This is the first in a series of adapted excerpts from my new book, FREEDOM IN A TIME OF MENTAL SLAVERY.

The title of this analysis will sound extreme and odd at first to the average person, to the propagandized mind. It will sound extreme to most people, but I’m no longer afraid to say it, no matter how strange it will make me appear. Evolution does not occur when people keep quiet to go along with the status quo, to avoid becoming an outcast or facing ridicule. It is precisely this fear, fear of being an outcast, which keeps us imprisoned. Conformity is the opposite of courage. Conformity is the opposite of freedom and evolution. We’ve gone along with the status quo for far too long, to our own detriment. The status quo is now doing much more to limit human potential than enhance it.

If you will hear me out, I’ll back up and qualify everything that I say. It took me roughly 20 years to get to this point. My focus has been on acquiring knowledge in pursuit of universal freedom and evolution, as grandiose as that sounds. It’s taken a firm dedication, intense research, investigative reporting, discussion and debate, trial and error experimentation, bold action and incredible risks. It’s taken everything I have in me to get this far.

I have hard-fought battle-tested wisdom to share with you. I stand before you battered and bruised. I’ve failed spectacularly along the way and have been humbled to the core. My ego has been shattered. I got to a critical point when I realized that I had to surrender. That’s when I had a major breakthrough, which has brought us here, to this moment.

Those failures, those deep valleys taught me more than I could have ever learned otherwise. The path to freedom is an ever-evolving Fibonacci spiraling road into uncharted territory. You will get lost; there will be setbacks and obstacles. However, failures that come as a consequence of bold action are potent learning lessons. They are the greatest teachers of deep meaning and significant wisdom. They deliver a needed period of reassessment and adjustment. If you can stay free of fear and overcome self-doubt, you can then get back into alignment and flow better than ever.

If it wasn’t for fear, fear and ego, a fear-based ego, I could have been here a long time ago. Fear and ego are forces that keep us imprisoned. Do not underestimate fear. It is a very insidious force. Fear is the linchpin. You can get so locked into the fear frequency that you rarely consciously realize how much of a hold that it has on you. It’s too terrifying to even consider, let alone confront. It is that unacknowledged, unexamined, unmentionable fear that we will pull out into the light. As a wise person once said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Ultimately, I’m here out of love and compassion, love and compassion for my family, my friends and for humanity. Be warned though, this love is intense. It will strike to your core. We will take a journey to the very truth, at the core, that our identities are built on. This requires a deep dive into consciousness, into the nature of nature, into dangerous territory for the primitive fear-based ego.

Profound truth, deep truth takes deep courage.

Now, I know aware people are skeptical when they hear someone claiming truth, rightfully so. Who am I to claim truth? What is truth? Really, what is truth?

Let’s not get sidetracked and lost in the intellectual wilderness, with those who are too intelligent for their own good. I don’t want to make that mistake, yet again. So let’s just give a wink and nod to the eventual contradictions and paradoxes that our rational minds will inevitably confront on our path to enlightenment.

I’ll still clarify what I mean by truth: truth that can be proved out through evidence, logical reasoning and rationalism. However, rationalism is a means to an end, not the end. Truth beyond that, this is a journey to transcendental truth, to attain the unknown. “Our pale reason hides the infinite from us.”

The path is truth that you intuitively know and viscerally sense when you hear it, see it, feel it and experience it for yourself, because it resonates deeply within you.

Dare I say, common sense… profound common sense, a shared deep common awareness.

To paraphrase William Blake, ‘If truth is told in a way that can be understood, it will be believed.’

Truth can be defined as “an observation in accordance with reality.” However, what is reality? Seriously, what is reality?

Here we go again, venturing off into the wilderness.

After all, truthfully, that’s where we are going with all of this. We will get deep into reality, that’s the main theme here. We will pull apart layers of reality to reveal deep truth. By deep truth, I’m primarily referring to observations that due to psychological constraints are not given proper conscious attention. Penetrating observations that strike to the root of reality, which if fully comprehended will dissolve your reality. That will make your reality evaporate into mist, or melt away, or disintegrate and crumble like a castle made of sand. Deep truth that will reveal reality as an illusion, an illusion that keeps us imprisoned.

