It appears the majority of people on the planet agree with Tolstoy. There is nothing you or I can do about the circumstances of life ... yours or mine, his or hers, ours or theirs ... so why bother. This gives us two choices, either complain about it and do nothing or enjoy it to the best of our ability. The historical overview gives credibility to the fatalistic perspective. Examining human activity from hindsight distances us from actual human feelings: suffering, consequences, thought, pain. It's certainly easier than assuming any responsibility for the state of the world and life in general.
       Passivity is the key and fatalism the rationalization. Let's all just read in retrospect about how human beings suffered or, better yet, lets just watch it on television or in the movies. Then we can cry or shake our heads and turn off the power. That way we don't have to get involved. It takes work, exercising the mind, to dig into the whys and wherefores of history, not to mention the behavior of the human individual personality. We might discover something nasty about us that we don't want to know and we certainly can't be negative about anything relating to human behavior. Why that's positively unspiritual! Haven't we been taught that all people are basically good? How else are we going to get to heaven? And, anyway, God is in charge of everything so what can I do? Almost all religious philosophy as well as scientific and intellectual discourse races in the opposite direction when it comes to discussing personal responsibility, individually as well as collectively. How else could we have invented the atomic bomb? Better to view life and history from a shallow, objective perspective so everybody feels better no matter what the human cost.
       Lets not talk about the decadent aristocracy of nineteen-century Russia and Europe or the millions of servants, serfs, slaves and chattel that drudged out an existence in the freezing cold while catering to their ridiculous, inane existence. Instead, let's admire them so much we invent television programs in The United States called The Rich and Famous trying our best to emulate their selfish, self-centered, spiritual corruption. Let's not notice that the French and Russian military leaders cared more about their egoic self-importance, their pecking order and what uniforms they were wearing than what was happening to the hundreds of thousands of men standing unprotected from the cannons and abandoned, falling like leaves in freezing piles of a groaning, mutilated, bloody mass. Better to pretend that some disembodied God was in charge of the world and they'll all go to heaven for their glorious self-sacrifice. The bad guys on the other side, of course, will all go to hell or reincarnate as a cockroach. Strangely enough, the bad guys on the other side were thinking the same thing! At this moment, does is not seem strange to you that we have not learned much in two hundred years? Or two thousand years? Does it occur to you that human beings all over the world are still thinking that all of them are the bad guys and going to hell and all of us are the good guys who are going to heaven? Does it not also occur to you that they are thinking exactly the same thing? When do we stop this insanity?
       Fatalism is a cop-out from individual and social responsibility. But so is believing that we are all right and they are all wrong. Who is we and who is they? And what can we do about it?
       The animals on our planet are "asleep in sin" as Ken Wilber says. But human beings are awake, "awake in sin." What is sin and what does Wilber mean by being awake?. He means that we're still animals but we have a brain, we think! Well, some of us try. But Ken Wilber doesn't believe in sin. So what is he talking about?  Our thinking brain should explain ... and it can ... it does.
       What is your brain for? To get a good job and get married and live happily ever after? To grab as much as you can and to hell with everyone else because you only have one life to live? To watch hours of inane television programs or play endless computer or slot machine games? To live on drugs and form gangs or rape, pillage, kill and burn the world to the ground because life is tough and you weren't born in luxury? To fight your way to power or force everyone else to be like you or beat everyone to death in your path so you can feel superior? To copulate because it feels good without any accountability for the innocent, beautiful beings that emerge? To then sell them into slavery or stick them in front of television or computers so they don't get in your way? Or send them off to war so they can die in glory? Then they can grow up to view life with a fatalistic perspective just like you.
       It is an instinct of all animals to form into a hierarchy. We do it for protection and to create social order. All animals need safety and social order. The hierarchical structure doesn't allow for individual thought and it, especially, doesn't allow for individual action. But human beings have evolved with a left, right and cognitive brain. Therefore, all human social groupings: families, religions, philosophy, laws, rules, gossip, criticisms and disapproval have been created to prevent individuals within each specific group from questioning or disrupting their particular hierarchy. To think, individually and separately, in ANY hierarchical structure creates immediate internal turmoil in that structure and any person who questions or disagrees with any of the rules becomes a threat. They are a threat because, if one person dares to become independent, it's only a matter of time before one other person will also become an independent thinker. The belief is that the whole structure will eventually collapse. This may or may not be true; but that reality is irrelevant to the structure. The structure must survive at all costs.
