The spiritual cause behind shooting sprees and other forms of violence

TOPICS: The reaction to shooting are often hypocritical – a system-wide problem in America causes these shootings – a generation of young people with no sense of purpose – the consciousness that creates a problem also prevents people from seeing the solution – American national psyche – American individualism can become a closed system – America is a cosmic experiment – being your brother’s keeper – a world view based on the reality of life – the dysfunctional modern world view – many young people feel stuck – only way to minimize violence is to give people a sense of purpose in life – universal spiritual view of life – how the power elite benefits from people having no purpose – Christianity as a mind-control machine – how the power elite used science – both Christianity and materialism deprive people of real sense of purpose – the power elite controls people by creating two opposites – can the elite protects us against the consequences created by the elite? – people have not taken responsibility for their lives or their nation – universal spirituality cannot be misused by the power elite – dark forces always behind such extreme incidents – dark forces need to steal people’s energy, but it must first be misqualified through negative feelings – the shortcomings of psychology –

Question from Kim: Jesus, do you have any comment on the shooting at Virginia Tech? What really causes such an incident, what are the spiritual causes behind it? I was surprised to read that since the incident, there have been quite a number of threats about copy-cat incidents, with young people threatening to kill more people than the shooter at Virginia Tech. It seems there is a segment of young people in America who actually see this kind of action as something to be admired, copied and bested. Can you explain why our society has come to this point?

Answer from ascended master Jesus through Kim Michaels:

I obviously have no desire to be insensitive to the people who have been directly affected by this incident, nor to the people who might fear that they or their children could be the victims of future incidents. However, I do want to make it clear that I am neither shocked nor surprised by this incident, for I clearly see what most people in America refuse to see.

In fact, I consider much of the public reaction – from the media, from politicians and from most citizens – to be an obvious case of hypocrisy. As all hypocrisy, it is based on a denial, a denial of the responsibility to look for the beam in one’s own eye. Most people are – as usual – more interested in pointing the finger at someone else, rather than admitting that this shooting is only one – admittedly dramatic but certainly not isolated – consequence of a system-wide problem for which all Americans are partly responsible.

In fact, if one were to step back from this incident, one might consider the fact that every single week far more than 30 people are killed all across America as a result of this system-wide problem. It might be through drugs and drug-related crime, including gang violence, or it might be through suicide of other kinds—in which I include many types of self-destructive lifestyles. These incidents have simply become so common that they have lost their shock effect, thus barely causing raised eyebrows, much less headlines.

The brutal fact is that the American nation has produced a generation of young people who have no purpose in life and thus do not value life – their own or that of other people – as should be normal and natural. So the real question is whether America as a nation is willing to consider why it has produced people who see no higher purpose to life?

As I explain throughout this website, this universe is designed to serve as a schoolroom for human beings. Thus, any incident that happens has the potential to become a learning experience. I have also explained that people can learn in two ways. One is by being open to spiritual direction and the other is through the school of hard knocks, where people learn by experiencing the – often painful – consequences of their actions.

So what we have here is – in its objective essence – an incident in which the American nation is receiving an opportunity to learn by seeing the extreme material consequences of its unwillingness to learn through spiritual direction. As a spiritual teacher, I lament the fact that people so often refuse to learn until they are faced with such consequences. Yet because I respect free will, I am always willing to help people learn. I wish their minds could be opened to learning without these extreme events, yet for those who are willing to learn from this incident, let me offer some thoughts.

Thought 1

First, let me say that I find it unlikely that American society as a whole will actually learn the lesson people need to learn from this incident. The reason is that the lesson that needs to be learned is that a society without spirituality will inevitably lead to self-destruction. Yet it was precisely America’s refusal to reach for – true – spiritual guidance that produced the circumstances that led to this incident.

As is so often the case, we have a spiritual catch-22. The very consciousness that created the problem also prevents people from seeing the problem and its cause—thus blinding them to the solution. Moreover, that same consciousness makes people prone to respond to the situation in a way that will not change the basic equation—and thus is likely to increase tension and thus set the stage for an even more tragic event in the future. This was the very mechanism that caused America to fail to learn from the 9/11 event and set the stage for the current situation in Iraq. As I have said before, you cannot solve a problem with the same state of consciousness that created the problem.

