Erst kommt das Fressen, dann die Moral

The Treaty of Amsterdam

In line with the European ideal of 'the bigger the better', many small people, especially in small countries like the Netherlands, have urgently tried to become big in an altogether unusual way. This has also affected the city of Amsterdam, as well as its city-university which had preserved much of the idealism of a free and just society of the 1960's, until the Treaty of Amsterdam was signed. Until then, the spiritual climate of the city was still local, more or less open and progressive. Control and repression were unpopular. This always has attracted many unconventional people who are traditionally less interested in money as the only meaning in life.

This has changed. And a new symbolic subway-system was designed, the North/South Metro Line, on the one hand with an open character by the amount of glass, suggesting transparency, on the other hand showing many mirror-like effects, so that presumably also its engineers would like to enter.

Commercialisation also took place at the University of Amsterdam, adapting to an unoriginal European standard, competing to be more international in delivering a good product: the student who finishes his studies successfully and sometimes his life, unsuccessfully.

Not everybody with an interest in free or uncontrolled intellectual development indeed was welcome anymore in its enclaves.

One particular individual was scandalised for having spoken about the World-Teacher Maitreya, the Master Koot Hoomi and Djhwal Khul, frequently called 'the Tibetan'. The latter became well-known by the many books he telepathically dictated to Alice Bailey in preparation of a new world-order, where spirituality and science, soul and matter, in other words where means and meaning would meet.

The person in question, who had thus spoken about the teaching of Maitreya, was simply turned out of university-circles. Having his dinner in the mensa – public meeting-space and restaurant – he was approached and interrogated by nearly ten policemen who had been called by the manager to this effect. Being no official student, he was then thrown out, not welcome henceforth.

Two Surinam security-guards had suggested his removal a little before. They just happened to have a job like this and had nothing else to do than inspect innocent folk, who speak too loud or who don't speak or who sit on a table rather than in a chair, in other words: who don't behave themselves. As a result of this type of control, in all sections of society and by the same cynical logic, many people have basically lost their country. Also security-guards need some entertainment. Life would be too boring otherwise.
This incident occurred long before the terrorist-attacks of September 11, 2001 in the U.S.A., but – to his shock – this innocent person already then was suspected of terrorist-plans, as he later admitted with hesitation.

Many cases are known in which, not stupid or wicked, people were separated from society in similar ways, just by a form of rigid obedience, call it slavery, and subsequently had to live – or die – on the street. Not only the university is guilty but the city-council and the national government, who have turned tolerance and democracy into a form of vanity – a kind of ideology, and who are proud to be pragmatic at the same time, like a merchant – no mercy. For within a context of large and rational political structures like Europe, some small, local and organic interests are easily sacrificed to suspense, in which everyday-life and learning are a matter only of results and ulterior motives. In this respect the university is no exception to the general rule that commercialisation leaves, or brings, organisations at the mercy of the power of money. More particularly it brings individuals at the mercy of the common denominator of foolishness.

A university is supposed to not only pass on some form of culture achieved so far, but to maintain the surroundings in which we can interpret the difference between personal and collective responsibility for ourselves. For not everybody is able to understand his own responsibility at heart. And who is, should at least be honoured by non-violence. Such people are rare and unique, and indispensable to our culture and our future, who will understand that their real responsibility is non-violence in this way. Control and competition are not even sublimations of violence, but rudimentary and prior (to) violence, draining the soul and exploiting the world. Violence just (foolishly) intends to bring relief, as any intelligent person can understand. Non-violence is no slavery or subordination, but understanding the inner rules of life by the difference between content and form, cause and effect. Life is content and cause, society is a form and a kind of effect. Formalism and materialism is one and the same thing, and not even social. Commercialism brings people at the mercy of violence. Yet they are supposed to be a good product of and equally useful to our society, at least the idea.

We already know of the cornerstone.

In a state of suppression the individual has to serve society – or the state in disguise – rather than the reverse until there is no individual left and society becomes a cynical remnant of itself, in fact until it disappears by its own selfish ideology, more abstract than a god or devil.

Students are moulded in this understanding, as if all scientists who feed them were no individuals but merely a product of later founded institutions, and as if cause does not precede effect. The same can be said to apply to both terrorism and any war on terror, twins and the common denominator of foolishness.

The individual who was kicked out of the mensa has at least had a lesson in psychology, call it economy, and what comes first: form or content.

By the law of analogy he has interpreted his local experience as a feat of mass-hysteria indeed.

The Master taught him this.

"Erst kommt das Fressen, dann die Moral," it has been said. And a public meeting-space is precious.

"Man ist was man isst."