Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essay (1841)

                Circles

                                                           

                                      Nature centres into balls,

                                      And her proud ephemerals, 

                                      Fast to surface and outside,

                                      Scan the profile of the sphere

                                      Knew they what that signified,

                                       A new genesis were here. 

The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end. It is the highest emblem in the cipher of the world. St. Augustine described the nature of God as a circle whose centre was everywhere, and its circumference nowhere. We are all our lifetime reading the copious sense of this first of forms. One moral we have already deduced, in considering the circular or compensatory character of every human action. Another analogy we shall now trace; that every action admits of being outdone. Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth, that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning; that there is always another dawn risen on midnoon, and under every deep a lower deep opens. This fact, as far as it symbolizes the moral fact of the Unattainable, the flying Perfect, around which the hands of man can never meet, at once the inspirer and the condemner of every success, may conveniently serve us to connect many illustrations of human power in every department. There are no fixtures in nature. The universe is fluid and volatile.

Permanence is but a word of degrees. Our globe seen by God is a transparent law, not a mass of facts. The law dissolves the fact and holds it fluid. Our culture is the predominance of an idea which draws after it this train of cities and institutions. Let us rise into another idea: they will disappear. The Greek sculpture is all melted

away, as if it had been statues of ice; here and there a solitary figure or fragment remaining, as we see flecks and scraps of snow left in cold dells and mountain clefts, in June and July. For the genius that created it creates now somewhat else. The Greek letters last a little longer, but are already passing under the same sentence, and tumbling into the inevitable pit which the creation of new thought opens for all that is old. The new continents are built out of the ruins of an old planet; the new races fed out of the decomposition of the foregoing. New arts destroy the old. See the investment of capital in aqueducts made useless by hydraulics; fortifications, by gunpowder; roads and canals, by railways; sails, by steam; steam by electricity.

You admire this tower of granite, weathering the hurts of so many ages. Yet a little waving hand built this huge wall, and that which builds is better than that which is built. The hand that built can topple it down much faster. Better than the hand, and nimbler, was the invisible thought which wrought through it; and thus ever, behind the coarse effect, is a fine cause, which, being narrowly seen, is itself the effect of a finer cause. Every thing looks permanent until its secret is known. A rich estate appears to women a firm and lasting fact; to a merchant, one easily created out of any materials, and easily lost. An orchard, good tillage, good grounds, seem a fixture, like a gold mine, or a river, to a citizen; but to a large farmer, not much more fixed than the state of the crop. Nature looks provokingly stable and secular, but it has a cause like all the rest; and when once I comprehend that, will these fields stretch so immovably wide, these leaves hang so individually considerable? 

Permanence is a word of degrees. Every thing is medial. Moons are no more bounds to spiritual power than batballs. The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own. The life of man is a self-evolving circle, which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and larger circles, and that without end. The extent to which this generation of circles, wheel without wheel, will go, depends on the force or truth of the individual soul. For it is the inert effort of each thought, having formed itself into a circular wave of circumstance, -- as, for instance, an empire, rules of an art, a local usage, a religious rite, -- to heap itself on that ridge, and to solidify and hem in the life. But if the soul is quick and strong, it bursts over that boundary on all sides, and expands another orbit on the great deep, which also runs up into a high wave, with attempt again to stop and to bind. But the heart refuses to be imprisoned; in its first and narrowest pulses, it already tends outward with a vast force, and to immense and innumerable expansions.

Every ultimate fact is only the first of a new series. Every general law only a particular fact of some more general law presently to disclose itself. There is no outside, no inclosing wall, no circumference to us. The man finishes his story, -- how good! how final! how it puts a new face on all things! He fills the sky. Lo! on the other side rises also a man, and draws a circle around the circle we had just pronounced the outline of the sphere. Then already is our first speaker not man, but only a first speaker. His only redress is forthwith to draw a circle outside of his antagonist. And so men do by themselves. The result of to-day, which haunts the mind and cannot be escaped, will presently be abridged into a word, and the principle that seemed to explain nature will itself be included as one example of a bolder generalization. In the thought of tomorrow there is a power to upheave all thy creed, all the creeds, all the literatures, of the nations, and marshal thee to a heaven which no epic dream has yet depicted. Every man is not so much a workman in the world, as he is a suggestion of that he should be.

