This is the beginning of the revolution, the only revolution that can ever succeed, one that rises straight upward from ignorance to intelligence.

Without fully realizing it, humanity will greet the year 2000 with a renunciation of outer illusions. Wars, strict governments, democratic commerce, notions of education and medical progress --- all activities of blind men leading the blind --- have failed to provide a satisfactory life. Humanity will begin to remember that the wisdom of itself is contained within its true intellectuals, to whom it must listen, if it wishes to live well.

No honorable man wants to be where he is unwanted. For many centuries now, society has failed to seek out its intellectuals, its wise ones, and thus has sealed its own doom --- refusing to follow wisdom, it must then follow ignorance, with painful results. The wise ones, thus shunned, must retire into solitude, keeping to their duty to be available for mankind, but generally waiting in vain.

For the intellectuals of society are heard only by those who first learn to listen to the intellectual within, the quiet voice of conscience ever suggesting what is noble and rare. For the State to be well regulated, every indvidual must first be so. And the inner regulation, of oneself by onself, is never a coercion, but ever a free choice.

This is the revolution in a nutshell --- make each person aware of his or her intellect, train in the everday usage of such, build with that intellectual vision until it is indispensable to everyday life. And once that awareness has expanded to a certain level, it becomes self-maintaining, growing greater and greater, teaching everyone of the freedom and joy that come to the soul.

The true revolution is not put down by society, not gunned down, the leaders imprisoned or shot. No, this revolution takes place up high, and the people of society never even see it. For society, reading these words, will dismiss them as demented, failing to understand because of its infinite arrogance, automatically assuming that everything that it perceives is inferior to itself --- and thus does it maintain what were better dissolved, namely, itself.

This is the brotherhood and sisterhood of the Holy Mind, the church-less communion of the here and now. Cathedrals, forests, gigantic oceans, far-falling immensities of intergalactic space --- any of these might give rise to contemplation, and in that mind is the truth. The price of entrance is your life.

"My Life!" you say, concerned to retain control. But I tell you, death will come at any moment, and your permission will not be requested. Therefore, your life is already forfeit, and it is only a question of time --- which time, when ended, will seem to have been only moments, just enough for a few memories, even then being forgotten.

Therefore, see beyond your life, to the life of all lives, and let go of your own, even as you let go of every bedazzling sunset, accepting the inevitable as the golden-orbed Sun sinks down into the sea.

The revolution is beginning, and it is about humanity getting permanently high.