Global Priors Council

Global Centrum: Chicago

July 29, 1975

There are just five things to do in life. If you lived 10,000 years ago there were just five things to do, five basic actions in life. If you live 10,000 years from now, there will be just five things that need to be done: depth awakenment, functional eptitude, historical engagement, spiritual prowess and primal community. Obviously, the discontinuity principle is there. Life is one happening, and it goes on as one happening, and yet when we bring our rational powers to bear, we see that it can be divided into five things that need to be done. (See the pentagon chart)

I remember as a kid someone explaining a kaleidoscope to me, how it had only a few pieces of colored rock and glass in there (something like eight or ten in the one that I had). If you looked through it and turned it just a little bit the rocks would fall into different relationships and the way the mirrors would present it to you, you had a whole different perspective, a whole different universe, a whole different design on your hands. But what was in there was just a slight turn from before. And you would turn it again, and again, and each time you would have a completely new universe of design. Well, it's this type of thing with the five actions. There are just the five basic actions in life, but the times turn those a little bit. The response required turns the total five and a whole new design appears, a whole new universe comes into being. So it is with the global strategies. Although there are just five things to do, the way the times present those five things to you calls forth the kind of response to what is needed that might be utterly different today from yesterday, and it will be different tomorrow from today.

To try to get a feel after what that would be today, the chart A shows the Strategic Campaigns that we will be talking about. There are four global campaigns before us at the present hour. There are two Frontal Assaults: the frontal assault of the Global Community Forum and the frontal assault of the Global Social Demonstration. These are your intensive and extensive aspect of the frontal assaults. These are the one­two punches in the midst of history. Someone was telling me the other night that Mohammed Ali won his fight in Kuala Lumpur. Well, his fists are the one­two punches. That is like your global campaign across the world. At the same time, I imagine all that went into the creation of those two fists was quite a bit. His torso had to be strengthened and trained, his legs had to have the stamina to hold him. It is like that. You have Indirect Maneuvers going on through the Primal Community Experiment and the Metro Cadre bands around the world. In other words, these maneuvers are like guerrilla activities. The infiltration is taking place across the globe in order that the one­two punches can take place. Now tomorrow their positions may shift, but this is the kind of strategy for today.

Then look on the right of Chart A at the Supportive Methods. The contextual image is one of Intra­Globality. Remember when the earthrise came up? Everyone on the earth now has burned in their mind that picture of standing and looking at the world that objectively is present as unity. You and I live in a totally different relationship than we did before. We were always trying to get out and to grasp something beyond ourselves to be global. What does it mean to live in that relationship with one another now on the other side of the radical alteration of the earthrise image by which we grasp our total relationship? We will be looking at the philosophy of Social Demonstration. What is the ontological ground that allows you and me to stand in the deeps of history and not collapse into seeing just some "do­goodism" going on out there but root whatever we do in history into that kind of depth.

Under Practical Skills is the arena of Social Methods. Last summer during the Research Assembly we welded out a consult model. That consult model was put into operation in Majuro and got that project launched. What have we learned the last year? We need to look at that, so that we can get hold of those methods which would also be applicable to the Primal Community Experiment.

Now let us focus on these four campaigns. The Global Social Demonstration is a three­year project whereby a band of 24 social demonstrations happens around the world, one in every time zone, one every hour­on­the­hour. In every culture, in 24 different nations that happening will take place. Then the Global Community Forum will not be just a local community convocation held here and there, but the systematic awakening of the population in every nation around the globe over a five year period until finally the whole globe is covered in replication with the awakening process. Next is the world wide community wrestling with the Primal Community Experiment. There have been 150 called into being since last January. This summer a systematic world­wide coverage on a metro level is being planned to be actuated over the next four­year period. Next is a Metro Cadre system with common format and meeting structures going on for twelve cadres around every urban House in the globe, six coming into being this year and six the following year, whereby that global band of a supporting force is behind everything that takes place.