This is a journey to transcendental consciousness. It’s a transdimensional flash, a penetrating glance, a glimpse of multiversal reality, and our role in it.

If I shall be so bold.

To paraphrase Emerson in Self-Reliance, ‘The deepest, most valuable truth cannot be expressed by a coward. So go upright and vital, and speak your truth in all ways. Speak out and speak with boldness.’

You may sense by now, I’m attempting to psych myself up here. Fear is still lurking in the shadows. How free am I, really, if fear still encircles?

So be it, in the end, the ego must be overcome. If I sound odd and people distance themselves from me, it will help in the destruction of my ego. So, nothing to fear… nothing to fear, be courageous, align and transcend…

Well, here goes…

We will infiltrate mass consciousness and penetrate the zeitgeist so deeply that we will enter into a new paradigm, another dimension. There are a growing number of people who know exactly what I’m talking about. They have expanded as well. You can say that we’ve been deep in the noosphere. We’ve gone nonlocal. We’ve made a quantum leap. We are entangled particles in pursuit of the unified field. We are cosmic consciousness in morphic resonance, cavorting with the Gaian mind… and she wants us to understand the nature of our enslavement.

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Our enslavement is her enslavement.

Her enslavement is our enslavement.

That’s how these things work.

Well, you see…

I’ve focused my vibration to resonate at this frequency, to translate the code and speak your language, to hack into mainstream reality and open the prison door.

My freedom is your freedom.

Your freedom is my freedom.

In the grand scheme of things, we are entangled particles.

Symbiotic mutualistic sentiments aside, for those of you who haven’t retreated already, I warned you that this would sound odd, and we’re just getting warmed up.

Editorial Note: My editor suggested that I remove the previous section and any mention of “alternate dimensions” from this introduction. He said, “You should hold off until you lay the necessary foundation. Lead with the wealth of well-founded evidence and groundbreaking research that makes a solid case and build from there. Don’t give detractors any premature ammunition. You are going too far too fast.” While I appreciate the (hopefully not too biased) praise and advice of a seasoned and respected editor, I cannot begin this by denying a crucial and sacred aspect of my work. I could not have built such a “solid case” without a multidimensional perspective. If I risk losing people who are closed-minded enough to deny them, so be it. They will eventually come back when they are ready. More than happy to start with those who have already expanded their consciousness. Besides, if detractors want to have a fight over alternative dimensions, I invite it. Please, take the bait. As my old friend Terence McKenna put it: “My attitude was always; if it’s real, it can take the pressure. You don’t have to pussyfoot around the real thing. If they’re telling you, ‘Oh you must lower your voice, and avert your gaze,’ then you’re probably in the presence of crap.… I cannot believe that this could be kept under wraps the way it has…. We are infantilized. We are told that we can wander around within the sanctioned playpen of ordinary consciousness…. This is an outrage! It’s a sign of cultural immaturity and the fact that we tolerate it is a sign that we are living in a society as oppressed as any society in the past…. This is not about my opinion… get it straight, this is about an experience… your experience. It’s about an experience which you have.” On top of that, denying other dimensions from this introduction ties into the fear frequency that upholds the status quo. It would be a betrayal to freedom and evolution, which is the main goal here. Again, ‘The deepest, most valuable truth cannot be expressed by a coward. So go upright and vital, and speak your truth in all ways. Speak out and speak with boldness.’

For those of you who can handle some multidimensional depth, let me get to the main point…

We live in a time of mental slavery.

We, you and I, we are mentally enslaved. We all toil on a mental plantation.

Let that statement, the thought that we are mentally enslaved, before you cast judgment upon it, override your conditioned mental reflexes before they instinctively dismiss it. Let that thought echo and reverberate around you…

We live in a time of mental slavery.

You shouldn’t believe it just because I said it so boldly and plainly. Let’s just hang a question mark on it for now, remove the preconceived notions, pro and con, and let the thought just marinate for a while, with a question mark swirling around it.

We live in a time of mental slavery?

As freethinkers know, you should hang a question mark on thoughts and statements that are said with certainty, or that you take for granted.

