The holy fathers were consistent in their negative attitude towards knowledge. In the course of many centuries not only progressive scholars were burned on the fires of the Inquisition, but books as well, which contained forbidden knowledge. It is well known that in 1562, Diego de Landa Calderón (1524—1579), a Spanish monk who was sent to the Americas in order to convert the Indians to Christianity, gathered together and burned massive quantities of Mayan manuscripts. For this and other “feats” he was elevated to the order of Bishop, whilst the priceless knowledge of Mayan culture was forever lost to humanity, which is now racking its brains in an attempt to understand the Mayan prophecy about the Great Transition of December 21, 2012.
By announcing that the eating of the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge is the reason for all suffering, both for those who ate of the fruit and for all their descendents, Saint Augustine and his followers turned the problem on its head, and they themselves, not God, doomed millions of people to suffering. Under the idea of original sin there is nothing left but to suffer or to hang oneself (shoot oneself, poison oneself, etc). What more can one do who has been sentenced by God (!) to live a life of sorrow on an Earth cursed by God (!)?
In reality, the state of things is exactly the opposite; the reason for all suffering is ignorance, and the accumulation of knowledge is the natural mode of deliverance from these things (ignorance and suffering); the renowned Greek philosopher Socrates (469 – 399 B.C.) spoke of this one thousand years before Saint Augustine was even born. It was precisely ignorance that Socrates viewed as the reason for all the afflictions and suffering of mankind. “The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance,” affirmed the great thinker. Socrates, as is known, was recognized by the Oracle at Delphi as the wisest man of his time. Later, millions of people throughout the world would agree with the orcale. And so this wise man left us with a precise diagnosis of the problems (ignorance) and a working recipe for ridding ourselves of them (knowledge). Socrates’ logic is irrefutable, as ignorance is simply the absence of knowledge, a lack of education. There is no reason to find something offensive in this word, ignorance; it is not stupidity, but an unknowing individual, unaware of the answers to certain questions, and nothing more.
The truth of Socrates’ words has been confirmed by history, since there are actually happy people on the Earth! The very fact of their existence decisively proves the fallaciousness of conceptions about original sin and the need for all people to eternally pay for that sin. Happiness, as has been shown, can only be achieved by those people who have managed to comprehend the meaning of life and their destinies (i.e. who have gained knowledge of their destinies), and by those who have the capacity to realize that destiny (who have discovered how to do this). This is attested to by several years of research such as our own and such as that of world renowned American psychologist Abraham Maslow (1908—1970) [7], along with many other scholars.
Socrates presented the complete ignorance of his contemporaries in terms of questions about human nature, the soul and the meaning of life; in precisely those questions which open up the road from suffering to happiness.
We’ll now take a look at what changed regarding this in the twenty-five hundred years that have elapsed since Socrates’ death. Has mankind managed to overcome global ignorance? How much more knowledgeable are we, the people of the twenty-first century, than Socrates’ contemporaries? Or are we just as ignorant as our ancestors?
According to scholars, it took from the start of the Common Era until 1750 for the scope of human knowledge to double. Knowledge had doubled again by 1900 and a third time by 1950. In the ‘70s, human knowledge doubled within the span of ten years, in the ‘80s within five, and by the end of the ‘90s human knowledge was being doubled practically once a year.
The amount of information, particularly digital, is growing even quicker. If, at the current rate, the information created by mankind in a year were to be converted to book format, it would comprise twelve stacks of books, each one reaching from the Earth to the Sun (93 million miles).
The growth of knowledge is particularly evident in technological development. The modern cell phone contains a microprocessor which has more processing power than all the processors which were on the Apollo spacecraft during its flight to the Moon in 1969!
Thousands of colleges and universities are dedicated to the training and education of people all around the world. In the U.S. alone, 260 billion dollars are dedicated to education and science each year.
And so, from the scope, i.e. the amount of knowledge alone, it would seem that we have surpassed Socrates’ contemporaries hundreds if not thousands of times.
But the question is this: what is this knowledge about? What, for example, does the owner of a new cell phone know about his own conscious and subconscious? What does a designer of modern, flashy cars know about his soul, about the meaning of life, or even about the sexual cycles of his wife? What, for example, does the president of a bank or a mighty industrial corporation know about his destiny in life? What about the average citizen, with or without a diploma from a renowned university? What do they know, for example, of the Akashic Records and the experiences of the Monroe Institute in researching the World of Souls? What do people know about the achievements of quantum physics in the realm of human consciousness and the material of our thoughts, of the cycles in development of human civilization and about the real reasons for climate change?
We maintain that 90% of all people don’t know the answers to these questions and don’t even think about them. We were brought to this conclusion by the results of our own research, which we have been carrying on now for more than ten years among our pupils, the number of whom at this point exceeds 50,000 people. Where have we found all these students?
In 1999 we, the authors of this book, founded the “School of Business” in Russia for training managers of direct sales companies in successful methods of carrying out their duties. There are more than two hundred such companies in Russia, and the question of professional training for their managers was and is to this day a very pressing issue.
Our great and continually successful experience in this field turned out to be in high demand, and the School soon transformed into an international one, opening branches in Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova and Kazakhstan. Hundreds and sometimes thousands of people regularly gather for seminars at our school, and in almost every class we carry out surveys that include many questions which shed light on the level of people’s knowledge, their needs and their interests.
Our pupils represent a perfect sample of the middle class in each of these countries. Among managers there are people from every age group (from 20 to 60 years of age) the majority of whom possess college diplomas, that is, people we are accustomed to calling educated. But only individuals among them possess knowledge of the questions enumerated above.
Official information, acquired as the result of sociological research in various countries, attests to the majority of people’s low level of education, particularly as regards questions that are common to high school and college programs.
In Russia, for example, 40% of the adult population doesn’t read books at all, and those who do read are generally satisfied with detective novels and harlequin romances.
The English, looking into the education level of their own population, stated with both shock