Secret History #4: How Evil Triumphs

Today we are going to discuss some extremely controversial topics. Today, we're going to look at how evil triumphs. Why is the world so evil? There's going to be a lot of extremely disturbing topics we're going to discuss. You're mature, and it's important that we discuss these topics to understand how the world works.

We will do a lot of speculation and theorizing. Do not take this as gospel. Do not believe this is the truth. The entire point is to help you develop the theories and ideas to better understand the world. These are tools. This is not truth; these are tools.

The Conflict in Gaza as Ritual Sacrifice

The first question I have for you is: what is happening in Israel right now? As you know, Israel is besieging and bombarding Gaza. You might have seen the videos on social media. It is disturbing; it is terrible, this is genocide.What I will argue, though, is that the truth is far more disturbing than this. What is really happening in Gaza is a ritual sacrifice, and this happens quite often in human history. If you go back and look at the real history of humanity, this happens quite often.

Some of the most famous examples are the Aztecs. We've dug up temples of the Aztecs, and inside the temples are thousands and thousands of human skulls. Before they went to war, they practiced human sacrifice. They would commit mass murder of their enemies in public. The Aztecs were really famous for this.

The Phoenicians, specifically the Carthaginians, were also famous for a particular type of sacrifice: child sacrifice. The Romans wrote histories insulting the Phoenicians for practicing this sort of sacrifice, but the Romans themselves practiced human sacrifice. After every major war, they would capture all the major leaders of their enemies and parade them through the streets of Rome. This is something called the Triumph. At the end of the Triumph, they would gather their enemies at the temple of Jupiter, their god, and then they would strangle their enemies to death. That's a sacrifice. That's human sacrifice. They didn't call it that, and they sort of disguised it, but we know for a fact that they did this.

So the question for us is, why does this happen? Why do the Aztecs do it? Why do the Phoenicians do it? Why do the Romans do it? And why, today, do the Israelis do it in Gaza? Remember, what the Israelis are doing is quite horrific because it is really this sort of sacrifice. Why? Because 47%, almost half, of the population of Gaza is under 18 years old. The majority of people who are getting killed are, in fact, children.

What is most striking or blatant about what's happening in Gaza is that we can all see it for ourselves. It's almost as though the Israelis want us to see it and want us to hate them. You can see all over the world that popular opinion is turning against Israel. You have these popular protests all around the world protesting what is happening in Palestine.

If they really wanted to do this, there are actually much more effective ways. For example, you could just poison their water, or you could poison the air so that everyone in Gaza gets a fast-acting cancer. We have the technology to do this. Israel could do it secretly, no one would talk about it, and in 20 or 30 years, the population of Gaza would all be gone. It would be very secret. Instead, they choose to do this in front of the world.

My argument to you is that this is intentional. They want the world to hate them because, by doing this, they create the ultimate taboo.

We find this disgusting and contemptuous, so the entire world will unite against Israel. But guess what? That's what their religion wants. In the extreme form of Jewish eschatology, they believe that at the end of the world, Israel will fight the entire world, and God will help Israel triumph in the end.

What's really happening in Gaza is that there are extremists within the Israeli government who want to accelerate the process of the end of the world, where Israel will face the world. If you think about it, the entire idea of this ritual sacrifice is to unite the Israeli population. And what's extremely disturbing and horrifying about it is that this works.

Let's use an analogy. In Chinese history, the most popular military strategy is to fight with a river behind your back. An army is losing and being scattered by the enemy. So what the general does is force the army to retreat to a river. Now, with a river blocking your escape, you have a choice: you can either drown in the river or you can fight to the death. Most soldiers will choose to fight to the death. At this point, the soldiers are unified, galvanized, and energized. They find a surge of energy to go and destroy their enemy. This is the most popular military strategy in ancient Chinese history. And guess what? It's the same as what Israel is doing right now in Gaza. It's the same logic.

What is the river for Israel?

The river is the taboo. What's the worst thing you can do in modern society? Killing children. There's no exit for Israel. You either go all the way, or the world comes and destroys you anyway.

