after taking pains to type this all up, i'm putting this text online in an effort to promote serious in-depth thought from someone whose ideas are pretty much sidelined in the music industry (and hardly well-known outside of a few radical centers even then). It is my hope that John (and Paola) won't mind me putting these excerpts of their not-easily-found book here. If you know how to contact John or Paola, please email me so that i may gain a more formal type of permission, or at least put in motion getting John's ideas SOMEWHERE ELSE on the Net (beyond the limits of his most recent, yet powerful, music releases)! And, John, i hope you will see this attempt to share your ideas with the world as something VALUABLE!

in discussion with Paola Igliori, John comments:

...The internal predator...I don't place emphasis on the internal predator because I don't think there is an internal predator, I think that the predator is truly external. It's in the structures and creations of man....see, we just are. We are human beings. ...We got what would be defined as strengths and weaknesses. I think that our technologic civilization is driving itself insane by going so far into the minute that it misses the simplicity of one doing the best that they can with the best that they have. For the tribes, for us here on this land, before the Europeans came here, we didn't have any problem with love and fear and loss...that wasn't some internal predator running around in our mind or our psyches or our souls or our spirits. That was something that the Europeans brought...that's an equation, a perception that's unique to them.
...
It's like this whole concept of guilt, sin and blame...it's all bullshit. It's an external programming being put inside of us. What we are is just natural human beings, natural human beings when we're honest with ourselves, when we tell ourselves the truth and then we act according to that honesty. See, I think that's what it takes, that's what it starts to take to make things more clear for us, to make us healthier is to tell ourselves the truth. [These] abstractions, to me, like love and pain and they become equated...that's too much like that psychoanalysis that comes of of European psychiatric mind fucking, doing the best that we can with the best that we have and understand the power that is in that. ...Let's say it like that: value is in the material world; power, real power is in the world of spirit.
(...)
Paola: The oppressor feels threatened by the power of awareness and it's a war that's very real and not new. Hitler knew and conquered all the power spots in Europe as the first thing; the Catholic church put its cross on top of Incas and Mayan pyramids and power spots in general.

It has put its cross on many, many of the European tribes, too. Europe's citizens were tribes before they were citizens.
Paola: Yeah, I'm pretty aware of that, being Italian; we still are in some ways. Our culture, somewhat like yours, I think, is more connected to celebration, to the earth, to life. Even if the predator has crept in since longer time, our roots are strong. Anyway...yes, Hitler...even very recently it was done in Europe...and yes, it's been done throught the ages...So, there could possibly be an actual physical danger around people that spread awareness even now, don't you think?

Well, I think that what one would define as physical danger, I think the potential for that is always there, but in context of people being hunted because of their thought and their perception, that goes hand in hand with "civilization"...it has always been a part of civilization and I don't expect it to go away now. It has been one of the main tools of civilization, to attack the spirit of the people...to persecute and hunt, and have their search and destroy missions against thought...
(...)

Paola: ...I really hear what you say about deactivating the external predator, that preys on our spirit, deactivate it through our perception of it, as it lives in the mind-set...
(next page)
So we all have associations in our subconscious that keep us stuck in repetitions until we get really aware of them. Of where the links are. Usually pain is the communication to pay attention, and if there isn't attention the price is more pain.

excerpts from "American Indian Community House, New York; June 17, 1992":
...we're part of the natural world, we're not necessarily superior to it but we're a part of it, and when we consider our role in that proper context--this predator energy feeds upon living things--it has found a way to take fossils and mine them into a form of energy to run its machine system--this predator energy has also found a way to mine the spirit, has found a way to mine our minds.

It feeds off all of us. And just as that fossil fuel system contaminates and pollutes the environment around us--the air the water the whole life cycles--and it leaves it back with its poisons and contamination [so we find the same in the way they mine our spirits]. As they mine our spirit through our minds the contaminations and pollutants are the distortions that are left and leave our minds foggy so that we can't see clear--that's the insecurities--that's the hatreds and the extremes of self trust and self respect and many forms of masks and disguises that it wears within our minds--this is all very deliberately done.