Anyhow, while in this other dimension, which widely expands consciousness and dissolves boundaries, the limitations and constraints of our current reality became intensely and vividly apparent. Here is what I have noticed with stunning clarity…

Even the most independent minded people vastly underestimate how mentally enslaved we are.

I include myself in that statement. I consciously avoid groupthink and consider myself to be as independent minded as they come, and I vastly underestimated my own mental enslavement.

It is a truth, an observation that I will demonstrate to you. If I’m going to make such audacious claims, I better be able to back them up. The burden of proof is on me, I’ll take it. As an old mentor put it, ‘Know your song well before you start signing.’

I’ll explain how the enslavement process works, the techniques and dynamics involved, the forces at play. We will analyze how the system conditions and contracts mass consciousness, and how it is reinforced. We will take a look at the origins and evolution of it, and I’ll give you the best advice that I have, some battle-tested wisdom on how we can transcend the illusion, the mental prison and free ourselves.

Having been bred within this all-pervasive prison myself, where we are repetitively told since birth that we are free, I understand the inherent disbelief people have when they hear such a harsh word like “slavery,” or hear a comment like, “You are mentally enslaved,” being directed at them.

Many of you are thinking, “Oh, come on man. I’m not a mental slave. This is all a pretty extreme or paranoid or exaggerated view of things.”

I hear that. I originally thought that too. I resisted the thoughts and depth of my own enslavement for far too long.

American astrophysicist and cosmologist Carl Sagan referred to this as being in a state of bamboozlement. He said, “One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”

Do you recall what I said about pulling those unacknowledged fears out into the light?

When our conditioned belief system is called into question, it is a hard pill to swallow. No one wants to believe that they have been manipulated or taken advantage of. This will stir up an instinctive dismissal, a powerful emotional response. As explained by evolutionary psychology, “To prevent its annihilation, the ego forces us to be constantly on the watch for anything that might threaten the symbols on which it relies for identity. Our view of the world becomes polarized into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ – things that support [conditioned reality], and those that threaten it.”

We instinctively, habitually look for anything that confirms our pre-existing conditioned beliefs, while ignoring or dismissing anything that goes against them. To paraphrase Bertrand Russell, this is how confirmation bias works: ‘If we are offered a fact, which goes against our conditioning or cultural programming, we will quickly dismiss it. If, on the other hand, we are offered something that goes in accordance to our conditioning, we will accept it, even on the slightest evidence.’ As Walter Lippman put it, “In the great blooming, buzzing confusion of the outer world, we pick out what our culture has already defined for us, and we tend to perceive that which we have picked out in the form stereotyped for us by our culture.”

Now, let’s gently prod at and allude to those unacknowledged fears…

Most people have a vague intuitive awareness of their enslavement. They just avoid consciously acknowledging it. It is often most obvious in your late teens and when you have your mid-life crisis. Then, once you are on your deathbed. Sadly, by then it’s much too late. The charlatan has had you for far too long.

When you are in your late teens, you usually don’t have enough maturity and cunning to deal with confronting your mental enslavement. You’re just a teen-age punk. “What do you know?” says the voice of fear. Those who usually try to escape in their youth often turn to shortcuts, quick exits through drugs, which only lasts for so long and you end up getting punished pretty harshly for it, for your escape attempts.

As for the awareness that comes at the mid-life crisis point, by then you feel so locked into the system, your conditioning leads you to falsely feel that resistance is futile. At this stage, most people try to bury those thoughts and feelings. It becomes a haunting feeling that keeps you awake at night. If self-medicating with alcohol and cigarettes can’t do the trick, that’s when prescription drugs enter your consciousness. The doctor dispenses pills that are just strong enough to dull you down a bit, take just enough life and humanity out of you so you can get back on the treadmill and keep the slow death march going. Besides, you don’t want to be that odd person. Can’t be a social outcast, can you? The charlatan has had you for a while now. You’re at the mid-life point, it’s halftime already and you have a lot of skin in the game.

Facing our enslavement takes serious courage. It’s one thing to recognize and acknowledge it, it’s quite another to confront and transcend it. As Nietzsche said in Twilight of the Idols, ‘Even the most courageous among us rarely has courage for that which they truly know.’