In fact, what's really interesting is that if you go online, you will see Israelis going around the world and causing trouble everywhere. They start fights. They shout "death to the Arabs" on public buses in the Western world. It's intentional. They want to unite themselves by dividing the world, by angering the world.

The Monkey Island Thought Experiment

To unpack how this works, I'm going to use a thought experiment. Let's just say that there's an island. We don't know where it is, but it's an island with no escape. In the center of the island, there's a hill, and it's safe. But everywhere else, you have these flesh-eating monkeys roaming. The problem is that the resources you need to survive—trees, food, and rivers—are where the monkeys are. There's one safe spot in the center, but everywhere else, if you want resources, you have to go fight these monkeys. They are flesh-eating monkeys. They want to kill you and eat you, and there's an infinite number of them.

Now, let's just say that one day, for whatever reason, 100 men, ranging from 15 to 65 years old, are mysteriously transplanted onto this island in the safe spot. They come from different countries, do not speak the same language, are of different ethnicities, and are all poor people from their countries with not much education. They're there, and they realize quickly that the situation is utterly hopeless. There's no escape from this island. These monkeys are everywhere, and they are tough warriors. The situation looks bleak. They don't even speak the same language or have a common culture.

At this point, you would imagine that they would feel hopeless and just lie down and die. But in reality, what happens is the opposite. In this hopeless situation, they find a drive, a purpose, a spirit to fight for each other.

The first thing they will do is develop a common language. They will very quickly develop a common language. With this common language, they will start to tell each other stories of where they come from. These stories will become a common myth, a founding myth of why they're here. They come to believe that God has chosen them to save the world, and that's why they're here.

Then, with this new religion, they will start to develop rituals to reinforce it. These rituals include sex. These men will have sex to create intimacy and bonding among them, and there will be a lot of religious rituals as well.

Another thing they will do is pick a leader. There are 100 of them, and they need a leader to organize them. We can imagine that during the leadership election, everyone gets up to speak. The man who's 65 is wise. He has experience and strategies. He delivers a very powerful speech, inspiring everyone and telling people how they can survive against the flesh-eating monkeys. He's really smart.

Then suddenly, a man who's 15, 16, or 17 years old gets up. He is not articulate. He has no ideas. What he does is this: he stands in front of everyone, bold and brave, and looks at everyone without saying a word. He shows them his hand. Then, from his pocket, he takes out a knife and cuts off his hand in front of everyone. He does not cry. He just looks at everyone as though nothing happened.

Let me ask you this question: who does everyone pick to be their leader? The second person, obviously. The man who has shown sacrifice, commitment, and devotion to everyone else. The old man has ideas and will become the advisor to the leader, but the leader is the man who is most willing to die for everyone else.

In this situation, the bravest among them will emerge as the leader. As such, these men will become extremely inspired and devoted. Even though they are weak, they will learn to become strong. Even though they are poor and uneducated, they will learn to be wise, clever, and strategic. They will radically transform themselves.

Ultimately, what will happen is the idea of cohesion. Cohesion like brothers, cohesion like a family. They will understand each other even though they're from different cultures and have different backgrounds. They will understand each other better than they understand their own children and their own wives. This cohesion will lead to something called synchronicity.

Synchronicity is when people act in unison together. A very simple example of synchronicity is a sports team. When you watch a soccer match, how is that team able to work together? Because of synchronicity. Because their minds are alike. It's what we call a hive mind. And this allows for something called telepathy. They're able literally to think and act as one.

Let me give an example. Let's just say these men are sleeping, but one of them wanders off to collect wood and is attacked by monkeys. It doesn't matter if he screams because he's too far away. Would his comrades know that he's in danger? They would. The example here is, let's just say you're a mother and you have children. One of them goes off to France on vacation, but while he's in France, he gets hit by a car and is hospitalized. Would you, as a mother, know that your son is in danger? Would you feel it? He hasn't called you. You don't know about this, but in your heart, would you know it? The answer is yes, you would know it. You would feel something is wrong. You would get on the phone and try to call your son. You can't reach him, so you would call the police. You don't know what's happening, but something in your heart is telling you, "I need to get in touch with my son." That's how the hive mind works. That's how synchronicity works.