Now to spell this out further. There is no future without Global Social Demonstration for people will not understand that they can care. When we were mainly preaching and teaching, there was a global band of courses. You went to various countries and discovered that every third world country lived off the hope that was 5th City. You would talk about what was happening in 5th City and they would just come alive. "Look! That is possible!" And then, the happening that happened a year and a half ago when Mayor Daley came over to the tenth anniversary of 5th City just blew my parochial mind wide open. I had always thought of 5th City as being a signal that the Third World would respond to because they wanted a better economic situation, etc. The Mayor, impacted by the anniversary celebration, threw his notes away. He let his emotions loose. He just dropped his prepared speech and suddenly burst out and said "Would that every community in Chicago could renew itself like this community is renewing itself." And then it dawned on me. Every community around the world. Every community around the world. So mouths just fall open. And when their mouths fall open you can see the awareness of a resurgence just pouring out of their inner being. This is the kind of happening I'm talking about. You work with the global band around the world, with the eight demonstrations that would come off first .And in between them are the 16 that will come into being. You are after a global band of explosions. Now, look at City 5 again. You could say, "Well that worked because it is in an affluent country" or something like that. We, in cynicism, do not finally believe that things can happen. People say that the world can be renewed, society can be changed and you and I sit back and say "Huh, I don't believe it." Once you say that you get all sorts of rational arguments that defend your position. Nobody can penetrate that defense, because you know how many times you have failed. You know how many times things have not come off. You know how impossible it is to change anything. And nobody can penetrate that defense with any rational argument. The only way that can be broken is for someone to go out and demonstrate­­ to do it! Then every rational argument you have either collapses or just oozes away. Without those demonstrations people cannot see. Yet one demonstration like 5th City is not enough, because again, I begin to rationalize: "Here is an affluent country; they can do some thing like that; it is obvious they are affluent; they must be pumping money in underneath there, they must be manipulating things here on the side. It is really a facade that they're trying to show us." But then, you put one in Majuro, one in Oombulgurri, one in Taj Gun, one in Kwangware, in different cultures, in different parts of the world, until finally every kind of argument that you have dissolves before that kind of demonstration. Then you have global explosions. That is the image that holds Global Social Demonstration for me. (See Pentagon Chart) A global explosion around the world that allows you and me to see that we can exercise that care, we can live out of the care that oozes and bubbles up out of our being wherever we are.

There is no future without Global Community Forum, for people will not believe that they can believe. Recently in Japan we met a man who had been in Hiroshima when the bomb went off. He was not close enough to be hurt greatly, but it burned the back of his hands. He said something like this, "When the bomb went off and my hands were burned, I died. And then I decided to give my life in the service of mankind." Well. you see, the happening happened to that man. He was awakened. You could say that it took something, metaphorically, like that bomb to awaken him, to see that finally every relationship goes down the drain. And he stood before the final nothingness that was there and there is where he had to live his life. The happening happened!

But today, whatever has gone on in the midst of this world has just eaten all relationships away. Eaten them away until inside of me I know that there are no relationships that I can finally ground my life in­­ in what is going on in this world. There is nothing here that is going to finally give my life meaning. There is nothing that is going to be able to freight what is going on in my life. I know that inside of me, but how can I even grasp that? Also, care is coming into my being, and I don't know how to relate it to what is going on.

So, you take people, diverse people in a local situation, bring them together, even if they hate one another or disagree or do not know each other, and put them through a methodology whereby they can take their local situation and the global demands upon them and devise ways by which they can respond. You give them the methodology so they can make that response, then let them sing to it, dramatize it and talk about it. And when that happens a happening happens. So it is that they live effectively for one day. One day, if at no other time. A happening happens. It is not just that you have one community here and another there. You systematically cover a nation going around to one percent of the people. Community Forums are being actuated today in North America and experimented with in some of the Commonwealth countries and prepared in others. You go around one nation after another, one after another, one after another, until finally the whole globe is covered. A "World on Fire" is the image I use to picture the awakenment to take place all around the globe.