Men walk as prophecies of the next age. Step by step we scale this mysterious ladder: the steps are actions; the new prospect is power. Every several result is threatened and judged by that which follows. Every one seems to be contradicted

by the new; it is only limited by the new. The new statement is always hated by the old, and, to those dwelling in the old, comes like an abyss of skepticism. But the eye soon gets wonted to it, for the eye and it are effects of one cause; then its innocency and benefit appear, and presently, all its energy spent, it pales and dwindles before the revelation of the new hour. Fear not the new generalization. Does the fact look crass and material, threatening to degrade thy theory of spirit? Resist it not; it  goes to refine and raise thy theory of matter just as much. There are no fixtures to men, if we appeal to consciousness. Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood; and if there is any truth in him, if he rests at last on the divine soul, I see not how it can be otherwise. The last chamber, the last closet, he must feel, was never opened; there is always a residuum unknown, unanalyzable. That is, every man believes that he has a greater possibility.

Our moods do not believe in each other. To-day I am full of thoughts, and can write what I please. I see no reason why I should not have the same thought, the same power of expression, tomorrow. What I write, whilst I write it, seems the most natural thing in the world; but yesterday I saw a dreary vacuity in this direction in which now I see so much; and a month hence, I doubt not, I shall wonder who he was that wrote so many continuous pages. Alas for this infirm faith, this will not strenuous, this vast ebb of a vast flow! I am God in nature; I am a weed by the wall. The continual effort to raise himself above himself, to work a pitch above his last height, betrays itself in a man's relations. We thirst for approbation, yet cannot forgive the approver. The sweet of nature is love; yet, if I have a friend, I am tormented by my imperfections. The love of me accuses the other party. If he were

high enough to slight me, then could I love him, and rise by my affection to new heights. A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends. For every friend whom he loses for truth, he gains a better. I thought, as I walked in the woods and mused on my friends, why should I play with them this game of idolatry? I know and see too well, when not voluntarily blind, the speedy limits of persons called high and worthy. Rich, noble, and great they are by the liberality of our speech, but truth is sad.

O blessed Spirit, whom I forsake for these, they are not thou! Every personal consideration that we allow costs us heavenly state. We sell the thrones of angels for a short and turbulent pleasure. How often must we learn this lesson? Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations. The only sin is limitation. As soon as you once come up with a man's limitations, it is all over with him. Has he talents? has he enterprise? has he knowledge? it boots not. Infinitely alluring and attractive was he to you yesterday, a great hope, a sea to swim in; now, you have found his shores, found it a pond, and you care not if you never see it again. Each new step we take in thought reconciles twenty seemingly discordant facts, as expressions of one law. Aristotle and Plato are reckoned the respective heads of two schools. A wise man will see that Aristotle Platonizes. By going one step farther back in thought, discordant opinions are reconciled, by being seen to be two extremes of one principle, and we can never go so far back as to preclude a still higher vision.

Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has broken out in a great city, and no man knows what is safe, or where it will end. There is not a piece of science, but its flank may be turned tomorrow; there is not any literary reputation, not the so-called eternal names of fame, that may not be revised and condemned. The very hopes of man, the thoughts of his heart, the religion of nations, the manners and morals of mankind, are all at the mercy of a new generalization. Generalization is always a new influx of the divinity into the mind. Hence the thrill that attends it. Valor consists in the power of self-recovery, so that a man cannot have his flank turned, cannot be out-generalled, but put him where you will, he stands. This can only be by his preferring truth to his past apprehension of truth; and his alert acceptance of it, from whatever quarter; the intrepid conviction that his laws, his relations to society, his Christianity, his world, may at any time be superseded and decease.

There are degrees in idealism. We learn first to play with it academically, as the magnet was once a toy. Then we see in the heyday of youth and poetry that it may be true, that it is true in gleams and fragments. Then, its countenance waxes stern and grand, and we see that it must be true. It now shows itself ethical and practical. We learn that God IS that he is in me; and that all things are shadows of him. The idealism of Berkeley is only a crude statement of the idealism of Jesus, and that again is a crude statement of the fact, that all nature is the rapid efflux of goodness

executing and organizing itself. Much more obviously is history and the state of the world at any one time directly dependent on the intellectual classification then existing in the minds of men. The things which are dear to men at this hour are so on account of the ideas which have emerged on their mental horizon, and which cause the present order of things as a tree bears its apples. A new degree of culture would instantly revolutionize the entire system of human pursuits.