Let's look at another example. Let's say that one day, 10 of you are collecting wood, and suddenly you're attacked by a hundred flesh-eating monkeys. There's a rope bridge that you've created. Nine get across the bridge, but you're the last person, and all the monkeys are about to descend on you. You know that if the monkeys get across, your comrades are dead. What do you do in this situation? You cut the rope. You die. You didn't think about it; you just kill yourself because what matters is not your life. What matters is the family. What matters is the team.

We know about this because in war, what often happens in trench warfare is the enemy will throw a grenade into the trench. There's not enough time to pick up that grenade and throw it away. So what soldiers do is they will jump on the grenade and absorb the explosion, thus killing themselves. It happens instantaneously. No one thinks about it. You just do it because what matters is saving your comrades. This is what happens. A synchronicity develops where it's almost as though you're able to read each other's minds.

They keep on doing this for 10 or 20 years. Then suddenly, let's continue the thought experiment. Suddenly, you are transported back to the real world as though nothing happened, but you have memories of what happened. You've experienced 20 years of hell on Monkey Island. You've developed the capacity to work together. You have a hive mind. You're really energized, inspired, and driven. You have a new religion all to yourself.

Now, suddenly you're all transported back to your real world, your old life. What would happen? The hundred of you would want to come together again. You would share your experience, your rituals, and your religion with your children and your grandchildren. Quickly, over time, you guys will conquer the world. You will become the secret elite. The world is yours. There may be presidents, there may be famous people, but secretly, you're the ones who are in control. Your children, your grandchildren, and your great-grandchildren will inherit this legacy. They are the ones who truly control power in the world. On the surface, there are leaders, but the real power belongs to you guys.

While you're on this island, you will develop certain rituals that are very strange but are important if you want to maintain unity. For example, one strange ritual is the funeral ritual. The idea here is that when someone sacrifices himself, you have a huge funeral for that person. This may involve you cutting that person into different pieces and eating that person. You will develop really strange rituals.

Historical Analogies: Sparta, Thebes, and Macedonia

How do you know that what I'm saying is correct? Let's look at certain analogies in history.

Sparta is one of the most famous military societies in world history. Sparta is a city-state in ancient Greece. You may have heard of Sparta from the movie 300. The movie is about 300 Spartan soldiers fighting hundreds of thousands of Persian soldiers. Persia is invading mainland Greece. They fight at a place called Thermopylae, which is the pass into mainland Greece. The Greeks have to hold this position to prevent the invasion. 300 Spartan soldiers, backed by thousands of other Greek soldiers, make a last stand in this pass. They are overwhelmed by the Persian invasion, and rather than run, the 300 soldiers make a final stand. Their leader is Leonidas, and he tells them, "We will fight to the death." They all fight to the death and are massacred. The Persians take Leonidas's head, cut it off, and put it on a pike to warn the Greeks, "We are merciless." Eventually, the Greeks, inspired by the sacrifice of Leonidas, will repel the invasion and destroy the invaders.

How do we get this culture? The education system of the Spartans is really interesting; it's really disturbing, actually. Young boys at age five and six are taken away from their homes and put in a school run by older boys, maybe 10 or 11 years old. As you can imagine, the older boys beat the crap out of the younger boys. From day one, there's no education. They're not learning anything. All that's happening is the older boys are just beating the crap out of the younger boys. But because this is happening—we call this hazing, which happens a lot among fraternities and sports teams—it builds solidarity. It builds brotherhood. These young boys who are five and six learn to love each other because only by helping each other can they survive the brutality.

Then, when they're 11, 12, or 13, when they hit puberty, they become mentored by an older Spartan soldier who's maybe 28,29, or 30, but he has a family. They become lovers. They have sex with each other, and this builds group solidarity. During the hazing phase, these young boys learn to trust each other and how to bond. During the mentorship phase, these young boys learn to think in a hive mind; they learn to be part of a larger group.

