Remarks by the Biographee


by Richard Kieninger

A book as limited in size as The Ultimate Frontier precludes complete development and explanation of its subject; yet its scope provides a basic introduction to the teachings of the Brotherhoods. In some respects the presentation of information may have seemed cursory, but the average reader was probably best served by having followed the same sequence of instruction that had been carefully designed for my understanding as a youth.

Persons who are predisposed toward formalized philosophy might have preferred the tenets of the Brotherhoods’ belief to have been developed step by step from a priori foundations, but to undertake a logical argument on this basis would be unprofitable since philosophers are not yet in agreement as to what constitutes a truth firm enough to be regarded as a basic philosophic foundation. For example, mathematicians and physicists agree to ignore the many unprovable foundations of science so long as these arbitrary assumptions continue to work in practical applications. Even empiricists are often forced to accept as fact many things which are but subjectively self-evident.

In any event, it is highly improbable that the cosmology known to the Brotherhoods could ever have been imagined by man—let alone proven logically by him. The realm of scientific philosophy lacks objective evidence of the planes of existence beyond the physical, and without acceptable observations, an hypothesis cannot be derived nor understanding be achieved. Unfortunately, scientists will never acquire objective knowledge of the other planes of existence because the necessary evidence can only be obtained through mental experiences which are wholly subjective. Inasmuch as observations must be reproducible under laboratory conditions in order to be admissible to the body of scientific knowledge, the powers of Mind are officially cast into limbo. Thus we are faced with a crippling shortcoming in man’s search for truth. Science has by its own rules limited itself to material phenomena and excluded itself from analyzing man’s place in the cosmos. I don’t quarrel with this sensible limitation, but I find it unfortunate that scientists have not as yet been able to extend their thoughtful probings to a disciplined study of the phenomena of the higher planes of existence. Essentially this has been the work of the Brotherhoods; and when a man sincerely undertakes the quest for higher understanding, he attracts the assistance of the Brothers who traveled that same path before him.

Our knowledge about the world has its root in man’s perceptions of existence through his five basic senses. Observation and logical inference have thereby brought him into possession of a great deal of knowledge concerning his physical environment. The next step is taken when an individual has intensified his senses beyond the physical; for from that point onward, his increased perceptions of nature allow him to know things about his environment that are closed to the average man. The Ego who has advanced to the point where he is acceptable for admission into the Brotherhoods knows that the Brotherhoods’ philosophy is truth because by then he is able to rely on empirical evidence—subjective though it may be. Men who have developed clairvoyant abilities are generally unable to convince those who haven’t yet come to possess these powers that there are other planes of existence. Clairvoyants find it is like describing a rainbow to a man blind since birth.

Fortunately, the current popularity of psychology mitigates an otherwise gloomy prospect for mankind’s future. Even though psychology is not yet a science (being essentially still in the stage of amassing observations), many of the reasonable conclusions it has synthesized after a century of analysis have earned it respect in scientific circles. The psychologist’s evident ability to predict human behavior has led to several accepted “laws” which are of practical use. Parapsychology is likewise beginning to draw attention to the case for man’s extrasensory perceptions, and sheer weight of evidence may eventually force the scientific philosophers to accord serious consideration to the “sixth sense.”

Perception of reality is obscured by one’s environmental conditioning to accept current popular belief as the highest good. The scientist and philosopher who critically seek truth know all too well just how difficult it is to be honestly objective. And ultimate truth is all the harder to come by when “truths” of many colors and postures are imposed by national and religious groups.

Equally confusing is the attempt to discern the hallmarks of emotional maturity. However, the Brotherhoods long ago recognized the highest values in human behavior and described these goals as the virtues. Now men outside the Brotherhoods have arrived at nearly the same conclusions as a result of psychologists’ recent efforts to ferret out the ideal characteristics exemplified by the completely mature person. We might expect a person of balanced emotional maturity to be considered the epitome of social acceptableness; but although he may be admired and respected, today’s world remains aloof from him. Our society instead rewards the person who conforms to its current modes of behavior. Evidence of strength of character in a man marks him as a disquieting and irritating influence. Life is by its nature a continual series of frustrations and conflicts, and maturity is measured by one’s ability to deal effectively with them as they arise.

One’s development of character and wisdom is not enhanced by following emotional whims and group manias, nor can the adventure of life yield Egoic advancement if the mind is clouded by alcohol, drugs or tranquilizers. Sanity grows upon the sharp point of contact with reality and keen alertness to its challenges; whereas avoidance of life and one’s problems is delusory.

Individuality and moral integrity protect one from being stampeded with the multitude who surge blindly to the command of the impersonal though all-powerful fad maker—they. On every side we are coerced to strive for social acceptance, and our children are made to sacrifice all too much on the altar of popularity. To have achieved perfect adjustment to a society that is childish is to have regressed. Our social aspirations are presently geared to glamour, and young and old alike have become willing pawns of the “image makers.” The manipulators of glamour and advertising have carefully designed these forces to make us discontent with what we are and possess so that we are moved to purchase and consume whatever goods are represented to advance one’s status. As a result of this insidious conditioning, we worship celebrities who are renowned for little more than their well-knownness, glorify the executive and his attendant wealth symbols, and emphasize sex for the wrong purposes. America has retreated from political, moral and economic reality so that life as it really is and the rewards for living it on its own merits have been largely abandoned for a glamour world. This national hysteria is equivalent to Germany’s erstwhile romantic hysteria of supermanism. One’s adeptness at playing at life according to the mode of American juvenilism is far from the height of human aspiration.