So in order for this system, this predatory energy system to work, we have to believe in it, we have to believe it, and if we are to look clearly at what's really going on as this process works, if we are going to believe in it then we can not believe in ourselves, we can not trust ourselves that's just the way this system works. We all have a commonality and it's within our genetic memory--I am from the people that are indigenous to this hemisphere but we are all indigenous to this planet. The DNA of the earth is in all of us--it is in all of us and it's just part of what's being mined along with the rest of the fossils--it's some elaborate system that I can't quite truly understand but it feeds upon us.
[(editor's note to John and others: in my view the external predator is fear which has become a kind of rigid institution where all policies and imaginations emanate directly from being stuck in fear; Russell Means called it *fear of the unknown*; i see this fear as institutionalized in modern "civilization", and a way to overcome this situation may be to institutionalize the opposite: i.e. bridging with fearers in ways that beautifully "blow them away"! We're not going to solve the problem by increasing fear quotients!)]

So this predator energy that feeds upon us--its got to do with clarity and how we use our minds. Predator energy...like in this time, this historical time--let's use advertising--we all accept advertising--it's an acceptable respectable part of this society--but the reality of advertising is it's an attack against self-worth--it's a constant barrage it's a relentless attack against the worth of the self because every time it is telling us that others will like us better--others will like us better--if we consume this or that and you become programmed with that crap all of your life all of your life. The subtleness and the blatantness simultaneously of that type of an attack.

We enter into this reality. Technologic reality tells us that we were born to die. Tribal reality is we enter into this reality, we believe this reality and we will continue as part of the larger life cycle. Technologic reality is you were born to die and at the end of it, it's all based upon the material aspects of reality...So if you behave like good little boys and girls, then you will go to male dominated god heaven. If you misbehave little boys and girls, then you will go to a male dominated hell. (...)

...In this room, every time any one of us accepts, rationalizes the great lie, because it meets a need for us to know more, or even help us to hide from it, then they are getting us to accept the illusion as reality. Every time we listen to a political pimp** come out here and tell us his selling line, and we know he's telling a lie but we rationalize why we're gonna vote for him or why we're gonna do this for him or why we're gonna accept that lie--that is converting this illusion into reality and we aid and abet it--because we have been programmed to do so.
[(ed's note: i question the use of the label "pimp" because it looks like John is making use of a sex-negative power word, demonizing a whole group of people as the image we're programmed with about what pimps do and who they are)]

And I find it very interesting to live in a "democracy"--all right a democracy--to me a democracy is just puritans with neon glasses, right, and that's all that it is.

The democracy, whether the democracy is called communism or fascism or capitalism--no matter what it's called--it's all what I call dark age ruling control forms--It's the dark ages with neon.

Nothing has changed--you're still the peasants--you're the peasants and you're the serfs and you gotta do the bidding of the landlords and the royalty--that is reality--it has not changed, you know--you can turn on all the electric lights you want--reality has not changed.

You can call yourself workers you can call yourself citizens you can call [yourself] anything you want. Freedom?? Why does freedom end in "dom". Think about it--why does freedom end in "dom"? Citizens don't feel oppressed because they live a hypocrisy, so they don't feel oppressed, they feel powerless. The illusion converted into the reality--and it all works on how we believe.

...The technologic mind-set says that we are born to die, all right? Now as soon as the human aspect recognizes [(or accepts?)] that definition of birth and death with these material gods and material devils, as soon as people start to recognize that concept, then at some point they become afraid of death--and once they become afraid of death to me it also means you are afraid of life--because we enter into this reality and we're going to continue on into other realities--that's the way it is--the body starts here--but once the citizens become afraid of death in that industrial context--see--then, there's the tap coming on the power--right then, there's the energy starting to flow out--right there--it's starting to go way off into a dissipated type of thing that someone else is going to harness.

It's like self-control. They tell us self-control, what is self-control all about, please tell me. What is self-control really about? I mean, if we're living entities, we are energy spirit, energy flows so, self-control means that you gotta dam the energy, you know dam--that's the true dam nation. Truly. You can look at anyone that's in control, really!

What we do with our lives, is that we influence our lives, and that's all that we can do--and it's enough, if we know how to do that. But to control our lives! No one's in control, trust me, no one, allright!

There are power systems that have been created where authority uses violence and manipulation and deceit and all of the aggressive behavior patterns to remain in authority but that doesn't mean that they're in control. We need to understand those distinctions.