Then, when they turn 18, they graduate. In order to graduate, they have a mission. The Spartans have slaves called Helots. These are just people that they've conquered who now work as slaves in the fields for them. There are lots of rules governing the Helots, and an important rule is a curfew. If it's dark at night, you cannot be outside the house. If you are, you could be executed. As a graduation mission, these young soldiers hide in the fields at night and wait for the sun to go down. They look for Helots who are coming back late, and they'll sneak up behind the Helot and cut their throats. This is basically a sacrifice. Human sacrifice. The Spartans did this as well; it's a very common thing.

What this does is it builds group cohesion leading to synchronicity. There were thousands of city-states in Greece, but only Sparta did this, and it made everyone think Sparta was disgusting. Everyone hated Sparta. But it kept Sparta unified and made it into the dominant military power in Greece at that time.

Later, Thebes, another city-state in Greece, would copy the Spartan system, but they made it voluntary. In Sparta, you had to be an elite to be part of the system, but in Thebes, anyone could join. They called this system the Sacred Band. It was comprised of 300 soldiers, and they were again lovers. It's really important for you guys to understand that at this time in history, there was no concept of homosexuality. It was perfectly permissible. No one cared if you had sex with men or animals or whatever. It was not a big deal. This comes much later in modern times. Back then, homosexuality was not considered a concept. If you're out in the field at war for years and there are no women around, you're going to have sex with other men. It's a very natural thing to do. It doesn't mean you're homosexual.

The Sacred Band of Thebes became the dominant military power after Sparta. They were like the vanguard, the spearhead. They would be the first in battle, and they were so ferocious that their enemies would run away.

Then, Macedonia would copy the Theban system. The most famous Macedonian in the world is Alexander the Great. His father, Philip II, is the one who actually built the greatest army in the world, the Macedonian army. It was his son, Alexander, who would take this army and conquer Persia. Philip II learned all this from Thebes. At first, Macedonia and Thebes were allies, but Philip II was very ambitious, so he wanted to conquer all of mainland Greece. In 338 BCE, at the Battle of Chaeronea, Macedonia fought against the combined forces of Thebes and Athens and destroyed them. Macedonia basically copied the system from Sparta and Thebes.

At this point, Macedonia should have destroyed the entire Theban and Athenian army. But when all was lost, the Sacred Band stood in the middle of the field and blocked the advance of the Macedonian charge so that everyone could escape back into the cities. They did not fear death; they welcomed death. For them, what mattered was honor and sacrifice. And that's how you create the greatest army in the world. These historical analogies give credence to our thought experiment.

Game Theory and the Power of Transgression

Now we're going to look at a question: why does this system work? Let's use Game Theory, which is just the study of how to win games.

Let's do a thought experiment and just say there are a million people in the world, and they're all trying to win a game against each other, but only one can win. According to game theory, the best way to win a game is by cheating. If you follow the rules, you will never win the game. You have to cheat. In this game, the best way to win is by coordinating with other people, because everyone else is playing by himself. If you can work with other people, that gives you a huge advantage.

The problem with this is the moment that people start coordinating, it forces an arms race of coordination. So maybe these two are working together, which now forces these four to work together, which now forces these five to work together. If you are the first to work together, you get screwed in the process. So if you cheat, you have to cheat secretly. You have to coordinate without people knowing you're actually coordinating. You have to conspire secretly.

There are different ways to collaborate secretly.

• Family
• Religion
• A common leader
• Similar race or ethnicity
• A similar language

These are examples of how you get people to coordinate. The problem is that these are all obvious to other people, which forces them to do the same thing. But there's a strategy that you can use that allows you to coordinate secretly and defeat all your enemies. This strategy is called transgression: the breaking of taboos, the breaking of social norms, the breaking of social laws.

The theory I want to propose to you is that the greater you transgress, the greater your cohesion, which leads to synchronicity.

It's a very simple idea. You're breaking the rules, you're cheating, and therefore everyone wants to put you in prison. This means that the only way you can survive is if you keep the secret among your group, which forces cohesion. We see this in all aspects of society. The most basic form of transgression is just joking or pranking. For example, six of you decide, "We're going to play a joke on the school. We're going to cover all the rooms with toilet paper." It's a joke, a prank, but obviously, you don't want to get caught because the school will punish you. This joke and this prank will make you more cohesive because now you have a secret amongst yourselves, and if anyone betrays you, you're all screwed. That's the logic.