       The group moves to isolate and discipline the miscreant. If the misbehavior becomes too great, the designated category elevates to danger and the individual is eliminated either by death, torture (physical, psychological, emotional or sexual), imprisonment, isolation or exile. That's why prisoners are never actually rehabilitated. Of course, the newest cure for "personal problems" (and it's always the fault of the person who's in violation of the system because one hierarchy always supports the other hierarchy) is to take some kind of a drug, legal or illegal, and fantasy it all away! Why do you suppose so many billions of people are alcoholics, overeaters, smokers, addicts, hyperactive or taking anti-depressants?             
       Hierarchies are multiple and concentric. They begin with the nuclear family, extended family, tribes, clans, siblings, parents, leaders and extend to schools, farms, villages, communities, independent churches, cultures, small social groups, cults, ethnic groups, institutions, businesses and morph into large corporations, political and intellectual beliefs, major religions, nations, territories and the global community. We all function in numerous hierarchical circles all of the time. And we all have to abide by their rules or we are punished.
       Better to sit in front of the television, keep your mouth shut and your mind blank, don't ask questions, do as you're told, stay positive and keep smiling, believe in some disconnected God running the show or a fatalistic universe where nobody is responsible for anything and, besides, you're just one small person so what can you do? Don't make waves! Tolstoy's Pierre would know what I'm talking about.

 CHAPTER I  

           From high up in the air, as you fly over the vast and breathtaking landscape of the great desert of the southwestern United States, the huge megalopolis called Southern California looks like an invasion of The Borg; a creeping infestation that makes one shudder with revulsion. At some point, this psoriasis along with the other inflammations on the skin of our planet will become too much of an irritant and Mother Earth will simply scratch us off. She might decide to disinfect her beautiful epidermis by ripping open the hole in the ozone layer allowing the sun to sterilize everything. Or she might cause earthquakes and hurricanes to get our attention.  
        I don't think there's much hope for humanity; most of us are so busy being important that we've forgotten why we're here and what a beautiful world this is. There are too many of us and we're too conflicted; arguing about war, religion, territory, terrorism, pesticides, genetic engineering, radiation, mad-cow, pollution and global warming. While a few are trying to save endangered animals, trees and rivers, the majority of human beings are making more and more babies
    We're strangling our planet with all kinds of pollution; on land, in the sea and in the air, not to mention the contamination of our minds. The human species is getting perilously close to becoming garbage itself.
       What has happened to us?
        According to Darwin, natural selection will take its inevitable course. It's not going to ask us, individually, who's responsible. Ignorance of the law will be no excuse. Yes, there are plenty of open spaces; but it's a matter of where the tolerance ends. Our planet is a closed system and there's no away to eliminate our filth. It may be out of our sight but it isn't out of her mind.
        What does this have to do with reconnecting with the soul? We need to focus on why we have life and the purpose of our existence. We need to pay attention to birth and death and their meaning. This is such a gorgeous place to live; why have we made it so terrible?
        After you die, you have a choice; consciousness or obliteration. Not heaven or hell; consciousness or obliteration. You acquire consciousness while living on this planet. That's what we're doing here; consciously evolving from animals to spiritual beings. The reason for your existence is not to be entertained, make money, babies, careers, fame, two-car garages, cities, slaughterhouses, power, skyscrapers, commercials, cults and parking lots. They're secondary. Your primary evolutionary function is to acquire consciousness.
        Consciousness is spiritual awareness. The more conscious your ego becomes, the more likely you will be to choose consciousness after death. The more oblivious your ego remains, the more likely that you will choose obliteration after death. I use the word, choose, because it's all choice. You have more choices than you realize; you are not as powerless as you have been led to believe. It may seem as though life is an infinite variety of random acts over which you have no control; but your belief systems and your unconscious have chosen them all.  
       When I first took a class in Sociology and was told that the existentialists said we all have a choice, I was infuriated. I thought to myself; they're just a bunch of bourgeoisie; spoiled, rich intellectuals who couldn't possibly know what it feels like to be trapped. But I learned the only thing that had trapped me was my own beliefs; beliefs about myself and what kind of personal power I actually had. Until each of us understands how that process of forming our beliefs happened and assumes the responsibility, not blame, of making the changes necessary to change those beliefs, our collective future looks grim.
        So what is consciousness and how do you get it?
        Learn how to listen; to hear the song of Mother Earth, to hear the whispers of the universe, to follow your soul's path to your oneness with The Creator. To do this, your left brain needs to listen to your right brain; the place that accesses creativity, your unconscious and your soul.
        Follow me through the doorway into the darkness, allow me to shine a light onto your pathway; through a place that really isn't very mysterious at all.