Thought 2

As Saint Germain eloquently explained, any closed system inevitably self-destructs, and this applies to a person as well. As should be clear from even a superficial study of this situation, the shooter did indeed isolate himself, thus becoming a closed system in which he became increasingly blinded by his own delusions, until the tension became so intense that he self-destructed. Yet it is also clear that several people were aware that he had a problem. So why did no one – including family, friends, other students, teachers or the system itself – get him the help he needed?

Part of the explanation for this is the American national psyche, which many people see as American individualism. Yet America is a cosmic experiment, which is a microcosm of the planetary experiment that Maitreya describes in his book. The basic idea is to bring together people from many different backgrounds so that they can challenge each other’s illusions, their mental boxes. The reason this is an experiment is that it can go in one of two ways:

People can expand their mental boxes and learn to see beyond outer differences, including race, ethnicity, nationality and sex. They can develop a true community spirit as human beings – or even better, as spiritual beings – and transcend the differences that normally divide people. In its essence, the purpose of the experiment is to break the isolationism that most groups of people have and force people to become more open to the universality behind appearances (Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment. (John 7:24)). The ultimate universality being, of course, that all people are the offspring of the same God.
People can close their minds and become even more isolationist, seeing the presence of different people as a threat that is forced upon them. Thus, they inevitably go into the Cain consciousness, as expressed in the quote, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 4:9). Is it not obvious that too many people separated themselves from the shooter and did not see themselves as his keeper? Obviously, his Asian descent played a part in this, but there is still a general tendency in America of not taking responsibility for others—actually thinking others should be left alone.

My point here is that America has a tendency to think that individual freedom trumps everything else, yet since no man – or woman – is an island, this is a mindset that needs to be expanded. If you do not want to be your brother’s keeper, don’t complain if your brother – after having become a closed system for lack of contact with other people – comes at you with a gun.

Obviously, one could say that many Americans do not see certain other people as their brothers and thus feel no responsibility for keeping them. An unbiased study of history will show that there is much discrimination in American society. My point here is not to place blame, but to simply point out that the tension between various groups of people is a clear sign of dualistic elements, causing people to polarize into opposing factions. This should be a clear warning sign that MUST be addressed and overcome.

This polarization can be overcome only by a critical mass of Americans looking beyond outer appearances – including race – to find the universal commonality between all people. Yet where shall the willingness to look beyond come from? Well, it can come ONLY through a spiritual world view that recognizes a universal source for all people.

Thought 3

The central issue in this incident is now coming into focus, namely that the shooter obviously did not value life—neither his own nor that of the other people he killed. So the real question is why modern American society – and most of western society – has produced a generation of young people with this lack of respect for life? Where must the respect for life come from?

Well, it can come from only one source, namely a clear understanding of the spiritual reality of life. That reality is what we explain throughout this website, and it is explained in great detail in Maitreya’s book. Yet let me give a very brief summary of the points that are important to this incident:

The Conscious You is an extension of, an individualization of, the Creator’s own Being.
You are designed to start out with a limited self-awareness and multiply your talents until you first become an immortal spiritual Being and then move on to attain the self-awareness of your Source.
The growth in self-awareness gives a clear purpose and direction to life. This also gives your life an immeasurable value.
Beyond personal growth you also have a greater purpose, namely to help bring God’s kingdom and a Golden Age to earth, even to raise up the entire sphere in which you live and make it a permanent part of the spiritual realm.
You have lived many lifetimes before, and in this lifetime you wanted to achieve certain goals, including learning specific lessons, paying back debts from past lives and expressing your unique individuality.
You have a Divine plan for this lifetime, a plan you made before coming into embodiment. You can reconnect to it by increasing your awareness and using your intuitive faculties.
As you expand your self-awareness, you realize how the material universe works, namely that it forms a kind of mirror that reflects back to you material conditions that correspond to your state of consciousness. If you think life is a struggle where everyone is out to get you, then that will be the material conditions mirrored back to you.
You have free will and can create any circumstances you want. Yet you can never escape experiencing the circumstances you create.
The only way to change your outer circumstances is to begin by changing the cause, namely your state of consciousness. You must begin by pulling the beam in your own eye, rather than focusing on the mote in the eyes of other people.
Everything in your outer life is a reflection of what is happening in your psyche. You have unlimited potential for changing your psyche. If you don’t like your circumstances or don’t like yourself, you can change yourself by increasing your awareness and using appropriate techniques.
When you change yourself, your outer circumstances WILL also change.