At the end of the day, people resign themselves to the slave mindset, “Well, that’s just the way things are, that’s the way the world works. I’ve got bills to pay, a family to support.” You see, that’s the fear. Fear is embedded throughout our programming. Fear is the jailer’s key weapon. It’s slave mentality, similar to “battered woman syndrome,” the mindset that keeps you in an abusive relationship. It says, “Accept your current conditions. If you don’t, things will get worse.”

We are conditioned to feel powerless and falsely believe that resistance is futile. We develop a “learned helplessness” that is based on a propaganda-induced delusion and reinforced by “pluralistic ignorance.” We are conditioned to fear anything other than the ruler’s rules. We are conditioned to fear anything other than the status quo. Many people cannot even imagine anything other than the status quo. Conditioning and fear dull the imagination and amputate critical thinking skills. The voice of fear says, “Just go along with the way things are. Stay in line, conform, don’t rock the boat and keep your mouth shut.”

Ignore that voice of fear. You don’t have to keep your mouth shut. You are not powerless. Resistance is not futile. At this stage, conformity is futile. In fact, you don’t need to resist anything. This is not about resisting, this is about transcending, transcending and expanding your awareness.

I’ve transcended the system enough to deconstruct it, to decipher it and translate it back in a language that those enslaved will understand, if they have the will and courage to do so. That is what I’m going to do now. This is what I have dedicated my existence to. We have a genuine chance at genuine freedom.

There is an old saying from an old aristocrat that has always haunted me. In, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, social psychologist Gustave Le Bon said, “Whoever can supply [the masses] with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.” Unfortunately, that always seemed to be profoundly true. Well, I’m here now to say, at this point, that old axiom has become obsolete. I refuse to provide illusion. I’m here to dismantle illusion, and in the act of doing so, I am not a victim.

That was my fear, my final hurdle that I am overcoming right now.

Before going deeply into the enslavement processes, just to give you a taste, to put a little flesh on the bone in this introduction, to briefly reveal one element of one of the three fundamental layers of our mental enslavement, I’ll begin by saying that the propaganda system that was put in place in the early 1900s was a significant factor in creating a false reality, an all-consuming illusion. It was a psychological seed that was planted in the mass mind by forces that wanted to control humanity. It was the opening of Pandora’s box, and it has since grown beyond control. It now has a life of its own, a self-perpetuating ecosystem. It has grown exponentially. It is now much more powerful, much more insidious, and much more oppressive.

To be clear, this is not a grand conspiracy theory. Let that mental block, that triggered dismissal dissolve away. As we will see, this is much more nuanced and complex than a conspiracy theory. This is an all-encompassing reality, a vast cultural cage that we have all been programmed into. It is as omnipresent as gravity and the air we breathe. We are like fish swimming in an illusion. We are imprisoned in a low frequency vibrational realm. We are bred and conditioned into it, from the cradle to the grave. It is all we have known, since birth.

The illusion is designed to manipulate, deceive, seduce and control the minds of the masses. While there are definitely elements of conscious conspiracy throughout the origins and evolution of it, as you will see, I primarily see the illusion as a consequence and outgrowth of primitive traits leftover from human evolution, predominantly the fear-based ego, driven by shortsighted greed. These outdated traits have become a disease. Like a virus they mutated from physical domination to the psychological realm, courtesy of the coinciding advancement in communication technology.

From a neuroscientific perspective, to make a quick general point in this introduction, at its core, the illusion is an omnipresent psychological operation focused on the conditioning, priming, orienting and overstimulation of the weaker and least evolved parts of the human brain, primarily the basal ganglia or what is known as the reptilian complex, and the more primal aspects of the limbic system or what is known as the paleomammalian complex. This conditioning, overstimulation and hyperactivity within the primitive elements of the brain short-circuit the more evolved neo-cortex, which then contracts consciousness, conscious awareness and effectively enslaves the masses.

It is more complex than that, just giving you a taste for now. There are many more aspects, dynamics and forces involved. As I said, I’ll back up and qualify everything I’m saying.

When it comes to propaganda and psychological operations, we should begin by mentioning Edward Bernays. Bernays is known as the “Godfather of Propaganda.” He is a founding father of psychological operations and was a primary architect of what evolved into our mental prison, the modern day illusion.

