Whether we witness the heartbreaking demolition of the cultural heritage of Palmyra by the Islamic State, or the Taliban destruction of Afghanistan’s ancient Buddha statues, or the systematic destruction of Tibetan Buddhist monasteries and centres of learning by the Chinese, or the whole sale burning of books on philosophy and esotericism from German libraries by Nazi mobs, the list is indeed depressingly long, but the playbook of all dictators is always the same. It an assault on the minds of people by curtailing freedom of thought by clamping down on freedom of enquiry in order to control the masses and brainwash them into a narrow groove of ideology with the sweetener of ‘a golden age of economic prosperity’.
We need to heed this seminal passage in Shakespeare’s (Bacon’s?) Macbeth:
But ’tis strange, And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths, Win us with honest trifles,
To betray us, in deepest consequence.
The latest example is shown below.
Who’s In and Who’s Out at the Naval Academy’s Library?
An order by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office resulted in a purge of books critical of racism but preserved volumes defending white power.
400 books were removed from the US Naval War College library, including Janet Jacobs’ Memoralizing the Holocaust and Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The two copies of Hitler’s Mein Kampf remain on the shelves
Midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy can check out copies of “Mein Kampf” by Adolf Hitler but not “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou.
Source reference: New York Times, 11 April 2025
Here are some wise words from a sage on the writing that is becoming increasingly clear on the ‘American wall’ (all emphasis is mine). They have been extracted from the complete posthumously published works of Paul Brunton comprising twenty-eight categories in 16 volumes.
Source reference: The Notebooks of Paul Brunton, Paul Brunton Philosophic Foundation and Larson Publications, 1984 to 1988.
Oscar Wilde was not led only by his customary habit of exaggeration to observe that “those who try to lead the people can do so only by following the mob. “Follow the career of most politicians and the truth in his statement will become clear.
The Director General of Archeology of India visited Germany shortly before the war. He told me [Brunton] there were twenty-seven university chairs of Sanskrit in Germany prior to the Nazi regime. Under Hitler they did next to nothing for there were hardly any students to use them!
Why did the Nazis quickly proceed to clamp down all freedom of speech and to shoot or shut up in concentration prisons all the intelligentsia? It is simply because truth can afford to encourage criticism, whereas falsehood fears it. Nazi Germany proved the irony of human suggestibility, that there, where truth was most absent, the people were led to believe it was most present. The Nazis invented pretexts for invasion as they invented history for propaganda. They did this because it was useful to them.
If we remember the mentally dark and morally savage state of Europe during the long stretch of centuries between the time of Justinian and the twelfth century, that period which has been well named the Dark Ages, we can picture something of the New Order which Hitler wanted to inaugurate. Had he triumphed there would have been no further philosophy for a generation.
The dangers to which humanity was exposed did not all vanish with the Nazis’ defeat. Those unseen powers still exist. What they could not achieve through a straightforward conflict, they will desperately try to achieve through a confused one. This indeed is the next phase of experience through which we are about to pass and which we shall have to endure.
The Nazis invaded first the minds of their own people and later those of the people of the countries they occupied. The Japanese Fascists did precisely the same.
But the long battle between the instruments of Light and Darkness is not at an end. The dark powers have sought to prevent the emergence of a more enlightened era. They have tried to do this through the virulent and violent German Nazis but failed. They will try to do it again. The re-alignment of the Nazi-minded and their antagonists will now take place in a lesser form inside many countries. The forces of evil did not sound their retreat with the downfall of Hitler. The anti-Nazi powers are gathering great strength but they will have to face a fresh alignment of these opponents. The struggle will next be so fundamental and against such irredeemable vicious enemies then as it was during the war itself.
The evil forces which have inspired Nazism have been defeated. But the defeat is not irretrievable. The military victory was essential but the mental victory will now be no less essential.
The victory which came to the Allies was a physical one. It must also be completed by a mental one. For the seeds of greed, hatred, falsehood, and envy which the Nazis spread through the five continents are being further spread by the Communists. Violence and hatred have flared up anew and thus given the evil forces a fresh chance to destroy mankind.
In the early part of 1939, for example, it was noted that only 5 percent of the people of London thought it worthwhile to attend any place of worship. And we say “mistaken” because, to take a particularly glaring example, the German people were one of the best-educated in the whole world and yet the Nazi doctrines were able to impose successfully on the German mind.
Here is a stubborn psychological problem, with profound metaphysical implications, which has remained unsolved throughout the whole history of science; but the range of data available today being greater, the prospects of its solution are brighter. Put briefly, this problem is as follows: is consciousness a property developed by the physical body in the course of its activity or is it a primary and intuitive part of the individual’s nature? If the solution proved favourable to the theory of primacy of consciousness, then the effects upon our culture would be incalculable. The Christian teaching about the immortality of the soul would be vindicated, the value of religion in human life would be established, and the intellectual materialism of our time, which has given birth to such horrible evils as Nazism and Communism, would be eradicated.