When you have this world view, your life never lacks purpose and you have ultimate respect for life as a unique opportunity to grow and to express your individuality in a way that lifts up both yourself and all life. In contrast, here is the world view with which a large number of young people have been brought up:

You are a nobody, you are simply a highly evolved animal.
There is no purpose or goal for your life beyond what you experience in the material universe.
Your personal life has no specific goal, and thus you and your life really have no value.
There is no greater purpose for human existence beyond living for a very limited number of years and then disappearing as if you had never existed.
You have never lived before. You are simply the product of your genes and your society, including your parents. Circumstances over which you had no control made you who you are and there is nothing you can do about it.
There is no deeper principles for how the material universe works, and there is certainly no connection between your state of consciousness and the outer circumstances you experience. You are simply a helpless victim of circumstances that are entirely beyond your control.
You have free will and can do anything you want. If you do not get caught, you can get away with anything, for there is nothing beyond this material life. So you can essentially do whatever you want without experiencing the consequences of your actions.
You cannot change your outer circumstances by changing yourself. Other people and society made you who you are, so they are to blame.
Nothing in your outer life is a reflection of what is happening in your psyche. You have a very limited potential for changing your psyche. If you don’t like your circumstances or don’t like yourself, don’t try changing yourself—find someone to blame.
You are stuck in a situation you didn’t create, so all you can do is protest against the people and society who forced you into it. However, these people don’t care about you – you are worthless – so killing yourself is the only escape and killing others is the only way to make a statement that will actually get people’s attention.

When you accept the first world view, you see that life has a general purpose and your personal life has a specific purpose—as have the lives of all other people. You see life as an opportunity for growth and thus you value life. You realize that you are ultimately responsible for your life and that you can change your life by changing yourself. Thus, you never feel stuck and never feel the need to lash out against others. Consequently, you never feel that violence is your only option or that suicide is your only way out.

When you accept the second world view – and know nothing else – you refuse to take responsibility for yourself. Thus, you inevitably feel stuck, and it is only when people are backed into a corner – when the flight response has been neutralized – that they resort to violence through the fight response. So the conclusion is simple. If America wants to avoid an escalation in this type of violence, it must find a way to give its young people – or should we say all people – a sense of purpose and a sense that they do have a way out.

Have I made the point clearly? There simply is NO WAY to avoid violence except to restore respect for the value of life. This cannot be done without giving people a sense of purpose and meaning. And this cannot be done without giving them a spiritual outlook on life. Take note that I am not hereby advocating that everyone would believe in a particular outer religion. I am talking about a universal world view that transcends and cannot be monopolized by any one church. It was this universal view that I truly taught 2,000 years ago. It was the same view the Buddha taught and that all true spiritual teachers have taught.

Which then gives rise to the obvious question of why such a world view is not the norm in American society, a question that can only be answered by considering who stand to benefit from the current conditions? Who is it that does NOT want people to take responsibility for themselves and realize that there is always a way out, that there is an alternative to the lifestyle they have been brought up to accept? Well, who can it be except those people who want to control the general population?

Thought 4

Behind everything that happens in society, there is always the power elite, and you will never truly understand history without looking at how an elite has attempted to control the general population. Every society has had a dominant elite and an aspiring elite, as Saint Germain recently explained. It was the dominant elite that killed me 2,000 years ago. Why did they do this? Because I taught a universal spiritual path that could make people independent of the dominant religion of my time. This path would take people beyond the control by the dominant elite, who were using the outer religion as the primary means for controlling the people.

When I started preaching that the kingdom of God is within you, the power elite decided that they had to silence me with any means necessary. My point being that the power elite never want people to discover the spiritual reality that can make them self-sufficient and thus take them beyond the control of any power on earth. And this is precisely what explains why people in western civilization are not being taught a universal, spiritual world view.

For centuries the dominant elite was the people who controlled the Catholic Church behind the scenes. Their control caused the Church to lose all spirituality and teach a world view that is grossly simplistic and almost mechanized. Which is why the Church – for over a thousand years – was one of the most effective mind-control machines ever seen on this planet. No objective person can claim that the medieval church attempted to follow my call to give people the truth that will make them free (John 8:32). Instead, it gave them a set of illusions that kept them imprisoned in a very small mental box and a very rigid outer society controlled by a small elite. No wonder they call it the dark ages.