Conversation is a game of circles. In conversation we pluck up the termini which bound the common of silence on every side. The parties are not to be judged by the spirit they partake and even express under this Pentecost. To-morrow they will have receded from this high-water mark. To-morrow you shall find them stooping under the old pack-saddles. Yet let us enjoy the cloven flame whilst it glows on our walls. When each new speaker strikes a new light, emancipates us from the oppression of the last speaker, to oppress us with the greatness and exclusiveness of his own thought, then yields us to another redeemer, we seem to recover our rights, to become men. O, what truths profound and executable only in ages and orbs are supposed in the announcement of every truth! In common hours, society sits cold and statuesque. We all stand waiting, empty, --knowing, possibly, that we can be full, surrounded by mighty symbols which are not symbols to us, but prose and trivial toys. Then cometh the god, and converts the statues into fiery men, and by a flash of his eye burns up the veil which shrouded all things, and the meaning of the very furniture, of cup and saucer, of chair and clock and tester, is manifest. 

The facts which loomed so large in the fogs of yesterday, -- property, climate, breeding, personal beauty, and the like, have strangely changed their proportions. All that we reckoned settledshakes and rattles; and literatures, cities, climates, religions, leave their foundations, and dance before our eyes. And yet here again

see the swift circumspection! Good as is discourse, silence is better, and shames it. The length of the discourse indicates the distance of thought betwixt the speaker and the hearer. If they were at a perfect understanding in any part, no words would be necessary thereon. If at one in all parts, no words would be suffered. Literature is a point outside of our hodiernal circle, through which a new one may be described. The use of literature is to afford us a platform whence we may command a view of our present life, a purchase by which we may move it. 

We fill ourselves with ancient learning, install ourselves the best we can in Greek, in Punic, in Roman houses, only that we may wiselier see French, English, and

American houses and modes of living. In like manner, we see literature best from the midst of wild nature, or from the din of affairs, or from a high religion. The field cannot be well seen from ithin the field. The astronomer must have his diameter of the earth's orbit as a base to find the parallax of any star. Therefore we value the poet. All the argument and all the wisdom is not in the encyclopaedia, or the treatise on metaphysics, or the Body of Divinity, but in the sonnet or the play. 

In my daily work I incline to repeat my old steps, and do not believe in remedial force, in the power of change and reform. But some Petrarch or Ariosto, filled with the new wine of his imagination, writes me an ode or a brisk romance, full of daring thought and action. He smites and arouses me with his shrill tones, breaks up my whole chain of habits, and I open my eye on my own possibilities. He claps wings

to the sides of all the solid old lumber of the world, and I am capable once more of choosing a straight path in theory and practice. We have the same need to command a view of the religion of the world. We can never see Christianity from the catechism: -- from the pastures, from a boat in the pond, from amidst the songs of wood-birds, we possibly may. Cleansed by the elemental light and wind, steeped in the sea of beautiful forms which the field offers us, we may chance to cast a right glance back upon biography. 

Christianity is rightly dear to the best of mankind; yet was there never a young philosopher whose breeding had fallen into the Christian church, by whom that brave text of Paul's was not specially prized: -- "Then shall also the Son be subject unto Him who put all things under him, that God may be all in all." Let the claims and virtues of persons be never so great and welcome, the instinct of man presses eagerly onward to the impersonal and illimitable, and gladly arms itself against the dogmatism of bigots with this generous word out of the book itself. The natural world may be conceived of as a system of concentric circles, and we now and then detect in nature slight dislocations, which apprize us that this surface on which we now stand is not fixed, but sliding. These manifold tenacious qualities, this chemistry and vegetation, these metals and animals, which seem to stand there for their own sake, are means and methods only, -- are words of God, and as fugitive as other words. Has the naturalist or chemist learned his craft, who has explored the gravity of atoms and the elective affinities, who has not yet discerned the deeper law whereof this is only a partial or approximate statement, namely, that like draws to like; and that the goods which belong to you gravitate to you, and need not be pursued with pains and cost? Yet is that statement approximate also, and not final.

