DEMOCRACY IS SELF-GOVERNMENT

Harold W. Percival

PART I

THE GOVERNMENT OF THE WORLD

A true, a Real Democracy never can be established on this earth until the Doers in human bodies understand what they are, as distinct from the man-bodies and the woman-bodies in which they are. When the Doers do understand, they will be in agreement that true Democracy is the strongest, the most practical, and the most perfect government that can be created in the interest of, and for, the welfare of each one of the people. Then the people as one people can be and will be self-governed.

What the dreamers of Utopias have failed to conceive, but about which they have tried to write, will be found in true democracy. Why? One of the reasons is that other governments of peoples are outside the people and are against the people; whereas true democratic government is within the people and is for the people. The chief reason that there are dreamers of ideal forms of government is that each Doer now in a human body was originally conscious of itself as the Doer-part of its immortal Triune Self. Then it lived with its inseparable Triune Self in the perfect government of Triune Selves by which all the worlds are governed, before it exiled itself to this human world, in which it periodically lives in the body of a man or of a woman. These statements will seem strange; will seem to be of another Utopian dream. Nevertheless they are true statements about the real government by which the worlds are ruled; the government of which men and women are destined to become conscious after they will have learned to govern themselves under a real democracy.

One depends on the word of another as authority. But you need not depend on the word of another for the truth of these statements. Truth is the Conscious Light within: this Light which, while you are thinking, shows things as they are. There is enough of truth in you to know the truths here stated (if you will forget what you think you know of experience), by thinking of these truths. The truth of this is inherent in the Doer in each human body. As one thinks of these truths they are obviously true; they are so; the world could not be governed otherwise.

In every Doer there is a forgotten memory of that perfect government. At times the Doer tries to imagine and to picture to itself the order of government of which it was once conscious. But it cannot do that because it is now enmeshed in a different kind of body: a fleshly human body. It thinks according to the senses of the body; it speaks of itself as the physical body; it is not conscious of itself as itself; it is not conscious of its relation to its Triune Self. Therefore it does not conceive of the perfect order of The Government of the world and it is not conscious of how the world is governed. The governors of the world are the Triune Selves whose Doers are consciously immortal, and hence are in conscious union and relation with their Thinkers and Knowers: Triune Selves who are in the Realm of Permanence and who have perfect physical bodies which do not die.

The idea or principle of democracy is based on the perfect self-government of each Triune Self and of their government of the world. When any Doer now in a human body understands that it is a Doer and perceives what its relation to the Thinker-and-Knower of its Triune Self is, it will in time regenerate and resurrect its imperfect human body into a perfect and immortal physical body. Then it will be in perfect union with its Triune Self. Then it will qualify to take its place and perform its duties as one of the governors in the perfect government of the world. In the meantime, it can, if it will, work toward that inevitable destiny by trying to establish a true democracy on earth in this realm of impermanence or time.

The Thinker of each Triune Self is the judge and administrator of law and justice to its own Doer in each human body, in accordance with what that Doer has thought and done, and in relation to other Doers in their human bodies.

Everything that happens to the Doers in their bodies, and every occurrence in their relation to each other, is brought about by the Thinkers of the Triune Selves of those Doers decreed as the just consequences of what the Doers have previously thought and done. What happens to the Doer in its body and what it does to others or others do to it, is the just judgment of its own Thinker and is in agreement with the Thinkers of the Doers in the other human bodies. There can be no disagreement between the Thinkers concerning what they cause to happen or allow to happen to their respective Doers in human bodies because all Thinkers judge and administer justice by virtue of the knowledge which is their Knowers’. Each Knower knows every thought and every act of its Doer. No Doer in a human body can think or do anything without the knowledge of its Knower, because the Doer and Thinker and Knower are the three parts of one Triune Self. The Doer in the body is not conscious of this fact because it is the Doer-part and not the Knower-part of the Triune Self, and because while it is immersed in its body it limits itself to thinking and feeling through the senses of the body and about the objects of the senses. It seldom or never tries to think of anything that is not of the body-senses.

Knowledge, inexhaustible and immeasurable and imperishable, is common to the Knowers of each Triune Self. And the knowledge of all the Knowers is available to the Knower of each Triune Self. There is always agreement in the use of knowledge because where there is real knowledge there cannot be disagreement. The knowledge of the Triune Self is not dependent on the senses, though it embraces all that has ever taken place in all the worlds concerning everything from the smallest unit of nature to the great Triune Self of the Worlds through the entirety of time in the Eternal, without beginning and without end. And that knowledge is at once available in the minutest detail, and as one perfectly related and complete whole.