Well, in the midst of that you have another campaign going on. It is the global ring of Houses, 102 of them, each with a Primal Community Experiment. It is hard to say what happened last January when the 150 PCE were launched globally. You had been struggling with one that you started last September when the gates fell open on the Local Church Experiment and you had turned out into the community, and perhaps were still floundering around. Then the global thrust went across the world. For us, at least here in North America, being exposed to the many shifts taking place in the experiment was a sort of a fright. For example, I did not see the great wonder of what was taking place. I had only seen the fright of the immediate anxiety. But, on the global trip, the wonder broke open in such a way that you could not refuse to see it. The whole world had opened up in a new way. Everywhere you went the flood gates of new possibility opened up.

An example is Hyderabad, India. We happened to be there when the ITI was going on, in the middle week when they had their work­day. At Gunfoundry 5, a community within Hyderabad named when the old Maharajas had used it as their armory, a guild had started. I met those guild members and one of them was a Muslim, another was a Hindu, although the community is predominantly Muslim with an occasional Christian. It was a strange polyglot group of people. It was a secularized situation in which they were taking responsibility for that community. Excitement in their being ? My goodness, they were planning that ITI work day. Well, they were scared to death. They did not know the response of the people, they did not know what their government would think, or anything else. So, they went around to the city just to get in­kind contributions. That was unheard of, in that poverty. The city was just overjoyed. They gave them a truck and some shovels, wire, even some money. Some people went out and got things to plant, and a fence to build a mesh fence. They went where there was a public latrine. It was a concrete building. You could hardly walk into that latrine without being shoved back out by what was in there. Then, outside the latrine was a big mound of garbage that had been there from the beginning of time. So, sixty ITI participants from Hyderabad, Colombo and others from the deep south of India went in and flushed the latrine out. They went in there and hit that thing. I happened to walk in on it when the dust was all over the place. It was like walking through a dust storm to get in there. And the smell, you were immediately saturated with it. They washed the latrine out, put a brown wash on it that painted it brown. Across the street there was a building. They white­washed it near the pump. They shoveled all of that gunk into trucks, hauled it off, and leveled it down. Then they planted trees, put a fence around it and suddenly you saw a jewel. The streets are narrow in that part of the village. People crammed the streets on all sides, standing and just looking. Afterwards, I talked to some members of the guild again. These were people who were just exploding inside. They had never had anything like this happen. "Do you know what they did here? Do you know what happened? Do you know what? THIS! Do you know what? THAT"' Possibility just broke loose. I would say that there is no future without the Primal Community Experiment for there is no way for people to believe in Hope. That day in India the possibility of living in Hope was just given to people. The image that bolds PCE for me is "Slow March" as the primal communities open up behind and become a context for the Global Social Demonstrations and Global Community Forum

Now let us look at the Metro Cadre. We have had trouble with the Metro Cadre. We tried to whomp them up. They would collapse and ooze out at the seams. Then we would whomp them up again and try to hold them in being. You never could get the metro cadre really boxed into being, although most of our leadership were trained there. Then all of a sudden, things shifted. Now Metro Cadres are sort of oozing up all over the place, inundating you, demanding that something be done. Demanding that possibility be given. Wherever you go you have a Metro Cadre dynamic ready and willing to respond. It is almost like the invisible college is becoming visible around the world, rising up in all kinds of forms and in all kinds of situations. People with the kind of care, who see themselves as Those Who Care, a new kind of self­consciousness shoving upon them in every relationship they have, demanding a new kind of intentionality in exercising that care. They therefore join with others to see that that care is carried out and take responsibility for the local situation in their various operating arenas. What that does to their lives! Again, you are not interested in finalizing any one way or any particular forms. I was talking to a woman recently whose family situation included a husband that had one kind of a thrust, and what seemed to her fifteen children swirling around her. Actually, she had three. The change went on in her mind! She was beginning to break loose. And what was breaking her loose, was that on Thursdays she went out to participate in the Metro Cadre dynamic. She said "Every Thursday I come alive!" Well, my! That possibility is there, for anyone to begin to live in the Hope that is just given, once they embrace the fact that they care. If I were going to put it on the Pentagon, I would say the middle is your Metro Cadre, and I would call it an "Intra­Global Servant Force." (See Pentagon chart) Here with the PCE, Hope is held forth.

