Já a meio da tarde na Valada das Tágides, a Lia...
O anoitecer chegado, as almas recolhem-se sob a luzes intensificada do horto búdico...
Vista do jardim para o páteo e o interior da casa, tão harmoniosamente ordenada. 
Um mandala de amor e harmonia, realizado no atelier ao fundo do jardim, aberto ao futuro...
Poesia Espiritual do Som sagrado, divino Iiiiiii, chave da Música das Esferas.
IIIIIIIiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
iiiiiiii dizes, dizem iiiiiiiiiii
iiiiiiiiiiiiii gritas, gritamos iiiiiiiiiiiiii
iiiiiiiiii invade o céu e iiiiiiiii entra em tiiiiiiiii e em miiiiiiiiimmmm
Iiiiiiii, vibra líiiiiiiipido nooo íiiiiiiitttiiiiimoo de tiiiiiiiii
Iiiiiiiii ecoa em miiiiiim e em tiiiiiiiiiii
Imanente e transcendente, como captarmos pela consciência a essência
senão pela entrega criativa e amorosa, persistente e alegre,
quando deixas de segurar o teu barco no porto dos hábitos
e não receias lançar-te ao mar alto e enfrentares ondas e piratas?
Como te podias deixar continuar a ser formatada diariamente ,
mesmo com teu discernimento apurado ajudando,
sem arderes de amor e te quereres entregar
à liberdade da inspiração dos sons sagrados que soltas e ouves em eco
e que a noite cruzam e iluminam e o sono vencem?
Conseguirás entrar no coração subtil e divino,
sacudires todas as trevas de pensamentos negativos
de tiiii e do mundo iiiiiiiiiiiimundo?
Oh siiiiiiiiiiiiiiimmmm, diz que sim ao teu Espíriiiiito,
Sê Tu, Esto, sê a luz do espírito íntimo de ti,
mergulha no silêncio com a espada do iiiiiii
e canta-o através de todo o teu corpo e alma,
sacudindo todos os medos e dúvidas
e ressuscitando a tua identidade espiritual.
Eu sou o Espíiiriiito e e e a Deus o ofereço e a ele me religo.
i i i i i i ispirito,
i em Ei, da Grécia mantra sagrado: Tu és,
na Índia Tat Twam Asi, Tu és Isto,
Hi, no Japão, Sol e Um.
«Eis-me de novo por este odorífero e frondoso bosque centenário, junto a Braga, que me recebe surpreso ao anoitecer, pois sendo Inverno não há aqui vivalma. Cumprimento os cinco cedros sagrados da entrada do poente [para quem vem dos hotéis e das capelas finais da Via sacra], com festas e beijo, e avanço à inspiração das sombras e vultos gigantescos que adquirem ao entardecer uma suavidade e lucidez quase infinitas, pois a água límpida dos tanques, o musgo das grande fragas, o céu enevoado, a palpitação do ar e os seres humanos e as árvores tornam-se um só todo.
A meditação será já dentro do hotel, e tentarei sentir e aprofundar o ser e o poder real deste cume da terra portuguesa, antes assimilando as impressões da breve passagem pelo Porto, agradecendo a Deus por tudo e admitindo novas obras ou projectos.
Quem abre à noite a janela do seu quarto e olha de súbito a paisagem, vê com seus olhos e sente uma estranha comunicação entre a terra e o céu. Não é chuva miudinha, não são cordelinhos de marionetas mas entre as árvores, as casas, os coruchéus e o céu há partículas e correntes quase subtis em sentidos verticais e diagonais e que vêm tanto da terra como sobretudo do céu.
As árvores mesmo tremeluzem na sua vitalidade. De noite perdem a beleza dos pormenores e das cores mas ganham em vulto, em aura, em mistério. São como gigantes ou guardas palpitantes e tento vê-las na suas subtis dimensões.
Que força perseverante as sustenta há séculos, impassíveis perante as derrocadas dos impérios e dos humanos e protegendo os sucessivos templos destes montes do Bom Jesus e do Sameiro desde há séculos investidos de cultos, possibilitando-lhes serem centros ainda de mais elevação ou captação energética vital e espiritual.