There can be no disagreement between the Doers who are in conscious union with their Thinkers and Knowers, and who are in perfect physical bodies which do not die, because they act in accord with the knowledge of their Knowers. But there is unavoidable disagreement among Doers in human bodies, who are not conscious of their Thinkers and Knowers, and who do not know the difference between themselves and their bodies. They generally consider themselves to be the bodies they are in. They live within time and are without access to the real and permanent knowledge that is of their Knowers. What they generally call knowledge is that which they are aware of through the senses. At best, their knowledge is the accumulated and systematized sum of the facts of nature, observed as natural laws or experienced by them through the senses of their bodies. The senses are imperfect and the bodies die. The most sincere and devoted among the learned and accomplished Doers who have lived for science in the interest of mankind, are limited in their knowledge to the memory of what they have observed or have experienced through their senses during the lives of their bodies. Memory is of four kinds, as sight, sound, tastes and smells. Each of the senses, as an instrument, records the sights or sounds or tastes or smells in its body, and is the same in kind as the like senses in each of the other bodies; but each is different as to accuracy and degree of development from similar senses in every other body. Likewise, each Doer is a Doer but is different from each of the other Doers in their bodies. The observations and sights and sounds and tastes and smells of each Doer will be different from the observations and sights and sounds and tastes and smells of any given subject or object from every other Doer in its human body. Therefore the accumulated observations and experiences cannot be accurate or permanent; they are human, transient, and subject to change. That which changes is not knowledge.

Knowledge is not nature; it is beyond nature; it does not change; it is permanent; yet, it knows all things that do change, and knows the changes and the series of changes that go on in nature units in their growth through the states of pre-chemistry, and in their chemical combinations which produce the phenomena of nature. That knowledge is beyond the present grasp or comprehension of all sciences of the senses. Such is part of the knowledge of the Knower of every Triune Self. It is the knowledge by which the world is governed. If it were not so, there would be no law, no order or sequence, in the definite combinations and changes of the chemical elements, of the composition of seeds according to definite types, of the growth of plants, of the birth and organic development of animals. None of the sciences of the senses can know the laws by which these processes are governed, because they know nothing, practically nothing, as to what the senses are, nor of the conscious Doer in the body and its relation to its Thinker and its Knower as the Triune Self.

And yet, there is a continuous performance of all these commonplace mysteries which are conducted by time: time, which is the change of units or of masses of units in their relation to each other, under The Government of the world. The unseen government of the world is constituted of the Knower and Thinker and Doer of each Triune Self complete, and all are in perfect and immortal physical bodies in the unseen Realm of Permanence. The knowledge of each is at the service of all, and the knowledge of all is at the service of each Triune Self. Each Triune Self is of individual distinction, but there cannot be disagreement in government because perfect knowledge precludes any possibility of doubt. Therefore the unseen government of the world is a real, a perfect democracy.

The idea of the perfect government is inherent in the Doer in every human body. It has manifested in spasmodic efforts at democracy. But each such attempt has failed because the ambition and vanity and selfishness and brutality of man under control of the senses have blinded him to right and justice and urged the strong to subdue the weak. And the strong have ruled the weak. Tradition of rule by might and bloodshed prevailed against rightness and the humanity in man, and there has not been the opportunity for any real democracy. Never before has there been the opportunity that is now offered in the United States of America to have a real democracy.

Democracy offers to a people the best possible government for the interest of all the people. It will eventually be the government of mankind, because it will be the nearest approach in government to the permanent and perfect government by The Government of the worlds, and because in a real democracy, some of the Doers in the people may become conscious of the Thinkers and Knowers of whom they are integral parts. But when great numbers of the people seek their own interests at the expense of others of the people, and when great numbers of the people fail to select the most competent and trustworthy of their number to govern them, irrespective of party or prejudice, and they allow themselves to be hoodwinked, wheedled or bribed to elect the self-seeking politicians, then that so-called democracy is the government which is most easily disrupted and changed into a despotism. And it matters not whether the despotism is benevolent or self-seeking, it is the worst form of government for the people, because no one human is wise enough and strong enough to govern in the interest of all the people. However wise and benevolent the despot may be, he, as a human, will have some defects and weaknesses. He will be surrounded by adroit flatterers, smooth-tongued tricksters, and impostors and humbugs of every kind. They will study him and discover his weaknesses and beguile him in every way possible; they will drive away honest men and seek offices and opportunities to plunder the people.

On the other hand, the would-be despot who desires and pursues power and pleasure is not self-governed; therefore he is incompetent and unfit to govern; he will promise the greatest number of people anything to get their votes. Then he will try by every means to offer them security and relieve them of responsibility and make them dependent on him. When he has taken the power from them, his whims become their law; they are made to do his bidding and they lose all sense of security and whatever freedom they formerly had. Under any kind of despotism, the people will be racked and wrecked and ruined. A nation thus reduced to impotence can easily be conquered by a stronger people, and its existence is ended.

The so-called democracies of history have always been overthrown, and though they offered the people the greatest opportunities, the people have been so blindly selfish, or so careless and indifferent about whom they had to administer their government, as to have allowed themselves to have been cowed, to have been made craven and enslaved. That is why there never has been a real democracy on earth.