Now, we have talked about the one­two punch going across the globe in the Global Campaigns of Social Demonstration and Community Forums and the infiltration tactics of the Primal Community campaign. The Primal Community Experiment campaign is that which provides the Global Community Forums with the context for awakenment to take place and is a tool, product, and end of awakenment. At the same time, the Global Community Forum exposes the ground or base of community and with the awakening happening begins to create community. Also the GCF provides the troops and a task for primal community.

The Primal Community Experiment is that without which we could not have Global Social Demonstrations. It provides a screen for building the practical vision of social demonstration projects in projecting the dynamic of the shaman activity, the dynamic of the symbolic grasping of relationships, and the dynamic of care of human settlement.

If you reverse the relationship you can see that the Social Demonstration projects give vision of possibility to the Primal Community Experiments. A few years back communities around the globe were being created out of the image of 5th City. Now the other projects are giving images of possibility and effectivity around the globe. Do you see the importance of this relationship in both directions? It is as if you have 24 social demonstration explosions going off around the world like flares or skyrockets being fired into the night, lighting the way. The direction is illuminated, and then the flare burns out and the skyrocket disappears into the night, and where are you left? You are left in the dark maybe with a seared being, unless there is some way for the replication of these to take place. The Primal Community Experiment is that replication going on. It is the catching of the emanating power, or the fall­out of the explosion. Every community now, once it sees the vision and the image of effectivity, can become that in replication, until finally there is no end to where that could finally rest .

With these Global Social Demonstrations, Global Community Forums and Primal Communities going on, there will, be a radical expansion of metro cadres around the world. Because of the secular or everyman nature of these programs there is a brand new kind of shift in the way we go, for now we genuinely go to the masses. As long as you and I were working just with the church in a sense we were working only in a ghetto community, as far as the world is concerned. But now, we have moved from the world on our hands as the movement to the world on our hands as the world. Once you and I move out to begin to move genuinely to the masses, that is like...well, who do you see in those Social Demonstrations? Finally, everybody. Who do you see in every one of those parishes around the globe? Finally, everybody. Who goes to the forums everywhere? Finally, everybody. What a sign! Finally, genuinely, for the first time "the last fat lady" is a concrete practical operating image, not a visional image. It is that kind of a shift.

And then, another thing is the whole new approach to transparentization. The great thing of what the Ur images did for us, the great thing of wrestling through imaginally and with all the power of our minds in the Ur images is actually taking place now in these campaigns. A whole new approach is like this: you find yourself out in a Social Demonstration project such as Taj Gunj, 65% Muslim and 35% Hindu. That does not leave any percentage points for others, although you probably have a Parsee or two and a Christian or two in there. So, you have got a whole new kind of situation to operate out of. You see, it is not only there, but in the Town Meetings and PCE as well. You now deal with human beings. Some human beings, incidentally, may be programmed rationalistically, others may be programmed Hinduistically, etc. but that is beside the point. Finally you are commonly working side by side with human beings in the midst of the human situation. We have a whole new world on our hands for transparentization to take place practically.

Now the Pentagon still has two other arenas. This one is Functional Eptitude or Methodological Eptitude. Without this dimension of the pentagon, this kind of tool, people finally cannot be released to do their own thinking, their own acting, and grasp their own being or be their own person. The tool has shifted beyond the rebellion of students around the world against colleges and universities that just provide a kind of factual education. Today training in methods has given us a new ball park to operate in. When you move out to act in Social Demonstrations and Primal Community, immediately you are shoved back to Functional Eptitude, forced to say, "Where am I going to get the tools to be able to operate? How do I know what to do? How am I going to get equipped?" So it is Functional Eptitude, functional education, methodological eptitude, that you would be after, to have the kind of tools that allow you to operate day in and day out inside the different cultures. And you also need skills to be able to see how to Journey continually into consciousness, here in the whole area of awakenment. The image that I have for the strategy of Functional Eptitude is "Waiting in the Wings." Tomorrow when the kaleidoscope turns one tiny little bit, this may be the major thrust. It has been the major thrust in our own recent history, has it not? It can come back again, and it will come back precisely on the other side of the radical scream of everybody around the world for methods, methods, for tools, for tools.