Quando as nuvens se rompem e descobrem o céu, as estrelas cintilam imediatamente na nossa consciência e somos alertados e atraídos para o sítio ou zona no céu, donde uma centelha luminosa, um raio delas partiu e até nós chegou. Depois vamos descobrindo as centenas ou milhares linhas de força que cruzam subtilmente o vasto espaço estrelado, frequentemente ligando estrelas, formando constelações.
Então, de novo o mistério da comunicação entre a Terra e o Céu se estabelece e agora somos nós os artesões. As mãos elevam-se em taça ao coração e estabelecemos a ligação sentida com os mundos infinitos, com os grandes seres e com a Divindade.
Por momentos o edifício do hotel, algo estanque e tentando-se impermeabilizar ao Inverno, abre-se e deixa penetrar as energias que como nuvens nos penetram e envolvem.
Oiço uma fonte que corre ou jorra constantemente a sua frescura, num ritmo que impulsiona ao de cima na consciência, durante a meditação, primeiro as memórias de infância semelhantes de águas, fontes, termas, e acaba por projectar-se na Fonte Divina Primordial, trazendo à visão da memória alguns fontanários ou tanques belos conhecidos, e logo a fonte do seio da Virgem que teria esguichado leite para S. Bernardo, numa imagem tão sensual quão correcta imaginalmente da possível relação do homem com a mulher, ou do humano com uma face da Divindade feminina, numa aleitação benigna e que já vinha da tradição grega com Hera, amamentando Hércules e esguichando a via Láctea... 
Tema de algumas belas pinturas artísticas, o grande asceta S. Bernardo, da Ordem de Cister, o impulsionador dos templários e das cruzadas, duro com os heréticos albigenses e com Abelardo, ei-lo a beber ou a chupar o líquido sagrado, para não se dizer o seio....
Que ousada imagem de simbolização e descodificação do seio da mulher, como phalus, como uma parte activa e emissiva no corpo feminino e como o ser humano se pode alimentar ou harmonizar com ele.
A receptividade do homem perante a mulher, ou mesmo homem feito mulher - receptividade - passividade (em especial o monge, o asceta) e a mulher feita homem-activa, tal como já no evangelho gnóstico de S. Tomé, Jesus falava disto, da mulher que se torna homem, vertical, unificando os oposto dentro de si, ultrapassando-os.
A manhã faz-se mais cedo junto aos bosques e aos campos do que nas cidades pois nestas as sombras da noite, a luminosidade derivada de luzes artificiais e o cimento das casas permanecem mais insensíveis à luminosidade do novo dia. No campo é diferente, pois tudo anseia, absorve, reflecte e intensifica a claridade, o calor e a vitalidade solar que se anunciam lentamente por uma gradual diminuição da escuridão até ao esplendor fecundante e ressuscitante do nascer do sol.
O canto dos pássaros talvez também dê, além da alegria e quase acção de graças, mais luz às matas, bosques e ambiente na aurora.
Não é também a luz, som, raios, partículas? Quem saberá discernir os efeitos dos sons e cantos das fontes e aves nos seus ambientes naturais ou mesmo nos largos, jardins e beirais das aldeias, cidades e bosques?
As trocas energéticas entre a terra e o céu são mais intensas nos campos e nas montanhas do que nas cidades ou mesmo nas planícies, embora estas também acolham o sol, a chuva e os ventos com maior ou menor receptividade.
Abro a janela da varanda, sinto a chuva miudinha nos pés e cumprimento os pássaros que me respondem. Estão satisfeitos por terem nascido neste bosque sagrado e suas imediações puras, pouco devassadas..
De manhã, durante o dia, a nossa visão penetra nas diferenças e deixa-se aprisionar nos quadriculados dos detalhes. De noite, com a obscuridade e o silêncio, vemos mais o conjunto, a totalidade, a energia global, e é uma visão mais demorada de empatia e de fusão, pois a racionalidade tende a exercer-se menos enquanto a sensibilidade, a emocionalidade e a intuição aumentam...
Caminhar à noite pela natureza, pelos jardins ou mesmo por certas zonas das vilas e cidades, ou junto aos rios e costas, é muito harmonizador e desafia-nos a sairmos da celeridade do conhecido e do atarefado para um espaço-tempo mais sacralizável pela nossa consciência, então ligando os movimentos do corpo e os sentimentos e pensamentos da psique, rumo a momentos súbitos de sensibilidade e intuição da Unidade e do Amor.