Most people bend their energies to the pursuit of power, property and plaudits instead of to the pursuit of maturity. The former lead to folly and disillusionment whereas the latter brings contentment, confidence and self-respect. Almost everyone thinks pleasure should bring happiness, and so it follows that sex has become much indulged in; but lack of maturity keeps such activity from delivering real satisfaction or contentment. Hazy misapprehensions about the rather rare state of psychological maturity restrict its popularity as a goal. Admittedly, it is difficult to have aims beyond one’s own horizons of understanding. Moreover, nobody can portray the advantages of maturity to a childish person because no amount of description can convey the feelings of an emotion to a person who has not already experienced that emotion. The short-range advantages of pleasure seem apparent, and the long-range advantages of maturity are obscure and more difficultly realized; therefore, the majority of mankind has always accepted the quicker goal and has barely considered the greater goal.

One of life’s cruelest deceptions lurks in the shallow ambitions of man; because when they are satiated, the result is boredom, discontent, and dejection. The hoped-for happiness is a will-o-the-wisp that leads the pursuer to seek newer pleasures after each in its turn proves as devoid of innate joy as the last. Nonetheless, perennial happiness is possible for the possessor of psychological maturity. Not so much because of his maturity per se but because of the attitudes that make maturity possible. Selfless work for others, love of humanity, kindness, love of nature, active furtherance of high principles, and communion with higher sources are the demonstrated wellsprings of undiminishing human joy.

The philosophers of the eighteenth century were stirred to great hope for mankind when the concept of Reasonable Man was propounded. As far as this two hundred-year-old dream is concerned, it has been attained only but limitedly. The Brotherhoods assert that about one person in 2,500 can be considered emotionally mature. Upon these few men and women rests the stability of society, and this is all the more remarkable since few hold high positions of temporal power. Perhaps no more than ten thousand men and women of the upper echelons of reasonable maturity keep the world on even keel. Most of these ten thousand are educators, philosophers, moralists and humanitarians; and they together with an unintended following of perhaps fewer than one million persons of goodwill and practical good sense comprise an informal association for the preservation of mankind. The rest of mankind are drifters who miserably fail to sustain civilization if the percentage of mature individuals within their society falls to a low percentage of the population.

 

In the democratic nations of Western Civilization, the average citizen sells himself out at the polls. I believe Freud was on the right track when he stated that democracy fails because of the emotional flaws in man. The British and American traditions of democracy continue to be undermined by universal suffrage. Western Civilization is producing some of the most exalted men and women to be seen for many millennia, but decadent and irresponsible individuals are multiplying far more prolifically and, consequently, so is their voting power. The hard-won freedoms of the democracies are being thoughtlessly surrendered by “emotional peasants” in exchange for “security.”

espite these drawbacks, the Brotherhoods insist that a democratic form of government is best for mankind; but They admit it can survive only among a citizenry almost wholly composed of emotionally mature individuals. The Brotherhoods expect to prove their contention by assembling the truly capable and mature persons of the world into a single group. If men of maturity and wisdom fail to unify themselves in this way soon, it could well mean the end of political and philosophical freedom anywhere on Earth for all time to come. Future seismic activity and political disintegration should serve to alert the mature individuals of the world who have been tardy in perceiving the imperative importance of so uniting. Even now, eminent social and economic analysts are warning us of many destructive trends that indicate a likely collapse of our present way of life in the very near future. I suppose I too could be classed as a prophet of doom, except that I foresee the wonderful nation-to-come being prepared under expert guidance. Whatever dire cataclysms man brings upon himself for the remainder of this century can be tolerably viewed by understanding that the imminent breakdown is for the greatest good in the long run. A totally fresh start can be made more easily for the world after a complete collapse of what now exists.

Our sick world is beset by problems that cannot be solved by the conventional power plays of times past, and I am doubtful that enough politicians throughout the world will adopt attitudes likely to solve the dilemmas of our times. At any moment, rulers may thrust us into a crisis that can swiftly compound into a debacle of unimaginable destruction. That is a sickeningly pessimistic outcome to visualize, but it is realistically probable. I would like to be able to console myself with the dream that mankind’s sanity will prevail to save civilization, but reasonable men are unable to comprehend the motives of madness and therefore they have been repeatedly overwhelmed by lunatics. Madness will be at the helm during most of what remains of the century, and it is painfully obvious that we are particularly unable to control madness in other countries.

A sense of hopelessness is coming more into the open as we talk to the man on the street. He still has goals for himself, but his long-range dreams for mankind are very tenuous. He advises others to grab what they can out of life while some measure of stability still exists. He extends this prerogative to politicians and surrenders his concern for the outcome of the fiscal policies of his government. Emotional tautness of unremitting anxiety can fray the lines of rationality.