The other thing that's really interesting is that when you transgress, when you break a taboo, you feel empowered, you feel liberated, and it becomes addictive. You fill the school with toilet paper, and you're like, "That was a lot of fun." Why was it fun? Because you broke the rules. You feel, "I'm more powerful than my teacher." So you keep on doing more and more of this stuff. Then you may be like, "Hey, let's go to the store and steal a candy." That candy may cost $1, nothing, but you try it and you are terrified. You're seized by doubt and fear. You're terrified because your mother, your teachers, everyone told you stealing is bad. But when you actually go and do it, how do you feel? You feel energized. You feel liberated. You feel empowered. And if your friends are with you, the friendship becomes much more unified, much more cohesive, much more synchronized.

Now you want to learn, "Let's break more rules. Let's see what happens if we break more and more rules." You keep on going because it's addictive, and ultimately there's a transgression that is the ultimate taboo: child sacrifice. Can you think of a worse transgression than this? That's why they do it—because it feels empowering. It releases energy. They do it because they believe that when you do this, it releases divine energy.

When you actually go and do it—and guys, I'm not telling you to go do this, please do not do this, and please remember this is evil, we should not be doing this—but those who can do it, they feel as though they are now inundated, filled with divine energy. They've found the secret of the universe. They've found the ultimate power in the world.

Another transgression which is not as bad, but pretty bad, is the idea of incest. There are secret societies out there that do this. And I hate to tell you this, but they do it in public, in front of everyone else, because that creates both group unity and synchronicity, and it releases, in their minds, divine energy. They have now accessed God. If you want to know what secret societies do, well, it's this.

Again, there's only a small group of people, but now we know why these people control the world: because they're able to keep secrets, because they're more motivated than everyone else, and they're able to work together in a way that allows them to achieve ultimate power. These leaders you see are puppets. They are just the face. The real power belongs to these secret societies that practice these rituals. Again, I'm not saying this is the truth. I'm just saying this is a possible theory about how the world works. This is a speculation and theory, so don't think this is the truth. But you can think about how this works and ask yourself: does it explain the world?

The Metaphysical Framework: Kant, Hegel, and Plato

Having explained this, I want to go into the deep theory as to why this is happening. If you talk to these people and they're honest with you, they'll tell you that when they do this, they access God, and God gives them divine power because they're superstitious and they're stupid. Just because they're powerful people does not mean they're clever. In fact, they're kind of stupid if you actually meet them. But I'm going to explain how this system works, and when I do, it will make sense.

I'm going to explain the theory as to how transgression is able to unleash divine energy. We will look at some major thinkers, and I'm going to introduce them now.

Immanuel Kant had a theory of how the world works. There is no objective reality that we see. Before Kant, the assumption was that we just absorb reality. But Kant says that we are active participants in reality. How? Because our brains are filters. We add space and time to reality. Space and time do not exist outside of us. The objective reality is called the noumena, the things-in-themselves. What happens is that through our filters, we interact with the noumena, and that creates something called the phenomena, the things that we see. That's the world we know. The noumena we can never, ever know. That's the theory of Kant, and this has been confirmed by neuroscience. This is basically the most accurate model of the world that we have.

The problem, though, is that Kant's conception of the world creates three questions:

1. What is the noumena? Kant says we can never know it, but we still want to know it.
2. Who gave us these filters? Where do our filters come from? How do our minds work, and who created our minds in the first place?
3. If we are all seeing the world through our own lens, how do we know that we're seeing the same world? How do our perceptions of the world align?

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who comes after Kant, proposes a solution to these three problems. He says the noumena is the Geist. Geist is hard to translate; we usually translate it to mean "spirit." What Hegel is saying is that the spirit world is what creates the material world. We are just a shell. What really matters is the spirit world.

