by David Ratcliffe
22 November 2016
Today marks the 53rd circle Earth has spun around the Sun since the world experienced the extra-constitutional firing of our 35th President.
This is to share an incisive review of Jim Douglass’ book, JFK and the Unspeakable, Why He Died and Why It Matters by John Schuchardt, published last April in The Present Age (based in Basel, Switzerland)
John presents a fascinating exploration of Jim’s book with that of Rudolf Steiner’s The Karma of Untruthfulness (Volume 1). The beginning provides more context of this remarkable review:
James W. Douglass’ JFK and the Unspeakable: Why he Died and Why it Matters[2] is the conclusive research into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas 22 November 1963, the most pivotal assassination in world history since Archduke Ferdinand’s assassination in Sarajevo, 28 June 1914. In 1914-1918 unprecedented millions would die. In consequence of Kennedy’s assassination, the Cold War would continue, millions would be killed in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, and the nuclear peril to life on earth would continue.
In Douglass’ title “the unspeakable,” students of anthroposophy will recognize the supersensible forces of evil. In a series of 13 lectures in December 1916[3] Rudolf Steiner provided the spiritual scientific knowledge that empowers an unbiased individual to achieve revelations of truth to which many remain blind.
James Douglass’ goal during 12 years of concentrated research and writing was not “to solve the assassination.” Rather, he saw movements of powerful spiritual forces, as he discovered the beginning transformation of John F. Kennedy and his confrontation with evil. Douglass knows that this story of transformation and the power of truth has the potential to overcome the illusions, secrecy, propaganda, and destructive poisons of endless GWOT (Global War on Terror).
“… there is a force more powerful than war…. That is why it is so hopeful for us to confront the unspeakable and to tell the transforming story of a man of courage, President John F. Kennedy. It is a story ultimately not of death but of life—all our lives. In the end it is not so much a story of one man as it is a story of peacemaking when the chips are down. That story is our story, our story of hope.”[4]
. . .
The research of James W. Douglass is, in my estimation, the greatest contribution to spiritual scientific research of 20th Century world history since The Karma of Untruthfulness. It is a revelatory look into current destructive forces seeming to control us by “external mechanisms”.[7] The genius of Douglass’ research is built both on the spiritual foundation of Thomas Merton and upon Douglass’ own life of faith as an activist and leading theologian of the nuclear age. Providing encyclopedic knowledge, documented with 100 pages of endnotes, Douglass never leaves the reader lost nor does he himself wander into speculation or theory. Rather, Douglass brings us to the security of truth. We follow how Kennedy’s turn towards peace and disarmament, after the near holocaust of the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 16 to 28 1962, led to his assassination.
Near the end we are reminded of a vital key to address what concerns us, our lives, and the world we belong to.
James Douglass’ book makes powerfully evident the thinking of the National Security elite, which is not only dead thinking, abstract logic, disconnected from living realities, but a thinking that has “untruth” at its foundation. Thomas Merton pointed out that “Truth is not a sentimental luxury but as essential to life as air and water.” The Prologue to the Gospel of Saint John says that God is truth. Gandhi said, “Truth is God.” James W. Douglass’ monumental historical research has dispelled a force of untruth that has held U.S. Americans and the world hostage for more than 50 years; spiritually seen, it is, in fact, an exorcism. Truth is the moral force more powerful that untruth.
As we continue to live out our days, here on the journey, it is helpful to be reminded of such Life-supporting and Life-serving awareness, especially when it appears that the chips are down. May we all continually awaken to and be renewed by recognition of our participation in and partaking of life at this unique time of Koyaanisqatsi.