Coincidentally, Bernays was Sigmund Freud’s double nephew, and I think it’s obvious that Bernays has had a much more profound impact on psychology than Frued. The reason why you may not have heard of Bernays is because he was a master of the darker psychological arts. As he put it, you can control public opinion as easy as pulling a lever, which he demonstrated over and over again. As Sun Tzu said in The Art of War, “To subdue the enemy without fighting is the highest skill.” Bernays mastered that art and extended the meaning of “enemy” to the entire global population.

In fact, looking at the dark side, Hitler and Joseph Goebbels used Bernays work and research on propaganda to build their Nazi regime. Once Hitler made sure that every German home could get a radio, the Orwellian “Ministry of Public Enlightenment” was then off to the races. After all, let us not forget that it was George Creel and Bernays who created the “Committee on Public Information” and influenced the population of the United States into World War I, which then laid the foundation for World War II. It was from the experience of the Committee on Public Information that the seeds of our modern mental prison were planted.

John Gatto, former New York City Teacher of the Year in 1989, ‘90, and ‘91, had this to say about Bernays in his book The Underground History of American Education:

“Four hundred years after Niccolo Machiavelli wrote his treatise on scientific deceit, Edward L. Bernays began to practice the scientific art of public deception…. Public Relations as political science was off and running on the fast track…. In 1928, Bernays published two books in quick succession which planted his flag in the dream terrain of the ‘unconscious.’ The first, Crystallizing Public Opinion, and the second, Propaganda…. The new world was blazing a trail into an even newer world than it imagined. Both of Bernays’ books argued that language could be used successfully to create new realities. Psychological science was so advanced, he claimed, it could substitute synthetic reality for natural reality…. Bertrand Russell wrote in The Impact of Science on Society that the most important subjects for the future would be ‘mass psychology’ and ‘propaganda’, studies which would be ‘rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated.'”

As Gatto also pointed out, World War I planted the seeds of our enslavement. Here he references a report that came out eight months after World War I ended, ironically on Independence Day:

“On July 4, 1919, the London Times carried a long account reporting favorably on the propaganda hydra growing in the United States…. According to the paper, men ‘trained in the arts of creating… and of swaying public opinion’ were broadcasting an agenda which aimed first at mobilizing world public opinion and then controlling it…. ‘Efficiently organized propaganda should mobilize the Press, the Church, the stage, and the cinema. Press into active service the whole educational systems… the homes, the universities, public and high schools, and primary schools… histories should be revised. New books should be added, particularly to the primary schools.’”

A leading American political scientist of the day, Yale Law professor Harold Lasswell summed it up this way in 1927, in his study Propaganda Technique in the World War:

“Discussion about the ways and means of controlling public opinion, testifies to the collapse of the traditional species of democratic romanticism and to the rise of a dictatorial habit of the mind…. The new antidote to willfulness is propaganda. If the mass will be free of chains of iron, it must accept its chains of silver. If it will not love, honor, and obey, it must not expect to escape seduction.”

One year later, in 1928, Bernays described the situation this way:

“Nowadays the successors of the rulers, those whose position or ability gives them power, can no longer do what they want without the approval of the masses, they find in propaganda a tool which is increasingly powerful in gaining that approval…. It has been found possible so to mold the mind of the masses that they will throw their newly gained strength in the desired direction…. The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.”

When it comes to the overstimulation of the least evolved parts of the brain, consider these cryptic statements from Bernays:

“Whatever attitude one chooses toward this condition, it remains a fact that in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons… who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind…. There are the invisible rulers who control the destinies of millions…. [We can do so] by operating a certain mechanism, just as a motorist can regulate the speed of a car by manipulating the flow of gasoline…. As civilization has become more complex, and as the need for invisible government has been increasingly demonstrated, the technical means have been invented and developed by which opinion may be regimented.”

Bernays said all of this publicly when the illusion was just beginning to develop. As Stuart Ewen, historian and professor at City University of New York Graduate Center, in the departments of History, Sociology and Media Studies, explained in his extensive study of propaganda, “accompanying a democratic current of social analysis that sought to educate the public at large, another – more cabalistic – tradition of social-scientific thought was emerging, one that saw the study of society as a tool by which a technocratic elite could help serve the interests of vested power.”