Shankara (700-750 c.), Ramanuja (1017-1137), Madhva (1238-1317) and, in the south of India, Tirumular, from the Taimil Saivites, and the 12 Alvars, from the Tamil Vaishnavites, where some of the most realized ones, in the old times, having still in our days their representatives very respected, and having influenciated many philosophers and mystics.
In Medieval epoch we find many famous yogis and mystics, some of them arriving already to a liberation from the chains of exclusivistic religious creeds of realization, some seeing the unity that is beyond the pratices and doctrines of sufism and yoga, all of them stressing the Love to God, and we should speak and know of the life and teachings of Jnanadeva, Namdeva, Ekanatha, Tukarama, Ramadasa, Kabir, Mira, Tulsidas, etc.
In the Moghul dinasty, and especially with Akbar and his grandson Dara Shikoh, appears the idea of the search of the best doctrines for a universal religion, that could be understood and attained from a syntesis of particulars ones, for which Akbar build the Ibadat Kana, where meetings or debates with representatives of different religions happened since 1575. Around 1579 he proclaimed the Din Ilahi, the Religion of God, but only for a few disciples and friends who were a bit more prepared. The merging of the two Oceans, title of a book of Dara Shikoh about indian and islamic spirituality, yoga and sufism, reflects his pioneering universal task (that in a certain way costed his life at the hands of his younger brother, the fanatical Aurangzeb), having achieved for that also the first translation to persian of 50 Upanishads, in 1657, who were then translated by Anquetil-Duperront, in 1795, to latin, reaching European people and philosophers as Hegel, Kant, Schlegel, Schelling and Schopenhauer.
In the XIX century there was a strong ressurgence of Indian nationality and universal spirituality, mixed with modern ideias of science and christianity, when, trying to became free from the fetters of British colonialism, some masters come to the forefront, especially Devendranath Tagore (and, after, his son, Rabindranath, Nobel Prize for Literature, 1913) and Keshab Chandra Sen, the great Brâhmo leader, living and teaching higher morals and doctrines. But it was Paramahansa Ramakrishna (1836-1866), the first one to be recognized by western orientalists and sanskrit specialists as a true yogi master, as, for example, Max Müller has done, with Romain Rolland, Nobel Prize for Litterature in 1915, amplifying the divulgation of his tecahings with a biography. It seems that just before and at beginning of the 1º great War there was some awareness of the need of a more spiritual way of being and living, and help was asked from India and their Sanatana Dharma, their eternal tradition of spiritual values and duties.
After him others masters become known to the West, particulary the disciples of sri Ramakrishna, like swami Vivekananda, who made an impressive speech on the World's Parliament of Religions (an incredible and pioneer meeting, with hundreds of participants, in Chicago, 1893, something impossible or irrelevant in our days, tragically...), swami Parananda and others, reaching until our days, like two monks with whom I have spoken, swami Ritajananda in Paris and swami Ranganathananda in Calcuta. In others lineages of swamis, we should mention Ramalinga Swamigal and Rama Tirtha, as both, with others, have been living examples, and generated discourses and books that were not only influent and commented in India but were also translated in western countries, like the ones of Vivekananda, in Portugal apearing
in the twenties of the XX century.
At that time, in 1927, also Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986) liberated himself of the megalomaniac dream of being the new World Teacher, as his theosophical mentors Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater wanted, and begin his career of a lonely psychological guru in the West that would last decades.
Another source of Indian spirituality that become known and available to the West was the one from the teachings and initiations of Paramahamsa Yogananda (1897-1952), a disciple of a valuable lineage of Kriya Yoga masters (his one being Sri Yukteswar Giri), who arrived to New York in 1920 and established after some centers of the Self Realization Fellowship, where meditation, Yoga Vedanta and bhakti (devotion), were kindled.
After them, many indian masters or teachers have become known to the West and we can name Sri Chinmmoy, Sri Satchitananda, Muktananda, Maharishi Maesh Yogi, Guru Maharaji, Swami Vishnudevananda and Rajneesh or Osho, indeed this one the most genial of them. Some of them unfortunately got trapped in misleading ways or less true and
valuable teachings.
On XXI century the Indian masters that attain sucess in the West have become indeed much more comercialized and cosmetic ones. Some of them, although having hundreds and thousands of disciples, are very superficial, some even faking the miracles that have made Sai Baba famous, like taking gold eggs from the stomach or making money and sacred ashes appear from the void, the belly or some occult device...