Omnipresence is a higher fact. Not through subtle, subterranean channels need friend and fact be drawn to their counterpart, but, rightly considered, these things proceed from the eternal generation of the soul. Cause and effect are two sides of one fact. The same law of eternal procession ranges all that we call the virtues, and extinguishes each in the light of a better. The great man will not be prudent in the popular sense; all his prudence will be so much deduction from his grandeur. But it behooves each to see, when he sacrifices prudence, to what god he devotes it; if to

ease and pleasure, he had better be prudent still; if to a great trust, he can well spare his mule and panniers who has a winged chariot instead. Geoffrey draws on his boots to go through the woods, that his feet may be safer from the bite of snakes; Aaron never thinks of such a peril. In many years neither is harmed by such an accident. Yet it seems to me, that, with every precaution you take against such an evil, you put yourself into the power of the evil. I suppose that the highest prudence is the lowest prudence. Is this too sudden a rushing from the centre to the verge of our orbit? Think how many times we shall fall back into pitiful calculations before we take up our rest in the great sentiment, or make the verge of to-day the new centre. Besides, your bravest sentiment is familiar to the humblest men. 

The poor and the low have their way of expressing the last facts of philosophy as well as you. "Blessed be nothing," and "the worse things are, the better they are," are proverbs which express the transcendentalism of common life. One man's justice is another's injustice; one man's beauty, another's ugliness; one man's wisdom, another's folly; as one beholds the same objects from a higher point. One man thinks justice consists in paying debts, and has no measure in his abhorrence of another who is very remiss in this duty, and makes the creditor wait tediously. But that second man has his own way of looking at things; asks himself which debt must I pay first, the debt to the rich, or the debt to the poor? the debt of money, or the debt of thought to mankind, of genius to nature? For you, O broker! there is no other principle but arithmetic. For me, commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred; nor can I detach one duty, like you, from all other duties, and concentrate my forces mechanically on the payment of moneys. 

Let me live onward; you shall find that, though slower, the progress of my character will liquidate all these debts without injustice to higher claims. If a man should dedicate himself to the payment of notes, would not this be injustice? Does he owe no debt but money? And are all claims on him to be postponed to a landlord's or a banker's? There is no virtue which is final; all are initial. The virtues of society are vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery that we must cast away our virtues, or what we have always esteemed such, into the same pit that has consumed our grosser vices. "Forgive his crimes, forgive his virtues too, Those smaller faults, half converts to the right."It is the highest power of divine moments that they abolish our contritions also. I accuse myself of sloth and unprofitableness day by day; but when these waves of God flow into me, I no longer reckon lost time. I no longer poorly compute my possible achievement by what remains to me of the month or the year; for these moments confer a sort of omnipresence and omnipotence which asks nothing of duration, but sees that the energy of the mind is commensurate with the work to be done, without time.

And thus, O circular philosopher, I hear some reader exclaim, you have arrived at a fine Pyrrhonism, at an equivalence and indifferency of all actions, and would fain teach us that, if we are true, forsooth, our crimes may be lively stones out of which we shall construct the temple of the true God! I am not careful to justify myself. I own I am gladdened by seeing the predominance of the saccharine principle throughout vegetable nature, and not less by beholding in morals that unrestrained

inundation of the principle of good into every chink and hole that selfishness has left open, yea, into selfishness and sin itself; so that no evil is pure, nor hell itself without its extreme satisfactions. But lest I should mislead any when I have my own head and obey my whims, let me remind the reader that I am only an experimenter.

Do not set the least value on what I do, or the least discredit on what I do not, as if I pretended to settle any thing as true or false. I unsettle all things. No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no Past at my back. 

Yet this incessant movement and progression which all things partake could never become sensible to us but by contrast to some principle of fixture or stability in the soul. Whilst the eternal generation of circles proceeds, the eternal generator abides. That central life is somewhat superior to creation, superior to knowledge and thought, and contains all its circles. For ever it labors to create a life and thought as large and excellent as itself; but in vain; for that which is made instructs how to make a better. Thus there is no sleep, no pause, no preservation, but all things renew, germinate, and spring. Why should we import rags and relics into the new hour? Nature abhors the old, and old age seems the only disease; all others run into this one. We call it by many names,-- fever, intemperance, insanity, stupidity, and crime; they are all forms of old age; they are rest, conservatism, appropriation, inertia, not newness, not the way onward. We grizzle every day. I see no need of it. Whilst we converse with what is above us, we do not grow old, but grow young. Infancy, youth, receptive, aspiring, with religious eye looking upward, counts itself nothing, and abandons itself to the instruction flowing from all sides. But the man and woman of seventy assume to know all, they have outlived their hope, they renounce aspiration, accept the actual for the necessary, and talk down to the young. Let them, then, become organs of the Holy Ghost; let them be lovers; let them behold truth; and their eyes are uplifted, their wrinkles smoothed, they are perfumed again with hope and power. 

