truth and cooperation as a dim, idealistic uncertainty. As a result of that, we have created in each department where we have compromised principles, the beginnings of a story that will end in an armageddon. In every case, we finally come face to face with the facts, we either meet them or fail. If we meet them, we have achieved the purpose of life, which is victory over weakness. If we fail to meet them, then as far as this life is concerned, we have failed regardless of how much wealth, fame, or authority we have accumulated.
Through corruption of principles, now we look around and we find the world in a condition in which a number of preachers and evangelists are talking about the armageddon. It looks like it’s here again. I think this is a mistake. It is here still. It was here because it has never been met. It was here in the first time when a cave man threw a rock at another cave man. This was the beginning of war and it will continue as long as the individual inside of himself wants to throw a rock. He may dress the rock up in a nuclear weapon, but it is still the old rock going on doing its original mischief. It is not the fact that at one time, somewhere in a dateable future, we are going to see the heavens open and the archangelic hosts come down and cleanse the earth. This is not what we are confronted with. We are confronted with the fact that in the due course of every civilization, every persons’s life, every invention, art, science, craft, trade, there are rules. If these rules are broken, universal law, which is always here, steps in and balances the books. When this happens a lot of misery seemingly occurs, individuals are frustrated in all their ambitions, and all their prides, but it is either that they shall have that bad moment and then gradually come back to integrity, or they will destroy everything that they hope to gain.
Now we are in the very edge of a very difficult international world situation, we are in the presence of an accumulation of thousands of years of mistaken activity. In most people’s mind’s the worst mistakes have been the most pleasant occurrences. The individual has found that it is possible for him to have more money than his neighbor. It is possible for him to be elected to public office, and have quite a following. It is possible for him to be a lawmaker and make many laws that are especially beneficial to himself. He has all kinds of opportunities. We see around us a world of trade, barter, exchange, of investment of speculation, a world of individuals all working desperately for their own benefit. This is regarded as virtuous. Why shouldn’t we go out and work for our own benefit? Why shouldn’t we give any consideration to anybody else? Why should we put someone else’s good, that we don’t even know, above our own opportunity to do unusually well? The answer is that we are part of a collective and the moment we begin to corrupt our neighbors, the moment we begin to exploit each other, each man exploits himself, but he doesn’t know it. He is gradually building for the complete destruction of the system he has abused, and somewhere along the line there will always be what has been produced by nature over thousands of years.
There will be prophets, there will be someone arise, who sees the facts, who tries to do something about it, perhaps he is accepted, more likely he is rejected because he interferes with the personal privileges of the individual. In some cases he has been martyred, in many cases he has been ridiculed, but always along the way there comes a moment in time in which the facts are available, and the individual can learn. This is his big decision, whether he is big enough, wise enough, virtuous enough to sacrifice something of his own ambitions to accomplish the preservation of the society to which he belongs. If he does not have this desire, he will then drift with it until it falls apart together. For the problems that destroy society are the injustices allowed to linger within the nature of the human being himself, as long as they are there, trouble will continue.
…if the selfishness is taken out of ourselves, the corruption of our natural resources is prevented. If we build our lives upon principles, then we will fail to destroy the planet on which we live. And if we are truly intelligent, wise, and thoughtful, then comes the Paraclete or the Prince of Peace, then comes a new law and a new cycle of existence, and we shall follow the way of heaven, instead of the way of earth. And if we follow the way of heaven, we will be blessed by the virtues and integrities within ourselves. But there is no possible way in which we can pile up a defense of vices which will protect us in an emergency, no matter what we do, unless we change the basic principle of life,making integrity the final criterion of all things, until then we are in danger. We are in danger not because heaven wishes to destroy us, but because we choose to destroy ourselves.
So we are all concerned now, quite a bit, and we wonder what is going to happen. Are we going to be able to handle this difficulty? Again, we can look about us, and see what is happening. We observe all kinds of emergencies arising, and we find that we might almost say, ‘the last desperate stand of that which must inevitably fail.’ We are witnessing a condition that unless there is a major change of integrities, we are not going to be able to solve the problem.
We are never going to be able in a military way to bring peace to the earth. We will never be able in the exploitation of resources to attain security. We can never buy our way to peace any more than the Roman Empire could buy its way to peace, all of these things have been tried before. We can never control so much that what we control cannot revolt against us.
…there is something else that we have to recognize, namely that if in our own hearts and minds we make the necessary adjustments, it may well be, because we are just little people, without very much authority or power, that we are not going to be able to change the course of history as individuals, we cannot, it is only as groups that we can have a powerful influence.
The more persons who see the facts, the safer the world will become. But in that transitional period in which perhaps we believe we have seen some facts, and we worry, and are gravely concerned because of the conditions around us, then I think it is very definitely necessary to realize that the law of cause and effect, which is producing these circumstances is not a law of extermination. It is not a law in which the end of universal process is annihilation. it is a law in which in the law, and greater span of things, it is necessary to prevent corruption from gaining too strong a hold upon the world. It is part of a plan that says when you make a mistake, you are punished and as a result of a few punishments you learn not to make the mistake. You may hold out for quite a while, but in the end the punishments, which come as the result of wrong living, will discourage the mistakes, they will not go on. Man will not exterminate himself, man will not destroy himself, he can make himself massively uncomfortable, he can get into more scrapes and problems than he ever wants to face, but there is within the human spirit itself an incorruptible, which is going to fight on until it wins, but it has to win in the service of truth it cannot win in any other way.
…Somewhere along the line, the army of the light must face the army of darkness and if the light is sincere and honest, then the darkness will be overcome, no corruption can withstand the strength of direct and honorable virtue. So that we are watching as this problem is producing its own panacea, there will be an alignment somewhere along the way in which the forces that believe in truth must come head-on into confusion or into collision with the forces who deny the existence of any truth except self gratification. This may come, but on the other hand it may simmer down into nothing more or less than a gradual change of point of view, because millions of people as soon as they realize that they have support, will turn toward righteousness and turn toward truth, because it is happier, it is more pleasant, more protective of all the values and virtues with which we are concerned.
https://archive.org/details/Manly_P.Hall_Digitally_Restored_Audio_Lectures
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