Yoga has become in the West in modern times, in much of the cases, mostly physical acrobacies, or asanas and pranayamas, or sweet devotion between disciples and masters, and also opressive and exclusivist schools and federations, with very little spiritual realization in the teachers or presidents. Surely there has been also some good Hatha yoga teachers, as Iyengar and others and you will find in the web hundreds...
So if you want to know really about Yoga you must have discernment and not be mislead by the superficial intermediaries that get between you and the true Yoga tradition, your true self and with God's realization, as you will be manipulated to realize mostly the wishes and ambitions of the group, of the guru, of the federation, and you will be under subtle treads of illusion and binding...
So it is better to do yoga and meditation free, or with some teacher that doesn't manipulate you or pretends to be what he is not, something that happens also very much in our days with so much self-proclaimed realized, enlightened, liberated and non-dual beings, seated in their heavens of ashrams or disciples, and smiling to their or in their own self-illusion of spiritual realization.
In India, in the XXI century, the instituition of Gurus is still very much strong, almost everyone has is guru or his ishta devata (personal and intimate God) and so ashrams, pilgrimages, kumbha melas are frequently in a full glow of dynamism.
So where and how can we find some sources of light to understand better the spiritual path, the value of the yoga practices and doctrines?
Well, beyond going to India to some ashram or good teacher or guru, the best is to pratice some inner concentration and meditation and read and know the basic texts: Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, Patanjali Yoga Sutras, Narada Bhakti Sutras, the Gospel of Ramakrishna, and then also the lifes and teachings of the most interesting mystics and yogis of all
the times...
From the XX century we can find also some Indian masterswho are of very deep and good quality, and didn't come to the West. We can name some more known, like Sri Aurobindo, Ramana Maharishi (in the last photo), Nisargadath Maharaj, this last two both in the Advaita Vedanta line, Gopi Krishna, Shri Anandamurti (founder of the Ananda Marga), Swami Yogeshwaranand Sraswati (with very deep visions on the subtle levels), Kavi Yogi ShuddhanandaBharati (with whom I lived two months in his ashram in Madras), sri Tathata, etc.
We should also mention the lineage of Vaishnavas, with very ancient roots and coming from Vallabha and Chaintanya in the XVI c., to attain with Swami Prabhupada and his Hare Krishna mouvement, or IKSON, a big impact im many young and alternative people in the 60-80 of the XX century. Many women have been also strong in the bhakti marga, like Sarada Devi, the wife of Ramakrisna (and in the photo), Sri Ananda Moyi, Krishnabai and now Amma.
From christians there has been also some good cases of finding and living the spiritual connections with Indian tradition, as it was the case of Robert da Nobili, in the XVII c., and especially in the XX century of the beneditine monks Henri Le Saux and Jules Monchanin, turned the swami Abhishiktananda, who founded the SatchitAnanda ashram in 1950, in Tamil Nadu. Father Bede Griffiths took their lineage from 1968 and developed, as they have done, a good comparativism and syntesis of hinduism and christianity, mostly by Yoga Vedanta, in valuable books. The following post
card was sent from him to me in 1980, as I was living there one month and had some satsangs and talks with him.
From other acharyas or gurus less known but with much erudition and capacity of comparativism, as they can be called scholars in indology and spirituality, we can name Ananda Coomaraswamy, Sarvepali Radakrishnam, Gopinath Kaviraj and gurudev Ranade, the four with excelent books, specially the last two ones, Gopinath on Advaita and Kashimir Shivaism and Gurudev Ranade on the Mystics, being himself a perfect symbiosis of a scholar in philosophy, a researcher in the teachings of the great mystics and at some time a disciple and then a guru in the lineage of Nimbal, with emphasis in meditation of the name of God, with bhakti, devotion or love, to attain union with the spirit (Atman) and the Divine, Brahman.
I have recently written some articles about Gurudev R. D. Ranade and the books Critical and Constructive Aspects of Prof. R. D. Ranade's Philosophy, by B. R. Kulkarmi, 1974, and Tributes to and Remembrances of Gurudev R. D. Ranade, The Saint of Nimbal, by Rajendra Chauan and Deepak V. Apte, 2020.