This old age ought not to creep on a human mind. In nature every moment is new; the past is always swallowed and forgotten; the coming only is sacred. Nothing is secure but life, transition, the energizing spirit. No love can be bound by oath or covenant to secure it against a higher love. No truth so sublime but it may be trivial to-morrow in the light of new thoughts. People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them. Life is a series of surprises. We do not guess to-day the mood, the pleasure, the power of to-morrow, when we are building up our being. Of lower states, -- of acts of routine and sense,-- we can tell somewhat; but the masterpieces of God, the total growths and universal movements of the soul, he hideth; they are incalculable. I can know that truth is divine and helpful; but how it shall help me I can have no guess, for so to be is the sole inlet of  so to know. 

The new position of the advancing man has all the powers of the old, yet has them all new. It carries in its bosom all the energies of the past, yet is itself an exhalation of the morning. I cast away in this new moment all my once hoarded knowledge, as vacant and vain. Now, for the first time, seem I to know any thing rightly. The simplest words,  we do not know what they mean, except when we love and aspire. The difference between talents and character is adroitness to keep the old and trodden round, and power and courage to make a new road to new and better goals. Character makes an overpowering present; a cheerful, determined hour, which fortifies all the company, by making them see that much is possible and excellent that was not thought of. Character dulls the impression of particular events. When we see the conqueror, we do not think much of any one battle or success. We see that we had exaggerated the difficulty. It was easy to him. The great man is not convulsible or tormentable; events pass over him without much impression.

People say sometimes, `See what I have overcome; see how cheerful I am; see how completely I have triumphed over these black events.' Not if they still remind me of the black event. True conquest is the causing the calamity to fade and disappear, as an early cloud of insignificant result in a history so large and advancing. The one thing which we seek with insatiable desire is to forget ourselves, to be surprised out of our propriety, to lose our sempiternal memory, and to do something without knowing how or why; in short, to draw a new circle. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. The way of life is wonderful: it is by abandonment. The great moments of history are the facilities of performance through the strength of ideas, as the works of genius and religion. "A man," said Oliver Cromwell, "never rises so high as when he knows not whither he is going." Dreams and drunkenness, the use of opium and alcohol are the semblance and counterfeit of this oracular genius, and hence their dangerous attraction for men. For the like reason, they ask the aid of wild passions, as in gaming and war, to ape in some manner these flames and generosities of the heart

René Daumal: You've always been wrong (1908 -1944)

        Spiritual Death

You have always been wrong. Like me, like everyone, you have let yourself glide on easy slopes which lead nowhere. Only in dreams has your mind traveled toward the truth. Set your thought today alongside the things that are holding out against you: your most beautiful theories fade away before the wall of appearances. This veil of colored forms, of sights, of sounds, of touch, so easily called illusory, is solid nevertheless. It is from here that you set out, but you took the wrong door. Or rather, you thought that you had set out, you fell asleep on the threshold, and dreamed your beliefs about the world and about the mind. Today I am waiting for you on the threshold. We will try to take our first steps together. I ask you first to look at what surrounds you at this moment, as simply as possible. See what presents itself to you. Above all, do not begin by questioning the reality of this world: in the name of what would you judge it? Do you know what absolute reality is?

Anyone who undertakes a voyage must set off from the place where he finds himself; he should not believe the voyage has been accomplished because he has an exact and detailed itinerary in his hand; the line he has traced on a map only makes sense if he can determine the point where he actually is. So, you, in the same way, seek yourself. I mean: awaken yourself, find yourself. The place where you find yourself is the true state of your consciousness, taken together with all that it contains. It is from here that you must set out. And all our speculations will never be more than the itinerary of a merely possible voyage.