But what we do anyway is, we influence our lives. When we're born into this reality as human beings they say to us--not things of the spirit...they tell us that we don't have a spiritual identity, they tell us we have a religious identity and under that religious identity we are the trinity of the chain: guilt, sin and blame. We've already sinned and we're already guilty and we accept it...Free-dom.

We accept that as a normal reasonable perception...We're not guilty, we're not guilty, our lives are a series of experiences and in that course of series of experiences there may be experiences that do not make us feel good about ourselves, but that does not mean that we're guilty, we have a series of experiences so we can learn the difference, to stop doing what does not make us feel good about ourselves or to keep...or remove ourselves from those types of environments. That's why we have a series of experiences, but people don't experience their life and look at it and learn from it.

People have the tendency to have the same experience over and over, and it's a guilty experience or it's a neurotic experience or it's an experience based upon no real true respect of the self and so as they lead us into that destruction of the self, the mining of the essence, the mining of the spirit to the mind as they feed upon us, so they get us to replace humility with pride. They get us to take what is the real spiritual aspect and value of us and replace it with a more aggressive behavior pattern.
[(ed's note: i wonder if these institutionalized fearers have forgotten the depth we can be, and in their fear of the unknown have reduced BOTH themselves and us to tools used to gain their alienated idea of "happiness". An example of us as tools is the way we, the masses, have our individualities reduced like 98% when we're made to be "soldiers" for wars at home and abroad.)]

Think of a word like proud...pride...I had to think about it because that's part of the thing..."Indians are proud"...then one day it just kinda dawned on me, Oh that John Wayne's proud, you know, that people dropping napalm off these planes in Vietnam, they're proud, these people that handed out these diseased blankets, they were proud, and their god was proud, they were all proud, and yet they were not very good people--and here I am I say I'm gonna be free and I want my liberation and I'm gonna be proud? No thank you--now to actually think about it, because see a part of the mining of the essence is the words and the language that we use and that we speak; now every time any individual in this room [at New York Indian House] uses the word proud I betchat, realistically to me, they could just as easily say grateful...they were happy, they were thankful, the things that really speak of the spirit not with the ego.

We've been conditioned see, so we've been conditioned to just speak and use language and words frivolously in ways we don't truly understand and when we truly don't understand it then we don't understand the impact that it's going to have on us in the long run, we really don't.

They tell us power is whoever makes the most money with reality, that's not power that's greed.
[(I ask that we look deeper into this idea of "greed"--ed)]
They tell us that if we vote once every two years or four years, we're exercising our powers. That's politics manipulation exploitation violence and greed, it's not power; but if we look at its goal--they have all [/everything]--that's power, then obviously we don't have any--and the reason we don't have any is because we belive the lie and we give it away.

Why do we believe the lie and give [our power] away? Because we don't trust our own [connections to power] anymore. We don't listen to our intuitions, we don't listen to our instincts. We don't trust ourselves. We were given that information to enter into this reality for a reason; but we're programmed not to trust [ourselves].

Now, if we're sitting in this room tonight somebody in this room is going to go off and tell the bad guys what we're talking about. Now in reality, in that reality, these guys got all the power right--they got all the guns and money and laws.
...Now, if they they have all the power, then why do they have to have someone come here and run back and tell them what we're talking about? Because they're afraid we might think. They don't want us to think and they don't want us to clear the pollution out of our own minds because we can do it by activating our thinking process--but if they have all the power, then why are they so concerned about what we think? Because, it's of the mind.

Theoretically if everyone that disagrees with the lie that has been imposed upon us--tomorrow, theoretically if everyone got up and said, all right I changed my mind. I'm not going to believe the lie any more--you would have nonviolent change--and you would have quick change--because the system goes upon our self-rationalizations and self-justifications and insecurity: lack of respect for self.
[(ed's note: and what if this lack of respect for self is simply **The Reflection of the 'ruling class'**??!! And a language which we can catch onto, opt out, and begin seeking to deal with via bridging beautifully with all these people so heavily stuck in this so-called 'ruling class')]

That's how it works and it has turned all of us against one another through distortion and it continues to perpetuate itself. So it's of our minds. The one thing feared by this predator energy is that we would use our minds and that we would attempt to see clearly with our minds and our lives. Somewhere in there as the evoltuion of life continues on, we are being historically placed in a position where we have to do something or we are the enemy of our future. Because apathy makes us the enemy of our descendents. That's reality and we can't blame the predator because we have minds and we have the ability to use those minds.