From western countries we can name as reliable sources about the Indian spirituality orientalists like E. Burnouf, Louis Renou, Jean Herbert, Lizelle Raymond, Arthur Avalon, Paul Brunton, Sylvie Lysart, Paul Masson Oursel, Theos Bernard, Heinrich Zimmer, Jean Varenne, Tara Michael, Frithjof Schuon and Michel Hulin.
In Portugal we see just a few to recommend: some worksfrom the XIX century of Esteves Pereira and Vasconcelos de Abreu, some articles on Rabindranath Tagore, Gandhi and Indian spirituality from the colaborators of the magazine Seara Nova, like Adeodato Barreto, Tudela de Castro and Luís de Castro Norton de Matos, or Marialva, in the years 20 and 30, and in our days two good translations of António Barahona, one of the Bhagavad Gita, other the Briadh Āraṇyaka Upanishad, my translation of Astavakra Gita, o Cântico da Consciência Suprema, and my translation with Satchitananda Dhar of the Patanjali Yoga Sutras, published with commentaries by Maria, already in a second edition.
In Brasil we could name Hermogenes, Caio de Miranda (master of my first Yoga teacher, prof. António Pedro), Carlos A. Vieira, Huberto Rodhen and Edson Nunes da Silva, these two last ones that I read and had dialogue.
Indeed, from India Yoga, the philosophical darshans and the great immemorial satsanga of gurus and disciples and their fruits are a fabulous treasure for the self-realization and betterment of Mankind, helping her to be linked to its Dharma and to its spiritual and Divine characteristics of Sat Chit Ananda (True being, consciousness and joy) and origin. But each one has to walk in the path of
realization by himself, surely blessed by some guru or master, visible or invisible, in the subtle satsanga of the brotherhood of the gurus, masters.
Om sri Gurabe namah!... Aum Himavat namah!
“Welcome to America, the Land of Freedom”, read the signs at Washington, DC’s international airport as you line up to have your fingerprints taken and your body cavities searched for mini nuclear devices.
I could have titled this article “Setting the Cat among the Pigeons”. In an attempt to forestall the expected avalanche of disagreement, I confirm my awareness of statistics produced by a wide range of individuals and institutions of widely-varying intent and ideology, and which can “prove” almost anything one cares to prove, GINI coefficients being one easy example. The statistics on which this article is based were not selected carelessly and are not invalidated by a reader’s disaffection.
The United States Is the Best Only at Being the Worst
The US today has the greatest income inequality of all Western nations[1][2], surpassing China and more than a few undeveloped nations as well. From this, it has the lowest social mobility of most nations[3], meaning that improving one’s station in life is becoming increasingly impossible. If your parents are not educated and wealthy, you will never be either, and the American Dream is dead. The US today has the smallest middle class and the largest lower class of all major nations, the middle class having been mostly eviscerated in 2008, that process completing itself today, and will probably never now recover. Americans carry the largest amount of personal debt among all nations[4], including credit card debt and increasingly unrepayable student loans, and the US now leads the world in personal bankruptcies[5]. Since 2008, according to the US government’s own statistics, the US has the lowest percentage of home ownership at 57%[6], ranked 43rd in the world, far below China at 90%[7], and America now has a virtual epidemic of homelessness compared to most other nations, with untabulated millions of homeless families with children.
The poverty rate in the US is extraordinary, with official statistics placing this number at 13% but in reality with more than 25% of the population living below the poverty line, in most cases far below[8]. It also has the highest percentage of children living in poverty, and with almost a third of all US citizens dependent on food stamps and other government aid to survive[9]. Unemployment is also extraordinary. According to the government’s own statistics, fully 40% of working-age Americans have no job[10][11], with many of the rest under-employed, working only part-time. It is only American cities or those in the most impoverished of nations that contain such vast areas of urban decay and desperate slums like those of Detroit and Chicago, where half of the areas are violent crime-ridden wastelands where no one goes.
The US has the highest educational costs, and yet the poorest overall quality of education in the developed world and parts of the rest. Read this article[12].
It will open your eyes. A few good schools or universities in an entire
nation do not make it a world leader, the proof residing in the highest
level of functional illiteracy of all major nations (25%) and a truly legendary level of ignorance[13].
