A Course in Miracles: Saving America With Ayn Rand and Jesus

How do we save America?

Ayn Rand's students claim that the first American Revolution was incomplete. The radical uprising of 1776 was an attempt to unleash the full potential of men and women by declaring them independent of subservience to priests, kings, aristocrats, or the political majority of some man-made democracy. Freedom to realize the potential for the fullness of life! But something went wrong.

The heroic Founding Fathers of America would by horrified by the "for your own good" changes President Obama and his thugs would like to force on us.

What went wrong?

Ayn Rand might say that although the American founders had tremendous self-assurance born out of inspired enlightenment thinking, they did not make a clear statement of moral imperatives which would necessarily create a solid foundation. They did not teach men and women the fundamental ideas prerequisite to feeling the sense of self-confidence and self-certainty which would be required to make a liberty-based republic work.

Students of Ayn Rand would say men and women lacking self-esteem naturally gravitate toward either wanting to rule others or willing to be ruled ... two expressions of the same malady. Rand's students might also claim that if socialist ideas top the list of self-esteem killers, Christian ideas are only a few notches down the list.

With respect to the latter claim, perhaps they have a point if they are referring to the Pauline mysticism that so often passes for Christianity. But modern scholarship tells us that the true teachings of Jesus have nothing to do with Pauline mysticism and everything to do with opening one's mind to certainty and self-esteem beyond even that imagined by Rand's Objectivists.

Two facts are in the 21st Century ascertainable:

1. Pauline mysticism is not the teaching of Jesus. The true teaching of Jesus, preserved for a while in the Nazarine movement of Jesus' direct disciples and relatives, and called "The Way," was shouldered into obscurity by Pauline Christianity to the north and west, and eventually by Islam to the east and south. (Read The Secret Legacy of Jesus: the Judaic teachings that passed from James the Just to the Founding Fathers)

2. The true teaching of Jesus, spelled out clearly in A Course in Miracles is all about achieving correct perception and reason:

"We said before that the abilities which man possesses are only shadows of his true abilities. Methodologically, man's mind has been very creative. But, as always occurs when method and content are separated, it has not been utilized for anything but an attempt to escape a fundamental and entirely inescapable impasse. This kind of thinking cannot result in a creative outcome, though it has resulted in considerable ingenuity.

"It is noteworthy, however, that this ingenuity has almost totally divorced him from knowledge. Knowledge does not require ingenuity at all. When we say 'the truth shall set you free,' we mean that all this kind of thinking is a waste of time, but that you are free of the need of engaging in it.

"The 'laws of chaos' can be brought to light, though never understood. Chaotic laws are hardly meaningful, and therefore out of reason's sphere. Yet they appear to constitute an obstacle to reason and to truth. Let us, then, look upon them calmly, that we may look beyond them, understanding what they are, not what they would maintain. It is essential it be understood what they are for, because it is their purpose to make meaningless, and to attack the truth. Here are the laws that rule the world."

There is nothing "mystical" about the true teachings of Jesus, and in fact these teachings might be said to help "fill in the blanks" not addressed by Ayn Rand in such a way that by comparing these two great mind-opening revelations for the 21st Century, the philosophy of Ayn Rand and the true teachings of Jesus, the answer to completing the American Revolution can be found.

The answer might be stated in many ways. Both Jesus and Ayn Rand might say, "the truth shall set you free." But what really is the fundamental truth, the most totally alive underlying experience of mankind?

When the light bulb finally went on in Dagney Taggart's mind, when she finally said in her mind the equivalent of "Oh, my God!", she commented to John Galt something like: "We never needed to worry, did we?" So maybe the final experience of untouchable self-worth which allows one to know with certainty "I have no need to ever rule others nor concede to being ruled" rests on the development of total trust.

In A Course in Miracles Jesus states: "Trust ... is the foundation on which their ability to fulfill their function rests."

Or maybe there are other traits besides trust which lead to the same result, other aspects of character development which will facilitate the same enlightenment in mankind. Whatever the answer to finalizing the American Revolution, it will not be found in the writings or lecturing of those who would rule or those who would allow themselves to be ruled. It will most likely be found in Ayn Rand's philosophy expounded in her remarkable novel Atlas Shrugged as well as in the teachings of Jesus outlined in A Course in Miracles.

To better understand the evil psychology of modern "liberal progressives," read Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged"

"God's laws will keep your minds at peace, because peace IS His Will, and His laws are established to uphold it. His are the laws of freedom, but yours are the laws of bondage. Since freedom and bondage are irreconcilable, their laws CANNOT BE UNDERSTOOD TOGETHER. The laws of God work only for your good, and there ARE no other laws beside His. Everything else is merely lawLESS, and therefore chaotic." -Jesus Christ in A Course in Miracles