They talk to us about morality; morality to me--it isn't about sex, it's about responsibility and irresponsibility--we conduct ourselves in a responsible manner or we conduct ourselves in an irresponsible way. We must take responsibility and we must respect ourselves enough you know because we don't have to be perfect--it doesn't matter what we've done we can conduct ourselves in a responsible way. We can speak our truths.

[(talking about his family getting murdered)] Obviously you can see I went nuts--I went crazy a long time ago. Trust me it's the safest place...(laughs) Normal...bizarre. The normal will vote this year.

(...) "Democracy"-- think about this. How many women in this room are still trying to get equal pay, how many women in this room are still trying to get their rights recognized? Democracy did that. Allright. How many black people are still trying to get what is called their equality--get their rights recognized? Democracy did that. And the Indian people? Democracy just basically tried to kill all of us off, so that we became such a small physical minority that it doesn't matter......Democracy did this. And if you would take the time to go read the founding papers, the papers of your so-called founding fathers, you understand the reality versus the illusion.

The reality is that if you were a rich, white male land owner, you got to decide what democracy was and if you were a white man and didn't have any property, then bye-bye Charlie--and if you were a woman you had no say--and if you were a Black you had no say--and if you were one of the Indian People you were the enemy. Now that is the framework of democracy.
[(i wonder if it's valid to point out that even being a rich, land-owning white man was no sure prescription for control; certainly there was a situation in which "idealistic" or "crazy" rich men were dealt with, especially if they were much less organized; i.e. look at how Ross Perot was dealt with when he sought to run for president--being a billionaire didn't really help him when the owners of society decided he mustn't be viewed as valid. There's a hierarchy of comparisons that we ought to think about carefully, especially if we realize the value of possible bridge-making rather than perpetuating alienation--ed)]

That's the reality. It was the dark ages just given new terminology and another disguise so the peasants and the serfs would continue to accept it.

I get frustrated sometimes and we got to deal with whatever is here because it is here. But I get concerned sometimes that maybe people are afraid to even think about challenging the concept of democracy and that's where all the good little nazis come from, the ones that are afraid to challenge the concepts when they see the contradictions in the concepts. That's where you get the good little nazis. And the distortion and the feeding process off of us to keep us distorted and insecure, that's to help us become good little nazis. It's all got to do with planting that seed and that idea and concept of fear.

[(i wonder if the meta situation about people "afraid to think"--audibly, anyway--may have to do with their fear of becoming excluded from their "paths of least resistance"-identities and alleged communities; because they believe--and may have good reason--that to question the basics of their groups is to risk being marginalized. i look at when people start to imagine they can speak their truths as they are seeing them (with the frames of references at hand), and this seems to happen only at certain times: Like when "radicals" seeded the anti-war movement, or when gay liberationists fought for freedoms in their ghetto; suddenly, many many people began to imagine that they might have the freedom to speak up in some ways, so they tried and found some leeway.--ed)]

...Now before civilization encroaches upon and turns human beings into citizens--the human beings always take that responsibility very seriously--but once civilization turns human beings into citizens then they no longer consider those responsibilities. My feeling is it's because they have been severed spiritually from their consciousness, their spiritual consciousness, their spiritual consciousness and had it replaced with a religious consciousness which is very limited. And for us, when we make the decision that we are going to use our minds more clearly, when we make the decision that we are no longer going to accept the great lie--the great lie is no longer acceptable.

I might not be able to act upon it in any major way and any way I can act upon it may seem insignificant to me, but it's not insignificant. Because it's got to do with our belief..our minds...and if we believe the lie if we believe there are presidential elections going on, that we really have a choice in, then we're denying ourselves reality. So at least people if we can't do anything about it at this point other than to recognize the truth for what it is, let'd do that. It's like we're all snowflakes and as soon as we sort our minds out and we make a more clear definition of reality in relationship to our responsibilities, then we will be a blizzard.

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