The US is the only country in the world where, in repeated polls for
the past 60 years, a full 75% of the adult and student populations
cannot find their own country on a map of the world[14]
. Compared to other nations, the US has the highest health care costs by a factor of two to ten, and yet has a surprisingly poor overall quality as well as the highest percentage of a population without health care[15]. The US has the highest infant mortality rate and the shortest life expectancy at birth of all major nations and far below many others[16][17], ranking around 50 in a list of countries. The US has the highest obesity rate of all nations, with nearly half of the population being overweight[18], one of the highest rates of sexually-transmitted diseases[19], of anti-depressant drug use that increased by 65% in only 15 years[20], a national crisis in opioid drug use[21] and of depression. It has the highest teen-age pregnancy and abortion rates of all developed nations[22], and one of the highest divorce rates[23][24].
Note that in many international studies US statistics aren’t collected
because, as observers noted “The authors left out the US because the
country is “an extreme outlier.” The US also has the largest number of one-person households (about 30%)[25][26], and the largest percentage of fatherless children (about 25%)[27].
America is one of the two most racist countries in the world, where even the random and unprovoked killing of non-whites is not only permissible but usually meets with approval. Americans are gun-crazy, owning more guns than the entire rest of the world combined, and more guns than all the world’s police and military. They carry their guns everywhere, and use them everywhere, the US having the highest rates of gun shootings and murders of any nation, with more than 20 small children and more than 200 adults being sent each day to either the hospital or the cemetery. Many small American cities, like the nation’s capital of Washington DC with only half a million people, or places like Detroit or Chicago, have more murders each year (by an order of magnitude) than does Shanghai with 25 million people. The overall homicide rate for China is 0.6 and for Shanghai 0.2; that for the US is 4.0. The gun death rate for children in the US is 40 times higher than for any other nation in the world[28][29]. The US also has the highest number of crimes committed with firearms each year, a staggering total of a minimum confirmed of 500,000 and an estimated 3 million[30][31], and the highest number of violent raids on private homes, with more than 80,000 instances per year of SWAT teams kicking in someone’s front door in the middle of the night, always terrorising and sometimes killing the occupants, usually without identifying themselves and often attacking the wrong house.[32][33]
The US has the highest rate of cocaine and meth usage of any nation[34], thanks in large part to the CIA’s very successful war on drugs which permits that agency to import cocaine duty-free. The US has the highest rate of gender inequality[35] among industrialised nations, far exceeding egalitarian nations like China (and formerly Iraq and Libya). The US has the highest number of lawyers and lawsuits in the world, by orders of magnitude, a reflection of both natural belligerence and inborn greed, Americans spending twice as much on lawsuits each year as on new cars[36]. Japan has 14,000 lawyers, China 160,000, the US 1.35 million (11 per 100,000 for Japan and China compared to 300 per 100,000 for the US). Americans surpass the entire world in their amount of useless consumption, having long passed the point where it can be deemed pathological. As one measure, that of shopping mall space per capita, Germany has 2.7 sq ft per person, Japan has 3.9 and the UK has 5. For every American shopper there are 24 sq ft of mall. The US has by far the highest level of carbon emissions on a per-capita basis, thanks in no small part to General Motors who has repeatedly committed genocide on electric automobiles.
Wars and violence are defining adjectives of America. The US as a nation is now, and has always been, intensely militaristic, inherently provocative, combative and violent. The US is by far the largest merchant of death in the world, being responsible for about 70% of total world arms sales. For comparison, Russia is second at 17%, while China is at 3%. If we include everything, the US spends about twice as much on its military each year as the entire rest of the world combined, already well-documented by many authors at well in excess of $1 trillion. It also has the world’s largest network of foreign military bases, with more than 1,000 such installations, including many that appear on no map, and the world’s largest number of bio-weapons labs, with more than 400 outside the US. America has launched the most wars of aggression in the history of the world and has been at war for 235 of its 243 years as a nation, all those wars unprovoked and unjustified, and none of which were either wars of ‘liberation’ or ‘to make the world safe for democracy’, but for colonisation and plunder. The US is also outstanding in that it has assassinated more foreign world leaders and other officials (about 150)[37] than even Israel has done, and also operates the largest network of torture prisons that has ever existed in the history of the world. The US also wins first prize for having some of the most bloodthirsty homicidal mass murderers and pathological killers in the history of the world, far exceeding our former heroes Stalin and Hitler. Kissinger, Albright and Curtis LeMay come immediately to mind, but there are more.
