Van Gogh’s Chair - 1888
Obedience to Authority, a book written by a man named Stanley Milgram, contains ideas worth examination. This man performed a number of experiments during the 1970s. He was prompted by the horrors perpetrated during Hitler’s reign, wanting to know why people would hurt or kill others for no reason other than being told to do so. He made subjects believe they were administering shocks to someone when questions were answered incorrectly. Sometimes they even believed that someone had passed out from the pain, yet they continued to hit the shock button when the subject didn’t answer right away. They didn’t know it was a set up; they thought they were hurting someone else badly, but continued to do so. These obedience experiments are cited in university classes and are referred to time and again when atrocities occur around the world. I think now is an excellent time to think about the reasons for this blind obedience. Perhaps it’s time to revisit Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience?
“The time for thinkers has come. Truth, independent of doctrines and time-honored systems, knocks at the portal of humanity. Contentment with the past and the cold conventionality of materialism are crumbling away. Ignorance of God is no longer the stepping-stone to faith. The only guarantee of obedience is a right apprehension of Him whom to know aright is Life eternal.”
Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page Vii:14-20
“The ego’s laws are strict, and breaches are severely punished. Therefore give no obedience to its laws, for they are laws of punishment. And those who follow them believe that they are guilty, and so they must condemn. Between the future and the past the laws of God must intervene, if you would free yourself. Atonement stands between them, like a lamp shining so brightly that the chain of darkness in which you bound yourself will disappear.”
A Course in Miracles T-13.IX.1:4-8
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