Then you come over here to Spiritual Prowess, or how to grasp the deeps of life. That is not raised in the abstract anymore, or in the theoretical. It is as if you and I go out to act and you have to stand out there day in, day out, day in, day out. Majuro is running the world today, imaginally. Tomorrow not only will global explosions be running the world, but Community Forum will be running the world. You go out there, and get on one of those little sand spits with the romantic image of the Pacific Islands, with palm breezes floating and the island music strumming in the background, and the fine, beautiful dancing girls. In reality you go out to Majuro where there are coconut trees, rats, a few pigs roaming around, and junk here and there. They put you in a hotel, and the room is not any bigger than this table, and it has no windows in it, just solid walls. Where is all this beautiful Pacific? The room has one little hole for air conditioning. Outside it was 90 degrees and inside you are about to freeze to death. You go out. They just finished a brand new restaurant nearby on the beach. It is built out of concrete blocks and the walls are solid from ground to roof on all four sides. On the leeward side of the building, facing brush and junk, is the door. And that was the restaurant. On the windward side was this beautiful beach and the sea. If you sit outside in the wind, it blows so hard that you feel you are hanging onto every tree. The shutters on peoples' shacks slant downward at an angle so low you can't see out. Otherwise the wind would come through with too much force. So you sit there internally hanging onto your table, just trying to keep from being blown away. "Life is too short for me to be here. Why aren't I back doing something at home where I could really enjoy it and do something effective in history?" Well, how do you stand day in and day out and operate, when you know you ought to be able to live in a better situation? And this forces a new kind of consciousness on you and you cannot live in the white hot heat of consciousness without using that "map to the Netherworld" so that you can know how to chart your journey, and how to return daily to that little sand spit in the midst of nothing but water, where all you can see is water and all you hear is surf. This "map" gives you permission to plumb the deeps and to stand out in the pressures of the world where consciousness is burned into you.

At the same time, it keeps the Social Demonstration open to the ontological deeps and the depth of global revolution. It gives permission for the awakening process to take place. The image that would hold the Spiritual Prowess is "Lurking in the Deeps." Tomorrow instead of lurking in the deeps it is going to flood out all over us. Can't you see, when the world is on fire and these explosions have penetrated everybody's consciousness, a new flood of people will come to wander around in the Netherworld. To go again to retreats to tap the well springs of the spirit life so that they can go back out to live their daily lives. Thus, the kaleidoscope could turn.

There are all sorts of things that need to take place to keep these strategies going. For example: Area Development. How do you go and develop Areas around the globe so they have operational images of Xavierism, of doing the metro for the globe, or the world from the metro so they know how to carry out indicative battleplanning and how to set up implementaries, and know how to maintain spirit strength to continue the mission. Leadership training then comes back with a white hot heat. Look at the people from other nations here at this assembly. That is what I mean by Intra­Globality taking place. Direct interaction is going on there. On this trip, one of the great happenings was not necessarily when the five of us were together. It came when one of us westerners was coupled with both Vinod and Kang. I remember we went to see a high dignitary, a great person, a global man. We went in and sat down. Here was I, here was Kang and here was Vinod. Well, the dignitary immediately pigeon­holed me. He had known me from the past. Then he looked at Kang, that did not quite work. He looked back at me and the pigeon hole began to dissolve a little bit. Then he looked at Vinod, and this whole pigeon hole thing dissolved more. Here was complete discontinuity presented to him. As we began to talk, awe began to seep through that discontinuity. It was just sort of like awe bubbled up out of cracks of the floor. This made for missional effectiveness. When one of us said something about Global Demonstration or Community Forum "WHAM' WHAM"' Effectivity took place. This is where Intra­Globality gives you a brand new arena in which to operate and by which to grasp your missional thrust. At the center of the Pentagon is the Movemental Order, or what I mean by the Metro Cadre or the Intra­Global Servant Force, those people who are aware of moving out.

There is also back­up, the Global Centrums. These are missional centrums, missional power, enablement power for missional effectivity to serve the worldwide band of Houses.

