RoadKill: We All Shine On

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A rare treat (and a must-read) for Lennon fans and other awakened dreamers...
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excerpted from The Cynical Idealist: A Spiritual Biography of John Lennon, by Gary Tillery (Quest Books, December 2009)

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What if a significant number of us were to agree that, starting next Monday, we would treat everyone we encountered with respect, compassion and love?

John Lennon realized, then propounded, that since as humans we have the ability to change our own habits and convictions, the only barrier to our living in a better world is agreement that we are committed to it. He implied the concept in "All You Need Is Love", "Instant Karma (We All Shine On)", and "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)". However, he crystallized his point of view in his masterpiece, "Imagine". In simple but resonating lyrics he sketched the framework of a harmonious world he and other dreamers had in mind, concluding with an invitation to the listener to join them.

Then he read a book called Mind Games....
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This fascinating review in Reality Sandwich chronicles Lennon's ongoing quest for expanded consciousness and a peaceful society. Following the de-legalization of LSD in the 1960s, Mind Games authors Robert Masters and Jean Houston developed alternative approaches to mind expansion based on meditation, assisted trance and guided imagery. This work caught fire in Lennon's imagination.

To those who were beginning to believe that the spirit of the 60s had died, he was advising, don't give up, keep on, keep chanting the mantra of peace and love. Let's work together as an invisible army. We'll use the power of visualization - some call it magic - to project our image of peace in space and time. We'll create an "absolute elsewhere" in our middle, an ideal so detailed and realistic that our intentions will make it manifest.

This absolute elsewhere, given the name Nutopia by Lennon and Yoko Ono, was revealed at a press conference in 1973.

Nutopia was a proposed emotional, intellectual and spiritual union of people. It would be an imaginary union, but certainly no more imaginary than the artificial boundaries that separated people in the "real" world.

Those perceptive listeners who understood and embraced the absolute elsewhere of Nutopia would constitute the invisible army Lennon described in "Mind Games". Acting individually but in concert, they would bring about a more harmonious world through communal visualization.

I don't want to give the whole story away in this post - it's well worth a click to read the whole review. John Lennon's vision and his message have now become a global movement, a universal wakeup call for humanity. It is a great sadness that he will not see it blossom.

Consistent with his own insight, Lennon had already used the principle of collective visualization to plant a positive image in the public psyche. He had already written a song that offered his solution, his alternative to the nightmarish futures on which the people of his era were focused - the endless quagmire of Vietnam, world famine, Orwell's 1984, nuclear winter, apocalypse in the Middle East - as well as his prescription to end the perennial strife of our species.

He recorded and released it in 1971, a song that would become his most famous anthem: