This week’s blog will discuss two current popular films, Twilight and Inception. We’ll expose these films’ subtle evil messages and identify the ways these films alert us to the need for occult protection against dark influences in the world masquerading as harmless entertainment.
Subtle evil refers to dark forces that can penetrate our fields subliminally through media and popular culture. While overt evil in the world (such as stealing, lying, cheating and violence) is easier to detect, subtle evil is insidious and much harder to identify. Because subtle evil is often slipped into media and popular culture and passed off as neutral, we can be exposed to messages contrary to our spiritual values without recognizing them. While we may be aware of the need to steer clear of "overt evil" in the form of violence, drugs and harmful activities, we may be vulnerable to subtler negative forces, because we do not recognize them as harmful.
In the film Twilight, an eighteen year-old young woman named Bella grapples with the decision to become a vampire in order to live in a love relationship with her vampire boyfriend. Twilight appears to be about vampires, werewolves, and teenage angst, but actually tells the story of a character, who justifies selling herself to the dark side. This affect is achieved by rationalizing this very disturbing source to give up your soul and become a blood drinker by linking it to the positive value of the normal late teenage independence maturation cycle.
In the film, the main character's attempt to assert her sovereignty is positively linked with her desire to sell her soul and become a vampire for eternity. It subtly links a “positive” (teenage independence) with a “negative” (selling her soul to the devil). Our spiritual perspective tells us that relationships are harmful when they don’t support our spiritual evolution, the purpose of life as God-merging. In other words, the positive and healthy aspiration to be sovereign needs to be linked with what we are choosing to be sovereign over. Are we sovereign over our choice to sell our soul to the devil or to link ourselves with the Divine? Sovereignty is the link then to our overall purpose of knowing God. However, the aspiration to be independent should never override our spiritual foundation.
In the film, Bella chooses to become a vampire under the guise of asserting her autonomy and transitioning into adulthood. While asserting one’s individual sovereignty and maturity is a positive message, there is a deeper, insidious message being parlayed. Vampires, in all cultures, are associated with the dark occult. They appear to be human but they are not. They are soulless beings that live off human flesh. They steal energy from other people against their will. Any action committed against someone’s will defines as black occult.
While this young woman’s decision is couched within the context of teenage maturing, the audience most likely does not notice that she's choosing to become a soulless being. She is willing to give up her soul and humanity to turn to the dark side. While Twilight focuses on a very positive principle, the notion of differentiation and healing and maturing, it makes the vampire world look attractive. They neglect to show scenes of her vampire group hunting for blood, and somehow they are gentler vampires than another group, more actively involved with death and destruction.
The filmmakers, in this case, are taking a very poor contra-spiritual-evolutionary choice and glorifying it because of the underwritten principle that as you mature you should have free choice. This is a very negative message that moviegoers receive - most likely unwittingly!
“Subtle evil” is so pervasive in films and popular culture that Twilight is hardly an aberration. The popular psycho-drama Inception is another movie that instills the energy of subtle evil by masking it with the other intriguing, artful elements of the film. Inception tells the story of a team of criminals who are involved in subtle levels of industrial espionage. They subvert by entering the unconscious dream state of a competitor in order to plant a mental/imaginative seed that will cause him to subconsciously self-sabotage his own economic empire. The title refers to the act of planting a seed that will alter the psyche of a victim through manipulating their dreams. The film's moral logic justifies killing, slander, and manipulation for power by couching these "dark force" ideas in support of bringing a loving father back together with his children. It is the “ends justify the means”, Machiavellian philosophy that justifies extortion for our own egocentric, power-driven gains and the positive value of parental love. The expert filmmaking has you actually rooting for the criminal dark side as they invade this innocent man’s mind to plant a seed of destruction for him and his organization.
The not-so-fictional mind control technique Inception is essentially the reverse of the Zero Point training I give at the Tree of Life. Zero Point is about removing all thoughts from your mind so you can directly flow with the divine will in your life and achieve your sacred design. The dark occult in this movie is able to subtly overwhelm the subject’s mind even though he has set up defense systems. Simply put, Inception justifies the destruction of a person’s sovereignty through subliminal mind control. It involves planting thoughts in the mind, whereas Zero Point is about removing all thoughts from your mind.
A common black occult teaching is that a stronger mind can overcome a weaker mind. Drugs are a big part of occultism because they allow the mind to be penetrated. They allow one to be affected by demons, dybbuks (lost spirits), and also, in this case, the power of the black occult. This whole movie is out of dark occult 101.
Inception’s dark occult characters have developed a method of entering people’s psyches through the dream state. As in most instances of black magic, many characters become deluded, which we often see when people turn to the dark side; they can’t survive the dark energies.
In Inception, it makes another interesting point in the love of the married couple, who have a beautiful love relationship, that is destroyed by this dark occult dream play. Her husband, wanting to help her, in the end, drives her into a psychosis in which she can't distinguish physical reality from the dream state. She eventually kills herself.
I'm going to deviate from the topic for a second because there's another teaching. There is a legend about an ancient Indian sage named Ashtavakra who was born liberated. Ashtavakra’s father is a sage. When Ashtavakra begins correcting his father's Sanskrit from the womb, his father gets angry and curses him to be broken in eight pieces. Ashtavakra is born crippled—in eight places. When he turns eight years old he notices his father is gone. His mother explains that this is because the king had a dream and none of the sages could answer it, and decided to jail all of the sages, including Ashtavakra’s father.
Ashtavakra asks his mother “what was the dream?” His mother tells him that the king had a dream that he was a beggar and went to pick some fruit from a farmer's tree and got beaten up. He awoke feeling like he was beaten up and he asked, "what's real? My sitting here in this kingly world with my crown and throne, or this situation where I was beaten up?” Nobody could answer. Ashtavakra, being liberated said, “Well, that's easy!” The King’s castle had a bell you could ring if you could answer the king’s question. Ashtavakra is a very bold young man, all bent and crooked and only eight years old, and so he goes and rings the bell.
All in the King’s Court laugh at him, including the King.
“What?” says the King. “A broken-up eight-year-old is going to answer my question?”
“King, you're only laughing because you're ignorant. I have the answer to your question," Ashtavakra says.
“Really?” The King says.
“Yes,” says Ashtavakra. Neither is real. The dream state and the waking state are both unreal. What's real is the eternal soul which never dies.”
It is very important to discern the real vs. the unreal! In Inception, the wife Mal is convinced that where they are in their deep dream world is what's real, but the husband, Cobb, knows in his heart that where they are is a dream. He wants her to wake up, but she’s not waking up, so he does something where he enters her mind and does an inception, implanting an idea that he hopes will get her to be willing to go back to the physical world.
On the surface, this may seem like it's a loving thing to do—he wants to save his wife from her delusions. But this is also black occult, because we don't have a right to enter anyone's mind for any reason and alter their situation. The inception he implants continues to grow only it's reversed now, and she's convinced that what's real is the dream or sleep plane. As a result, she becomes psychotic and, ultimately, suicidal.
This is what happens when people play on these deep levels that are beyond what we should be playing with. This seed that he planted against her will grows malignantly, and she commits suicide. He runs away because she set it up in a way that if he didn't join her in this group suicide that it would look like he did it. He goes on the run, in Europe and around the world. People know that he has this ability to go into people's minds and steal their secrets.
Saito, a very powerful Japanese entrepreneur, who is the number two energy producer in the world, has recognized that the head of the number one energy company in the world is dying. Saito wants to plant an idea in his son, which would destroy his competitor. This is the explicit use of the black occult arts. Saito says to Cobb that if you can plant a dream, an idea, in this young man's head that he should divide up his energy empire, then I'll be the number-one energy and number-one power in the world. That is also black occult work, only this time it's going to ruin someone's life and destroy their position in the world. It's industrial sabotage. In return for this, he promises the husband Cobb that he will pull strings to safely enter the United States and no longer be pursued for the alleged murder of his wife. Industrial sabotage and damaging dark occult practices are thus couched in family values.
