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The Illusion of Outside Authority All that appears to be
outside authority is an illusion of the mind which was formed in childhood and
has not been destroyed by the light of common sense.
There is no such thing as outside authority.
We are born alone, we live alone and we die alone.
We all are peers, but no one is superior. Each is autonomous in his own life. The illusion of outside authority appears as a mirage
before our senses only when we wish to escape personal responsibility and are seeking
someone to blame. We invent
such illusory figures when we want to abdicate our own initiative and be
able to point to these synthetic gods as the source of our misfortune if we do
not succeed in our own larcenous ambitions for aggrandizement and exploitation. Man creates outside
authority figures for the same reason that he creates idols.
The primitive man and the childish man are alike; they are deeply fearful
of uncertainty in life and their ability to achieve their aims.
The primitive digs up mud to fashion into an image and calls it
“God.” He puts it on a pedestal
so that its head is higher than his own.
Then he abdicates and prays to this image of his own creation – to this
god to do favors for him – to send rain, crops and fruit.
But these prayers are not really supplications at all.
They are commands and demands hidden in a begging voice.
The child is whining for his supper, and he calls his whining reverence
“prayer,” or “worship”, whereas it is only abdication of his own
personal responsibility. He sets up
his outside authority figures so that he can make infantile demands for them
to take care of him -- as his
parents did when he was little. And
he becomes rebellious, angry or resentful if the god he has made does not answer
his demands. His apparent
submission to, and fear of, such imaginary outside authority figures stops
immediately as soon as he faces the realization that they exist only inside his
head, as his own invention, and do not exist in the outside world or have the
power to grant him gifts. No power
exists outside an individual that can damage him.
All that helps or hurts him is of his own invention. Each of us must be a lamp unto his own feet – else he
remains in darkness. Each must
finally be his own and only final authority.
He can never delegate nor abdicate this fundamental position. His strength is internal, never external. Pgs;
204, 205, 206 Beyond
success and failure:
Willard and Marguerite Beecher;
The Julian Press, Inc.; 1967
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