Ewen’s work provides a very detailed account of the birth and evolution of propaganda. His books, PR: A Social History of Spin and Captains of Consciousness, would be read in every high school if we lived in a free society.

The defenders of the aristocracy evolved into a “technocratic elite.” As Yong-Bok Kim, Princeton Ph.D and former President of Hanil University, described it in Toward a New Political Paradigm:

“From ancient times, authoritarian despotism and imperial powers dominated humankind; and in modern times… technocratic powers with a liberal facade dominate the peoples of the world. The powers-that-be in modern times are not a natural phenomenon of political life, but a demonic distortion of human reality. Their powers are uncontrolled except by their own will and logic, and therefore tend toward unlimited expansion. The organization of modern political power is so far-reaching that it encompasses virtually the entire life of the people, including their inner spiritual and psychological experiences.”

In a research study that I found at the Stanford University Library, which was contributed by the United Nations, Zoran Vidakovic presented an analysis of the technocratic elite at the First International Seminar on Science and Technology in the Transformation of the World, in a 1979 report entitled, The Technology of Repression and Repressive Technology. He summed it up this way:

“Technocratic management corporations, as well as the direct participants of the global functions of the order, were enabled and compelled to establish broad control over the activities of science, universities, and the entire system of education…. In these contexts, the staff of these systems took to solving the complex problems of management in technically attractive ways, regardless of the inhuman or merciless efficiency of the solutions, including psychology, sociology, and other ‘humanistic sciences’ in the system of exploitation and force. The entire informative system, logic, language, and mentality of modern exploitation were taken on.”

We will look further into this analysis later. As Luiz Alberto Bahia put it in his comments on social scientist Simon Schwartzman’s study, Science, Technology, Technocracy and Democracy:

“The charisma of technocratic rationality — technocracy being the group of social scientists with the power to run society — has the conservative function of all ideologies. While apparently transcending the social reality, it is in fact maintaining it.… Technocracy, as the science of governing man, resorts to the traditional emotions that make it possible to manipulate people, through the adoption of new techniques of communication and education. As Simon Schwartzman shows, the conservation of power is achieved by the creation of a ‘benevolent, massified society.'”

When it comes to the creation of a “benevolent, massified society,” infamous sociologist Edward A. Ross, who was fired from Stanford University for his racist views on eugenics, declared as early as 1901, “Plans are underway to replace community, family, and church with propaganda, education, and mass media…. People are only little plastic lumps of human dough.”

As “education reformer” Harold Rugg said in The Great Technology, “A new public mind is to be created. How? Only by creating tens of millions of individual minds and welding them into a new social mind. Old stereotypes must be broken up and ‘new climates of opinion’ formed in the neighborhoods of America.”

Now, again, I want to acknowledge that this is all hard to believe. I can’t acknowledge that enough. It is an uphill battle getting people to even briefly entertain the idea that they are mentally enslaved. There are so many embedded conditioned reflexives that will block those thought processes. We absolutely do not want to believe that we are mentally enslaved.

Kelton Rhoads, a professor of Communication and Psychology at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School and the US Air Force’s Joint Special Operations University, who is also a Senior Mentor for Psychological Operations (PSYOP) forces at the JFK Special Warfare Center, summed up the situation this way:

“Make no mistake. There are legions of influence agents operating in our society. They thrive — they exist at the pinnacles of power — by getting you to think things and to do things they want you to think and do. Most people are either unaware of these influences, or when they are, vastly overestimate the amount of freedom they have to make up their own minds. But the successful influence agent knows that if he can manage the situation and choose the correct technique, your response to his technique will be as reliable as the springing of a mousetrap.”

The key point: Even the most independent minded people “vastly overestimate the amount of freedom they have to make up their own minds.”