As always happens, the dominant elite became blinded by their own mindset, they became a closed system, and their power started slipping. Because of the rigidity with which they attempted to defend their doctrines, people started seeing that the doctrines did not make sense. This gave an opening for a new – far more universal – world view, as promoted by the early scientists.

Yet as soon as science began to actually challenge the world view promoted by the Catholic Church, the aspiring elite quickly seized upon the opportunity and started controlling science as a means for taking power from the then dominant elite. This caused science to deviate from its original track, which was to provide a universal world view, free from the superstition and inconsistent doctrines of the Church—but not free from spirituality.

This, of course, was not what the aspiring power elite wanted, for it would make it impossible for them to control the population. So they gradually took science into the detour called scientific materialism, where science became the opposite polarity to the Catholic Church and all organized religion. Thus, the population was led into the illusion that they had to choose between one of these polarities, thereby cleverly obscuring the fact that there is an alternative, namely the universal, spiritual, world view I am talking about.

So western society is now caught in this dualistic battle between a religion devoid of universal spirituality (based on the dualistic illusion that there can be only one true church) and a science devoid of any spirituality (based on the dualistic illusion that there is nothing beyond the material universe).

One might think that the Church’s world view would be the lesser of two evils, since it contains the concepts of a God and punishment in an afterlife. Yet if that were true, how come the Middle Ages – during which the Catholic Church dominated people’s thinking – had so little respect for the value of life and maintained a system that made the general population the literal property of the noble class?

My point being that both world views are equally damaging in terms of placing responsibility for life and salvation away from the individual. Only when you personally take responsibility for your life in this world and for your ascendance into a higher world, can you have the ultimate respect for life and truly value the life of yourself and others. The Catholic Church obviously placed that responsibility on itself and its graven image of me and God, thereby effectively putting people in a situation where they could do nothing to free themselves and thus could be controlled by an elite.

Today, scientific materialism is doing the exact same thing, only from the opposite direction, from the opposite dualistic polarity. Materialism promotes the world view I described earlier, in which there seemingly is no higher authority and rules. This leads people into thinking that anything goes—if it feels good, do it, for nothing really matters and life has no value.

It might seem as if this permissive world view would go against the purpose of the elite—namely wanting to control the population. Yet in reality, the same goal can be accomplished. The old world view placed a punishing God, and its representative – the Church – as the obvious authority controlling the people. As long as the people believed in this authority and its world view, they were under control. This obviously restricted people’s behavior, but it also protected them – to some degree – from creating unpleasant consequences. However, people also felt the control as a burden and as a restriction of their freedom.

Thus, people’s inherent drive for freedom – which is truly a drive for true spiritual freedom – was used by the aspiring elite to create an alternative world view. When you remove the restraints of an external authority, people begin to do whatever they want. This inevitably creates consequences, as the cosmic mirror reflects back people’s state of mind. And as these consequences become increasingly severe, the aspiring elite can step in and present itself as the protectors of the people—offering to protect them from the consequences of their own actions by creating the illusion that if only people follow the elite, they will not have to change their lifestyle and world view.

The extreme example of a materialistic philosophy was communism, which created a tension between the communist block and the so-called free world. For decades this allowed the power elite to set itself up as the ones who were protecting the people in the West from communism—yet they had created communism and its opposite, capitalism. This caused the elite to run American foreign policy, and one consequence was to open the nation to the 9/11 event, which then became an excuse for limiting people’s civil liberties.

Likewise, the Columbine and now the Virginia Tech incidents are direct products of the materialistic world view. Yet they will likely be used to manipulate the American people into giving up more of their freedom. After all, we need the elite to protect us against the consequences of the world view created by the elite, right? For if only we give up a few freedoms, we can continue to live the lifestyle to which we have become addicted, namely that we do whatever feels good without worrying about the consequences—without taking responsibility for our personal lives and our society.

This illusion – this eternal ping-pong game between two dualistic opposites – will be maintained until the people wise up and decide that they want more than a comfortable materialistic life, they want true spirituality, they want real answers to the questions of life, they want the Living Word instead of dead doctrines and barren philosophies. Yet for this to happen, people must decide that they are willing to change themselves, to change their consciousness, to pull the beam from their own eyes.

