 8 Jul 2008 @ 15:35, by Trent Crace
The middle man is that which stands between you and the source. The middle man is the doctor, the medium through which one attempts to communicate with and care for one’s body. The middle man is the news media, the medium through which most people get their ideas about events in the world around them. The middle man is one’s mind, the medium through which one attempts to perceive one’s environment. The middle man is the priest, the rabbi, the imam, the supposed mediums through which one may access the divine.
The middle man’s worth is expediency. In other words, he saves us time and energy…or at least, he should. The news media filters out all of the ‘insignificant’ events in the world so that we do not have to travel throughout the globe, witnessing all events and having to decide for ourselves what’s significant. The doctor has spent at least seven or eight years in fervent study of the body. He knows what amino acids are and he knows what your spleen does. He knows your vehicle better than you do. The mind acts almost completely similar to the news media, filtering out events of which you do not need to be aware so as not to bog down your consciousness with trivialities. The priest knows exactly where you may find your Higher Self.
The middle man inevitably begins to appear a lot like the Demiurge in the Gnostic myth. The Demiurge is a false god, falsely believing that anything he creates come from himself, not knowing that things only emanate from the Father, the true God. The doctor believes that he creates your body, or at least, creates your body’s health. The truth is that you can create your body’s health, and that you merely delegate this power to him. All will be rainbows and sunshine if the doctor is decent, lucid and able—he will make your body happy. But if he were truly all of these things, his aim would not be your continued dependence upon him. His aim would not be your continued existence as a stupid, weak and disempowered child. His aim would be to gently push you towards being comfortable with allowing the Source to flow through you, i.e. his aim would be education rather just maintenance.
There is a saying in Zen Buddhism, “If you meet a Buddha on the road, kill him!” The meaning of this saying is obvious: even a Buddha can ultimately be an obstacle to obtaining truth for oneself. In a real world setting however, it could far more rewarding to sit with the Buddha a while, make a decision as to whether to trust him, and ask him if he would be so kind as to point to the truth. One could go to every door in the world and never know that the truth was actually just next-door. A Buddha could really save one some time.
Middle men seem to be particularly destructive when it comes to truth and divinity. Geoffrey Filbert writes in Excalibur Revisited that when L. Ron Hubbard ran the so-called Power Processes, Hubbard never actually “flattened,” or finished, the one that reads, “Tell me a Source.” Hubbard stopped at a half-truth, Self as Source, and never arrived at the other side, i.e. Self as not-Source. It’s interesting then that Hubbard and his church began to posit themselves more and more as the Middle Man when it came to scientology technology, going as far as to attempt to copyright the truth that had been obtained through years of arduous research by many, many gifted people. Geoffrey Filbert, in typically brilliant fashion, knew the higher truth and went about copyrighting and freely publishing that which the church attempted to own and conceal from the public. Geoffrey Filbert killed the Middle Man.
Max Sandor wrote recently in his blog that “there are strong indicators that the BASIC GLUE of non-optimal behavior patterns, some call it 'case', may in fact be based on what falls under the heading of the fuzzy word 'vanity.’” Through the lens of vanity, one could come to a better understanding of the problem of the middle man. Who cannot identify with a need to be needed? Whether it’s a friend, a child, a nation or a student that is in need of you or your expertise, it feels pretty damn good to know that you helped that entity reach a higher ground. Maybe it felt too damn good. It doesn’t take long to look into one’s environment and discover a mother or father who, because of vanity, has deliberately engineered his or her child to remain in constant need of his or her care. The need to be needed is the need to be Source. But, as was mentioned above, the truth is that everything is Source…and yet nothing is Source! It’s just another game, an extremely fun and rewarding one if one has the ability to play both sides (the definition of pan-determinism). It feels great to be needed and it feels different, but just as great, to be in need. There should no seriousness there, just a spirit of play.
It’s worth noting that a middle man, if he or she is not the truly nurturing, educational-type, will begin to produce the opposite of what he or she is supposed to offer. So parents, who are to some extent responsible for teaching their children how to survive, end up destroying their child’s capacity to survive independently of them. A doctor, if one were to take the multitude of pharmaceuticals he has prescribed for one, will end up destroying the body to which he has taken an oath to heal. A religious group will begin to suppress the truth, all in the name of truth, while offering lies to its adherents; all the while making it that much more difficult ‘to become whole again,’ (which comprises the real meaning of the word “religion”). The news media will claim to present unbiased coverage when the content of their reports is always anything but neutral. Could one imagine a world where before every newscast and on the front page of every edition of every newspaper there was this disclaimer, “According to principles ‘discovered’ by Alfred Korzybski, any content that you find here will inevitably amount to an abstraction, a half-truth. The word is not the thing. It is up to you, our viewers and our readers, to discover the whole truth for yourselves.”
There is a strong chance that one’s middle man will refuse to be killed. He has enjoyed the feelings of godliness he has gotten because you have needed him. “You want to kill me? How disrespectful! I have made you what you are. I HAVE CREATED YOU.” The truth is that you have trusted him, he has helped you. Perhaps you were once dependent upon him, but now you stand educated and you have gained your independence. You say, “Before, I almost regretted having to kill you. But now I am going to enjoy it.”
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