It's really important to understand the concept of the Geist. It's best to see Geist as a combination of three English words that derive from it:

• Ghost: A parallel, spiritual reality that exists alongside us.
• Geyser: A force that is exploding, becoming, or expanding. This Geist is constantly expanding and becoming.
• Gist: The essence of things, the core of things.

The real truth in the world is the Geist, not what we see but what is invisible to us. With the Geist, we can answer all three of Kant's questions. The noumena, the real world, is the spiritual world. It's the Geist that gives us these filters. And because we're all seeing the world through the Geist, we see the same world.

This creates another problem: where did the Geist come from? What is the Geist? Here we will look at Plato and Dante.

This comes from Plato and a religion called Gnosticism. In the beginning, the Big Bang, the force is the Monad, or the One. Just think of this as a supreme god, the spiritual sun of the universe. The Monad works by breathing. When it breathes, it vibrates its divine power, and through this, it creates new beings called dyads, which are just pairs of forces. These dyads then create different realities. Eventually, you reach Earth. In other words, what Plato and the Gnostics are telling us is that the Geist is a multi-layered, multi-dimensional world that we access all the time. The Earth, what we see, is just the most outer shell in this universe.

The question then is, what is the purpose of life in the world? Plato says that the purpose of life is to return to the Monad. This is actually the framework for a lot of religions, including Hinduism and Buddhism. Nirvana is the return to the Monad. Plato says that through the pursuit of knowledge—philosophy, the love of knowledge—you can return to the Monad.

Dante has another solution. Dante says that the Monad is love. Because the Monad creates things, its divine spark emanates throughout the universe. There is a divine spark in us, and this divine spark is called love. We are able to love people—mothers love children, you love each other—because of this divine spark in you. The more you love, the more you return to the Monad.

So, Plato says pursue knowledge. Dante says pursue love.

The Source of Evil

This sounds all very good, but why does evil happen in the world? What's the source of evil? You have this theory of the universe, but then the question is, why do people do bad things? Why is there sacrifice in the world? Why are people doing all these bad things and not only getting away with it but also controlling the world?

For Plato, the answer is very simple: this world doesn't matter. Who cares if they control this world? It's a fake shadow world. Ignore them. Just focus on the pursuit of knowledge because that allows you to be one with the Monad. Who cares about this world? Give them what they want—their power, their fame, their money. Who cares?

Dante's answer is actually very interesting. He says this: if the Monad is love, then love is trust. The Monad loves us, and as a result, the Monad gives us free will. Now, free will can lead to bad things, for example, this world, but the Monad has no choice in the matter. For it to interfere means to take away our free will, and free will is its greatest gift to us. But now and then, it will send messengers to our world to remind us that there is a divine spark in us and we can activate it and achieve a greater consciousness. These messengers are Plato, Dante, Jesus. Now and then, the Monad will implant ideas in these people, who will then tell us the truth. But it's our choice whether or not to believe it because the Monad has given us free will.

For Plato, what's important is the pursuit of knowledge. For Dante, what matters is the pursuit of love—to love each other unconditionally.

What this system also tells us is that the powerful want to deny this system. Because if they control Earth, the fake world, they want to make it as real as possible. That's the source of their power: the belief that the only thing that matters is the material world, the prison that we live in. And that's why we have science. Science is the negation of the spiritual world and the validation of the material world. If you cannot see it, it must be fake.

Transgression works in this model because transgression allows the powerful to align with a certain part of this universe, because in this universe, there are evil forces as well. The metaphor is to think of the internet. There are millions and millions of websites, and through transgression, by doing the same evil act, the powerful have locked on to the same website. Because they've locked on to the same website, it allows for synchronicity. It allows for them to think alike and to behave the same way.

That's the general theory. Again, this is all speculation. I'm not telling you this is true, but I'm giving you a framework to work with to better understand why things happen.

Questions and Answers

Why does the government seem to benefit elderly pensioners?

In China, from day one, you're taught to respect your elders. You're taught that elderly people are worth emulating, worth studying from, and are what's most precious about our society. So it makes sense that the government would create policies to most benefit the elderly. That's the structure of Chinese society: respect for the elderly.

In this system, what is evil?