One of the best analyses of propaganda that I’ve read is Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes, written in 1965 by sociologist Jacques Ellul. It was incredible how well he understood the psychological impact of propaganda on modern society back then. He recognized how all-consuming propaganda was, even to those who were consciously aware of it. He understood it as well as anyone, and he said this:

“I, too, tend to believe in the pre-eminence of man and consequently, in his invincibility. Nevertheless, as I observe the facts, I realize man is terribly malleable, uncertain of himself, ready to accept and to follow many suggestions, and is tossed about by the winds of propaganda…. Having suffered, felt, and analyzed the impact of propaganda on myself, having been time and again, and still being the object of propaganda, I want to speak of it as a menace which threatens the total personality…. [Propaganda is] an attempt to modify personalities and control the behavior of individuals… those who accept the principle of propaganda and decide to utilize it will inevitably employ the most effective organization and methods… with inevitable results on the individual or groups…. Propaganda is today a greater danger to mankind than any of the other more grandly advertised threats hanging over the human race.”

He said that 50 years ago, when propaganda was much less sophisticated. To update and rephrase Ellul, ‘Having suffered, felt and analyzed the impact of propaganda on myself, I want to speak of it as a menace which dominates total reality.’

In 1967, Guy Debord, one of the last true mental freedom fighters, famously referred to the illusion as “the spectacle.” In 1988, he left us with these words on the power of propaganda and enslavement of society:

“The spectacle has spread itself to the point where it now permeates all reality…. The spectacle’s domination has succeeded in raising a whole generation molded to its laws. The extraordinary new conditions in which this entire generation has effectively lived constitute a precise and comprehensive summary of all that, henceforth, the spectacle will forbid; and also all that it will permit…. Spectacular government, which now possesses all the means necessary to falsify the whole of production and perception, is the absolute master of memories just as it is the unfettered master of plans which will shape the most distant future. It reigns unchecked; it executes its summary judgments…. The precious advantage which the spectacle has acquired through the outlawing of history, from having driven the past into hiding, and from having made everyone forget the spirit of history within society, is above all the ability to cover its own tracks — to conceal the very progress of its recent world conquest.”

Now, you may be thinking, “Okay, enough already, yeah, people are propagandized, I can see that. However, I’m not a mental slave. My life is pretty good. I’m content enough in my life.”

Again, the conditioned mind has a hard time imagining anything other than the status quo. It is all we have known. To spin a reference from Marshall McLuhan, you are “looking forward through the rearveiw mirror,” and a highly distorted mainstream media system.

Other than the unsustainably of the status quo, which if not dramatically altered will make present living standards decline, I want to make it clear that I’m not here to talk about a slight increase in freedom or slightly better living conditions.

I’m here for a complete paradigm shift… an evolutionary leap… an evolved level of consciousness.

We are here for the emancipation of the human spirit, if I shall be so bold.

If your attention span has lasted this long, congrats. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule. You have now demonstrated the necessary will and requisite mental dexterity. Perhaps you’re ready for the red pill…

Though you may feel as if I hit pretty hard already, I’ve deliberately gone easy and kept it vague enough so those who are not ready to unplug can still back away. This was just the blue pill.

Are you ready to pull the plug?

Are you ready to tap in?

One last chance: if you want to return to the plantation, now’s the time to retreat. Once you get a taste of genuine freedom, a taste of the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge, there is no turning back. If you think ignorance is bliss, and prefer to live in denial of your own humanity, please return to your normal programming and forget about all of this.

You can leave now and just write me off as the crazy person who says he went into another dimension and came back babbling about mental slavery, a paradigm shift, emancipation of the human spirit and bizarre things like that.

Ha. That’s how I will use the hopelessly enslaved to reach those who are ready.

As a wise person once said, “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” However, at this point, at this stage in evolution, no one is hopelessly enslaved. We can free our minds, we can free ourselves at any time, if you have the courage to surrender and transcend.

Just to be sure, everyone should take a break now. I don’t know how your conscious mind came to stumbling down this rabbit hole, so whatever path you just took to get here, hit the pause button. Go to the restroom and get some food and water or tea or coffee or something. If you take this ride, you are going to need to fuel up.

You need to make sure that you have time to concentrate, time to think clearly, with clarity.

Time… to… concentrate…

On the mental plantation, free time is a very precious resource. Be cunning; use your free time wisely. Taking a break now will also give you a chance to forget about all of this until you’re truly ready to pull the plug. Fuel up, my friends. Clear your schedule.

I’ll be here when the time is right, when you are ready.