Notice how this is the same tactic used in Twilight. A good thing like teenage independence somehow is meant to justify moving into the occult. Here it's shown that his desire to be with his children overrides all other moral and spiritual codes—all he has to do is destroy someone’s life, enter their mind, violate their beingness, and then he gets into the country free and all charges against him are dropped and he can fulfill his role as a father. Something is off here!
Looking at the media that's out there, this is going on all the time. We can call it propaganda—they say this big lie enough times, and you can affect people's minds as Goebbels said. But this is more sophisticated because this young man, who is inheriting the number one energy company has actually been trained in how to protect his mind in the cult way. When they enter, his defense systems start activating, and you have all these people shooting at him trying to destroy the dark side, but as it's portrayed, the dark side becomes heroic. In addition, Inception uses the love code 528, discussed by Dr. Len Horowitz as the love harmonic code. They use this as part of the combination to get into the inner safe of his consciousness, again, using a positive thing for dark ends. This strategy is a consistent technique the dark uses to confuse people.
The audience associates the dark side, who are literally invading this guy's mind and trying to destroy him, as heroic and the guy trying to defend himself is portrayed as the dark side. His defense systems are legitimate, being invaded by the dark side of this team running after him. In the end they win; they plant the dream inside his mind and lay the seed for the destruction of the world’s leading energy company and for this young man’s mind.
The principle I am pointing out is that the movie basically says, “you can be as evil as you want as long as you have a "good" purpose”. This is exactly the same principle as we see with the 18-year old choosing to be a vampire. It's like it's her maturity that counts. It doesn't matter what you choose.
Inception is overall a very dark occult movie shifting values, which says evil is good because he gets to be with his kids. It doesn’t say evilness ends up killing people and destroying their lives. He didn't want to accept the karma from invading his wife's mind leading to her suicide. Now he's created more karma by destroying someone else's life and empire in order to be with his kids. The movie ends with everyone is smiling because he's with his kids. What's been planted is dark occult is good—most people don't see that when they see the movie. Most people think, "oh, this is a very interesting, well-done, and complicated movie about the mind."
What’s going on is both movies are putting subliminal messages into you. You want to be a father with your children. You want to mature and have your own choices. But they’re linking it deeply with the dark side. The result? In a subtle way, we lose our ability to choose to distinguish between light and dark. It’s so subtle that few people really get it, but once I expose this to people, it becomes very clear. It shows a very different view of the movie. This is what is going on in our society. Even if you’re well defended, when enough people gang up on you, it’s pretty hard to keep clear. We know in terms of wisdom, it’s wise to work with collective energies that protect you, to live the Six Foundations and Sevenfold Peace creates a field of positive energy that’s much harder to penetrate as well as learning ways to psychically defend yourself. These are all levels of the story.
This is what certain elements in Hollywood and the entertainment world are putting out—very dark occult things making it seem heroic and good and bringing many people in to get involved and see it as good when it isn’t. People see it as merely artistic expression, but it isn’t. It’s very deliberate. You know someone is thinking about this when two movies come out with the same principles. Someone is planting seeds in people’s minds—brainwashing, but more refined—so they can be controlled, their lives destroyed. My teaching is we really have to start distinguishing between the subtle light and the subtle dark, because that’s the battle that’s going on right now. People are giving away their sense of subtle discrimination about light and dark. If this happens enough, you can get people to do anything. That’s what the dark side is going for.
In the spirit of making peace with culture, an aspect of the Sevenfold Path of Peace, we can learn to "touch and not blend", meaning that we can interact with culture as long as we do not lose sight of our higher truths. The key to engaging with culture is to cultivate awareness of the subtle energies that are conveyed and may stray from our higher values.
May everybody be blessed that we have the wisdom to distinguish between subtle light and subtle dark.
- Dr. Gabriel Cousens M.D.
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