In this system, what is evil is the denial of the system. Because the Monad is the truth, it's love. The closer you move to the Monad, that's what's good. The further you move away from the Monad, that's what's evil. At the very end of this model is Earth. So the more you embrace the material world, the more you deny the spiritual world, that's what's evil in this model.

For Plato, what's good is the pursuit of knowledge, and what's evil is the denial of knowledge, which includes, by the way, art and movies, because movies are just a shadow of the shadow world. If the world we live in is fake, and movies all they do is depict this fake world, then it makes things worse. For Dante, whatever allows for more love is good. What allows for less love is bad.

Can sacrifice, by creating cohesion, bring people closer to the Monad?

Sacrifice can be considered a way to unite people; it creates cohesion. With cohesion, it unlocks divine energy because you're accessing a part of this model. As they're doing this sacrifice, they are worshiping a certain god. Sacrifice is part of their religion. They have a religious framework for the sacrifice, and that's why they do it. They are sacrificing these people to send to this god. So they're accessing a part of this model, which is a lower part. There are evil beings in this model as well.

Is our current society constructed to be evil?

What Dante is saying about our society is that it is first and foremost anti-love. It does not allow for people to love each other. For example, school. Without school, your parents would just care about your happiness. But because of school, parents care about your grades and whether or not you get into an elite American college and get a good job. The parents deny your free will, they deny your agency, and as a result, you don't feel loved. Our society is anti-love because it is constructed in a way that does not allow for normal human relationships to flourish. The denial of free will is anti-love, and therefore it's evil and limits you from getting closer to the Monad.

Why would the powerful want to keep us from getting closer to the Monad?

The people in power want to stay in power. What they're doing goes against the Monad, but they want to stay in power. They gain benefits, such as power, by disobeying the Monad and letting others disobey the Monad because they can keep their power.

It's really important to be clear: different people will interpret this model in a different way. In their conception, the Monad is the evil one. Their god is the good one. They believe they are liberating us from the Monad by making us more focused on the material world. But the reality is that they were able to get their power because they had a religion that promoted transgression, which allowed them to coordinate well together. Now that they have this power, they need to rationalize why they have it and develop systems to maintain it. That's why we have the world we live in today.

Do Plato and Dante have different definitions of the Monad?

No. The Monad does not have two meanings. It has different names, but one meaning. It is the sun, the divine sun, the source of all life. It is everything: love, knowledge, everything. The question that Plato and Dante are debating is how do you return to the Monad?

For Plato, it's the pursuit of knowledge that allows you to get closer. For Dante, it's the pursuit of love. For Plato, it's like spending your entire life learning mathematics, specifically geometry, because he thinks that geometry is really the secret language of the universe. Dante says that's too hard; that's not intuitive. Plato is an elitist. He's like, "Only if you come to my school and you learn sacred geometry will you access heaven." Dante is like, "That makes no sense. The Monad would not create a system which only the elite, the chosen, could access. The Monad, if it truly loves everyone, will give everyone the capacity to reach it." And that capacity that is accessible to everyone is love. It doesn't matter who you are; you can all love. But quite honestly, there are not that many people in the world who can do calculus. Plato is like, "You have to do calculus." And Dante is like, "That's just ridiculous."

Why do so many different religions and thinkers arrive at the same realization of the Monad?

The answer is the Geist. Where do our thoughts come from, and where do our thoughts go? Do you really think that it's our brain that produces thoughts? Why is it that we have the same brain, the same neurological structure, but we have different ideas? Why is it that I have so many ideas, and others have limited ideas? Biologically, we cannot explain it. If you study neuroscience, one thing they will never ask is, "Where do our thoughts come from?" which is weird because that should be the most basic question. They never ask that because they cannot answer it.

The possibility is the Geist exists, and our ideas come from the Geist. When we think of ideas, it goes back into the Geist. It's a ghost. It is with us and is not with us. There's just a big system out there that everything comes from, so all things will go back there eventually. That's how we can explain why all these different religions have the same conception of the universe—because they're getting this conception through inspiration, through communication with the Geist. That makes a lot more sense than, "Oh, the synapses in our brains fire together, and we have an idea."