As long as people refuse to take full responsibility for their lives and salvation, there will always be a power elite who is controlling them. After all, as long as you are refusing to take full responsibility for yourself, you are actually saying that you want someone else to make decisions for you. And as Maitreya explains in his book, no true spiritual teacher will do this for you. Yet the false teachers will gladly do this, and they do so because they want something from you—they want power, they want your spiritual light.

Thought 5

What would be the best possible outcome of the Virginia Tech shooting? It would be that a critical mass of Americans would realize that incidents such as this one are what the cosmic mirror reflects back as a result of the current American lifestyle and world view. Thus, this world view is bankrupt and a fundamental – not a fundamentalist – change is needed.

If anyone is willing to look for a higher world view – a view that can take them beyond the dualistic power-struggle – there are already many teachings on this website and more will be added. Yet for those who really want to understand the basic dynamic and how to defeat the power elite, I recommend Maitreya’s book LINK as the best introduction currently available.

The Virginia Tech shooting is simply one consequence of an anti-spiritual world view. More will follow—unless Americans wake up and realize there is a middle way – a strait and narrow way – between the two dualistic extremes of organized religion and materialistic science. Why am I talking about a universal spirituality? Because the more universal spirituality is, the more difficult it is for the power elite to use it to control the people. I did not come to start the organized Christian churches you see today. I came to start a universal spiritual movement, designed to set people free from any outside control by helping them find the kingdom of God within themselves—thus attaining the only true form of independence, namely spiritual self-sufficiency.

Thought 6

In an incident as extreme as this one, it needs to be considered that the person who is identified as the shooter was not actually the being who committed this act. The shooter had indeed become so influenced by the anti-spiritual world view that he was vulnerable to certain forces, which we might call non-material forces. These forces are beings who have been cut off from receiving any light directly from the spiritual realm, from their higher selves. Thus, they can survive only by stealing light from people.

Yet these beings cannot absorb light of a very high vibration, so they must get people to misqualify the light, to lower its vibration through negative feelings, such as fear and anger. My point being that after the Virginia Tech shooter had become a closed system, he became vulnerable to certain dark beings who started projecting thoughts of victimization, anger and hatred into his mind and emotional body. Precisely because he cut himself off from meaningful interaction with other people, the shooter gradually became completely controlled by these forces.

I am aware that people who have been brought up with the materialistic world view described above will be prone to reject the existence of such forces. Yet what you do not know can indeed hurt you, and ignorance of such forces only makes you more vulnerable to them. In fact, all self-destructive behavior – from over-eating to drug addiction to violence – is caused by people becoming controlled by such non-material forces.

So when the shooter had lost his connection to reality, his mind was so taken over by these beings that they literally were able to use his body and outer mind at will. Thus, it was actually the being that controlled him who performed the shooting. I am not thereby saying that the shooter had no responsibility, for he was indeed responsible for allowing these forces entry into his mind and energy field. Yet I am simply pointing out that you were not dealing with an act of insanity. You were dealing with a highly calculated act, designed to produce enormous amounts of negative energy that the non-material forces can use for their sustenance.

This is truly what is behind all serial killings, rapes or other violent crimes. Insane people do not generally hurt other people but only themselves. Thus, when you see deliberate acts of repeated violence, you know non-material forces are at play. Incidentally, this also makes it very difficult to predict such acts. Even though the shooter had displayed certain warning signs, no current psychologist or psychiatrist is educated to take into consideration the influence of demonic forces.

So unless a psychologist had actually seen the shooter while he was taken over by these forces, there would have been no scientific basis for declaring the shooter a danger to society. Do you see my point? As long as the science of psychology does not take into account the existence of non-material forces, how can it possibly predict what actions people might commit while taken over by such forces? The denial of a non-material cause not only blocks an accurate diagnosis, it also block any real solution.

Could the situation have been avoided? Certainly, but not by the current mental health care system. It would take a spiritual world view to detect that the shooter had become open to non-material forces and a spiritual treatment plan to help him overcome that vulnerability. I can assure you that in the not-too-distant future, such a spiritual world view will indeed become the norm in western society, and thus such incidents will become extremely rare.