The US has by far the highest incarceration rate of all nations, with more than 25% of the world’s prisoners in its jails and with almost 35% of all adult Americans having a criminal record. Alarmingly, the US has by far the highest number of internment camps – prison camps – in the world, all 800 fully-staffed but empty, waiting for Americans to dare launch another Occupy Wall Street or similar protest. The US has the most militarised police forces of any nation, with frighteningly heavy-duty military hardware like MRAPs, APCs, drone aircraft and automatic weapons. The police motto “To protect and serve” that was once plastered on every police car, has been amended. It now reads “To occupy and kill”. The US has by far the highest number of civilians killed each year by police (well over 1,000) of any nation in the world, even including rogue states and axis of evil members. Americans have far more to fear from their local police than from terrorists. Police brutality in America is now legendary, so common as to be one of the nation’s defining adjectives, with beatings, shootings, harassment, false criminal charges reaching epidemic proportions and increasing.
America is the world’s only nation with a website named “Killed by Police.org” to document the epidemic of civilians killed by police, and the only nation where local newspapers have sections devoted to listing the number of daily killings in each neighborhood of the major cities to assist citizens in house purchases. Violent crime rates in the US are at least an order of magnitude above those of China or Japan (and many other nations).
The US also has one of the most corrupt police and judicial systems in the world. No Western country is particularly free of this charge, but America excels. As one example, the US has by far the largest number in the world of citizens falsely convicted by fraudulent testimony, some 40,000 convictions caused by one fraudulent forensics lab alone. And of course, the US has the world’s largest espionage network by orders of magnitude, with an ambition to steal every secret and to record and save every communication by every human on the planet.
It is no longer a secret that American-style democracy has a few flaws, with extreme dysfunction and rampant corruption among the more visible, though looting the public trough would run a close second. The US also has the government most totally over-run with puppet-masters and controlled by parasitic aliens, having entirely lost control to its various lobbies and with all its elected officials having sworn allegiance to the Jews and Israel rather than to America. The US has the highest number and percentage of Presidents, Secretaries of State and Defense Secretaries who were certifiable as criminally insane and who should have been given lobotomies and committed to institutions for life. Too many names to list here. America is the one nation that has more or less institutionalised government corruption at virtually every level, extending deeply into the judiciary, the regulatory bodies and Congress, as well as local and state governments. The US is well-known for compiling the most fraudulent economic statistics of all developed and undeveloped nations, including the hugely fictitious ‘average income’ of $45,000, and is one of the most indebted of all countries in the world today. I strongly suggest everyone read this short article on US economic statistics[38] and cease the rubbish about how China’s numbers can’t be trusted.
Not to be outdone, the US media are in a class by themselves in terms of dishonesty, bias, censorship, and petty opinion-based journalism. American journalists are mostly cut from the same cloth, displaying more or less the same malignancies.
The US has the most complete immunity for elite white-collar crime, prosecuting only its person-companies but never the persons. Americans boast of their transparent and corruption-free financial system, and the US media enjoys trashing China for what appears to be an occasional corporate fraud. But in the long list of the world’s largest corporate bankruptcies due to fraud and corruption, all but one occurred in the US. Ron Unz prepared a list that included Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Global Crossing, Adelphia, MF Global, Lehman, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Washington Mutual, and Wachovia. The US has also been home to the world’s largest Ponzi schemes like those of Bernie Madoff and Allen Stanford, that resulted in almost $100 billion in public losses. It is the US, not China, that is the home to corporate fraud and deceit, while all but two of the largest corporate frauds in China in recent decades were committed by American firms, not Chinese.
To end our list of areas in which American Exceptionalism truly shines, the US has for years been deservedly voted the world’s most hated nation, is widely reviled as the world’s greatest bully, and judged by all peoples – including Americans – as the greatest threat to world peace.
Lest anyone think the above list is unfair or exaggerated, you can do a simple test by applying the items to other countries. Germany, for example, or China or Canada. Certainly every nation has some deaths, crime, divorces, military spending and so on, but none of the items in this list can be applied to Germany, China or Canada, nor to any other nation. The US does have the greatest debt, highest military spending, racism, killings, guns, incarceration, torture prisons, initiated wars, and all the rest. The records for inequality, obesity, consumption, personal debt, poverty, cocaine use, murders, all belong to America, with no other nation even in the running. The claim is as demonstrably true for ignorance and hypocrisy as it is for police brutality. As an accusation or an indictment, the list is 100% accurate, a factual description of America as it is today, seen without the propaganda and rose-colored glasses.
A complete list of areas of American Exceptionalism must include one other item: The most traitors. This unfortunate category exists on several levels, the first being the President and White House staff and the US Congress who, as we already know, have pledged allegiance to Israel rather than America. The second is the foreign-owned US FED, criminally pursuing its own agenda while systematically destroying the economic fabric of America. The cadre of elite owners of most large US banks and multinationals fall into this category as well, pursuing their own private advantage while consciously gutting the economy of their own nation.
But there is a third, more pervasive level, a large cadre of educated Americans who are essentially compradors, traitors to most of their values and to their people, embedded in the system and dependent on it, participating fully in the destruction of their own country by acting as lieutenants for the officials of the secret government. These individuals are vital for the success of the transformation of the US to a fascist state, with the elites dependent upon them to execute their policies, yet they also profit from their positions in terms of attractive salaries and protection from much of the law. These are the people who best know of all the crimes and social injustices, being in fact a willing part of their execution process, but least likely to blow the whistle for fear of damaging their careers. It is the middle level of educated executives, lawyers, accountants and managers in government, criminal corporations, Foundations, think tanks, the media, and so many others, who are directly responsible for knowingly inflicting the vast damage on their own people and nation. Like the CEOs of the banks and multinationals, these compradors seek only their own advantage, discarding their human values and blinding themselves to the harm they do.
The following bulleted list is for your ease in reading.
ASTON, William George. SHINTO (The Way of the Gods). London, Longmans, Green, and Co. 1905. In-4ª II-390 p.
A very detailled account of the formation, characteristics and history of Shinto, made by William George Aston (1841-1911), a remarkable author of grammars and history of Japanese literature as well as translator of one of the two mythical and foundational books of the story of Japan, the Nihongi (compilation from the year 720). He is considered to be one the best japanologists of XIX century, having lived 25 years as diplomat and scholar in Japan and Korea.
It has forteen chapters and with 16 illustrations and very good contextualizations, with examples not of only from Japan, but also from others traditions. In the preface the author points to his special indebtedness to Edward B. Tylor's, Primitive Culture and James George Frazer's, Golden Bough.
In the firsts chapters he points the roots of Shinto, as for example Korean ones (not specifying the Shamanism), and the materials for the study, and shows how personification of natural forces (like the Sun Godess, Amaterasu omikami) and deification of human beings (like, for example, Temmangu, the god of learning and calligraphy, ) has originated the multitude of Kamis and how the polytheistic character of Shinto is mitigated, as there is the general consensus that the important is not the name of the Kami but de fact that a Kami, god, spirit or deity, is present there, giving beautiful examples like a poem written in the famous and so inspiring (as I experienced by myself) Ise shrine: «What is that dwelleth here I know not, yet my heart is filled with gratitude and the tears tricke down».
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| It has a index with eleven pages, in small letter, very useful. |
It is also important the fact that George Aston was using thousands of old books, and at the end of his life he and Ernest M. Satow gave 10.000 books to the library of Cambridge University. At least these ones were not destroyed by USA bombardments in II great war.
He uses quotations from the old mythic texts but also from the classical Shinto philosophers, as Motorii and Hirata, and others westerners field researchers on Shinto or japanologists, like Ernest Satow, Weston, Chamberlain, etc.
He gives many japanese synonyms words for the main aspects of Shinto, distinguishing them very well, as he was a specialist of Japanase language, as for example, Shrine: Miya,
Araka, Yashiro, himorogi, Jinja, having all them the main meaning of a house for the God.
It has many pratical aspects relating to purification and spiritualization, the use of the salt, the gohei, and giving many examples of noritos or prayers, highligthning the sober style of mentioning the deities, compared to other religions, where there is only «a few adjectival prefixes to the names of the Gods, such as oho, great, take, brave, taka, high, kaya, swift, toyo, rich, iku, live, yori, good..»
Surely one very good book, even with not so perfect conclusions, to introduce people to Shinto, with deep knowledge and sensibility.