There are many thoughtful men and women who are sorely saddened by the prospect of seeing human beings reduced to a stone-age existence again. The likelihood of one’s grandchild being a stupid, snarling, short-lived, malnourished clod is crushing to one’s sensitivities. One cries out in anguish at the thought of mankind’s achievements going to naught. Yet no one is more sympathetic to this pathetic state of affairs than the Brotherhoods, for they have watched civilizations obliterated many times over. In certain instances, men of quality who have cried out against the insanity of it all have been granted solace by the Brotherhoods who took them in and enlisted their talents. One of the principal purposes of the Kingdom of God is to preserve the best of our culture and technology embodied within a competent citizenry so it doesn’t take 7,500 years to get back to where civilization is today. The citizens of the Kingdom of God will be expected to educate the rest of the world in what they preserve.

If the average man of today were transported to a civilization like that of ancient Lemuria or the coming Kingdom of God, he would be a jarring misfit. His selfishness, his negative desires and ambitions, his arrogant intolerance, hatreds, cruelties and overall lack of personal peace and joy would make it impossible for him to get along in cooperative harmony. Since fear, anxiety, fretfulness, and irritability in one individual tend to spread to those who come in contact with him, it is obvious that he would only detract from the spiritual peace of a Lemurian environment. In spite of the luxuries, beauty, and material abundance that a society can create, its civilization is vapid, restive, and unfulfilling if the citizens are no better than the man of today. He has not learned self-discipline let alone self-government. He would require too many laws, and the Lemurian way of life relies on its code of ethics without external enforcement.

The very minimum of government is a Lemurian principle lest the government operate in the environment of the citizens against Cosmic Law. The purpose of Lemurian government is to provide public services inexpensively; and although there are government administrators in the Lemurian scheme of things, there will be no politicians. Democracy will be exercised by referendum and not by a legislature of representatives bending to pressure groups and lobbies seeking legislative favoritism; nor will organized political parties vie for control of government policies. The executive officers of the government will not be the leaders of the people but will be strictly public servants having supervision over only their respective departments and offices. The people will look to the Adepts and great philosophers among them for inspiration and counsel, and then they will act for themselves.

Lemurian economic policies will seem quite different from the traditions we follow today. Machinery will put an end to hard labor, and automation will reduce the workweek to a few hours. The cost of necessities such as food and rental of housing will permit the wage earner a comfortable surplus for savings and luxuries. Automated farms will produce food very inexpensively, and radically simplified distribution methods without middlemen’s markups will hold retail food prices close to the cost of rain, sun, fertilizer and seed. Hard goods will be made to last for generations so that natural resources are conserved. Designs in the styling of appliances and automobiles will be such that they will look attractive indefinitely as well as outlast the owner’s lifetime. Production methods today are geared to produce the greatest profit for the stockholders; therefore, continual style changes accompanied by advertising that has conditioned us to scorn the old and worship the latest models makes us discard what is still useful. Just in case some people might prefer to get the maximum usage out of an item, defects are purposely engineered into it so it will need to be replaced early. The savings involved when one needs to buy only one automobile instead of ten during his lifetime is considerable. Our present industrial and finance system is designed to keep us from catching up, and it has come to depend upon the exchange of goods and services at maximum production capacity in order to avoid collapse.

The great increase in the amount of leisure time to be enjoyed in the Lemurian system will be occupied by closer interpersonal relationships and by schooling. Education will be a lifetime avocation in the Kingdom of God, and citizens will be disposed to seek knowledge of all things. The individual’s attainment of Adeptship in the Brotherhoods will be the end goal of every activity in the Kingdom of God, and the beauty, bounty, and tranquility of that nation will by intention serve to enhance Egoic perfection.

Meanwhile, there are citizens of the world who are able to understand that they must create a new, protected society in order to escape the exploitive elements of the present order of things. The Adelphi Organization is already established and is available for them to escape to. There they can ready themselves and their children for participation in the Kingdom of God, which is being prepared on a presently existing island in the Pacific Ocean to be called Philadelphia. There the productive and positive people of the world can preserve their liberties and assets. The Adelphi Organization is financially supporting the development of the island as well as having already put together the community of Adelphi in Texas. Fortunately, there are many people who have become aware that huge corporations, international banks, and powerful narcotics cartels are skimming hundreds of billions of dollars annually off the top of our national economy while also diminishing our personal freedoms by way of legislation preferential to these immensely wealthy interests or by threats to our safety. As a result, the standard of living of people throughout the world is continuously eroding, and the prospect of real poverty haunts everyone except the ultra rich. Left to themselves, people of good will can govern themselves and bring prosperity to everyone in their commonwealth. Adelphi and the island of Philadelphia are ready to demonstrate the truth of this.

The Kingdom of God, or more appropriately, the Nation of God, has been planned by the Brotherhoods for thousands of years. Perhaps at last we shall see to what heights man can rise in fulfilling his quest for civilization.

Home