Then, a kind of intensification is required with impact courses. Do you see how LENS becomes a white­hot heat impact force? For example, a state government is thinking about asking us to train their government people. If they did that, that would mean a LENS every weekend for this coming year, just in that state. So there is the radical intensification of LENS in relationship to the Primal Community, LENS in relationship to preparation and LENS in getting leadership. And then the LCC, not your Global Forum, but the LCC as a course used to prepare for Primal Community, and Social Demonstration, in order to equip people in a local situation and to get them energized. The ITI's around the globe are constantly funneling in a tremendous reservoir of awakened and alive people. And now maybe these ITI's should be stepped up to having one ITI per Area per year around the globe, except maybe Europe and Latin America where you would have one pare­area per year with systematic quotas and recruitment from each region of laity, clergy and in some cases LENS grads and guild members.

Not only that kind of impact, but take that three­week ITI course, reduce it to two weeks, make it secular and add on the Social Methods School so that you are back to three weeks; then use it in places like India, in Taj Gunj. It would be an impact course to get people to the project the same as the ITI is an impact course. It would be a secular course for Muslims, Hindus, Parsees, etc. But with the Social Methods School in the last week it would not only be the impact but the functional training element which relates directly back to training people for the Social Demonstration Project.

There is one more thing that we used to call demonstration that needs some alteration in our imaginal context. Social Demonstration is demonstration in the midst of a delimited geographical community. Now we have in the past been calling institutional projects demonstrations, like a demonstration in a school or in a business. Now, we need to call them pilot institutional projects over against community social demonstration. Along this line we also have what we call consults. Aren't they tremendous? You take indicative battleplanning methodology, sit down with some group like the Royal Bank of Canada and help them think through their own situation. You are not bringing any axes. You are helping them think through their own situation. In one sense, the consult stands on its own bottom. And that is exactly what you are after. It is functional, it relates people to the work that is going on in the guild or in the parish. It brings them to courses, Town Meetings, Forums, or it equips them to be Guardians, or possible givers of resources to the work. This has those two ramifications.

The pilot institutional projects are similar to the great project going on in Korea in the International Schools. The kids come. They cannot speak English and the curriculum is in English. Secondly, they hate the school to begin with because of the strangeness of the situation. So you have got a mess on your hands. To bring that demonstration project about in a brand new way immediately gives you a way of renewing International Schools. Do you see, those projects are extremely important, but they have to be put in a kind of brackets until Global Social Demonstration and Global Community Forum comes off. Otherwise it is a reduction of your revolutionary principles of hitting all the problems at once. It just becomes one problem among the many problems. Secondly, it is utterly impossible to renew the total global social educational network form one little tiny geographical place. For example, in Korea, how can you renew the total social situation of International Schools all around the globe from Seoul alone? It seems an impossibility. But on the other side of the global explosions are going on the Social Demonstration Projects and having set the World on Fire by the Global Community Forums come the slow march of Primal Community as they come into being around the globe. When this happens, your communities have a contextual situation in which the projects can take place. Then, you have a global network of communities on your hands that can be of service to and a context for these projects, and institutions. This gives great flexibility if you can pick out certain crucial issues across the globe because now you really do have a lever. You can pick out where break­open possibilities are and move on them. Then you see, the great thing about institutional projects is that replication can take place in every imaginal social situation. In every kind of vocational position. Whereas paravocation comes into being in a faith stance, it is being grounded here. Institutional projects allow replication to go on in every kind of historical vocation in any kind of institution.

But in the meantime the image of "Preparing the Sod" would hold the Pilot Institutional Projects while Global Social Demonstration and Global Community Forum take place. When the kaleidoscope rotates one tiny bit, the Primal Community Experiment comes in not just as a slow march but the great march of history then the soil will have been prepared with such tremendous experiments going on, as the Seoul project.

Again, there will be no future without Social Demonstration. Otherwise how can people understand they can care. There will be no future without Global Community Forum for people to allow themselves to believe that they can believe? And then, there is not going to be any future without Primal Community Experiment and its back­up Metro Cadres . There would be no place for people to live in the Hope that appears to them. The Faith, Hope and Love are the only things important and strategically I believe they are manifest at this particular hour in these four global campaigns.

­­Joseph Slicker