All self-contained metaphysical systems resemble the fruitless pleasure of a man who spends his time reading guidebooks and itineraries, putting together routes on a map and believing he is traveling. Up to now, philosophers have seemed to do hardly anything else, or, if some of them have made actual voyages, none has known how to reveal them to us; and so, any philosophy, even if it was lived by its creator as an actual experience, remains a sterile game, of no use to men.

The attempt I am suggesting you make with me can be summed up in two words: stay awake. I have asked you first to awaken, to see what you are aware of now. You are aware of continual change. Besides, you have felt, in one way or another, a need to become something which you are not yet: but it is even possible that, not understanding me well, you say that you feel nothing of the sort. Even so, you can experience, if you accept passively the conditions being imposed on your consciousness, that you are asleep. Awakening is not a state; it is an act. And people are much more rarely awake than their words would have us believe.

The only immediate action which you can accomplish is to wake up, to become aware of yourself. Just take a look at what you believe you have done since this day began: it is perhaps the first time that you have really woken up, and it is only at that moment that you are aware of all that you have done like an automaton, without thought. For the most part, men never wake up except to the point of realizing that they have been asleep. Now, accept, if you wish, this existence of a sleepwalker. You can live the life of an idler, a laborer, a peasant, a merchant, a diplomat, an artist, a philosopher, without ever waking up, except from time to time, just enough to enjoy or to suffer the manner in which you sleep. It would perhaps even be more convenient not to wake up at all.

And since the reality of the spirit is action, in this sleep, in the absence of real action and lack of real thought, there is nothing. Truly, it is spiritual death.

But if you have chosen to be, then you have committed yourself to a rough road, climbing ceaselessly and demanding an effort at every moment. You wake up, and, at once, you must wake up again. You awake from your awakening, your first awakening appears like sleep to your deeper awakening. On this way of self-inquiry, consciousness is forever going into action. Where most other men only wake up, fall asleep, wake up, fall asleep, climb one step in consciousness only to fall back immediately, never rising above this zig-zagging line, you find yourself.

You find yourself again and again launched on an undefined route of always new awakenings, and as there is nothing better for a discerning consciousness, your pondering on this perpetual awakening towards the highest possible consciousness will constitute the science of sciences. I call it metaphysics, but, though it is the science of sciences, don’t forget that it will never be more than the itinerary planned beforehand — and only in outline — of a real journey. If you forget that, if you believe you have achieved awakening because you have established the conditions of your perpetual awakening beforehand, then, at that moment you fall asleep, you fall asleep into spiritual death.

Jiddu Krishnamurti: Total Freedom (1895-1986)

              On 

       Meditation 

    for Westerners 

Question: Is it possible for Westerners to meditate? Jiddu Krishnamurti: I think this is one of the romantic ideas of Westerners - that only Easterners can meditate. So, let us find out, not how to meditate, but what we mean by meditation. Let us experiment together to find out what meditation means, what are the implications of meditation. Merely to learn how to meditate, to acquire a technique, is obviously not meditation. Going to a yogi, a swami, reading about meditation in books and trying to imitate, sitting in certain postures with your eyes closed, breathing in a certain way, repeating words - surely, all that is not meditation; it is merely pursuing a pattern of conformity, making the mind repetitive, habitual. The mere cultivation of a habit, whether noble or trivial, is not meditation. This practice of cultivating a particular habit is known both in the East and in the West, and we think that it is a process of meditation.

Now, let us find out what is meditation. Is concentration meditation? Concentration on a particular interest chosen from among many other interests, focusing the mind on an object or an entity - is that meditation? In the process of concentration, obviously there is resistance to other forms of interest; therefore, concentration is a process of exclusion, is it not? I do not know if you have tried to meditate, tried to fix your mind on a particular thought.

When you do that, other thoughts come pouring in because you are also interested in those other thoughts, not only in the particular thought you have chosen. You have chosen one particular thought, thinking it is noble, spiritual, and that you should concentrate on it and resist other thoughts. But the very resistance creates conflict between the thought that you have chosen to think about and other interests; so you spend your time concentrating on one thought and keeping off the others, and this battle between thoughts is considered meditation.

If you can succeed in completely identifying yourself with one thought and resisting all others, you think you have learned how to meditate. Now, such concentration is a process of exclusion and therefore a process of gratification, is it not? You have chosen a particular interest that you think will ultimately give you satisfaction, and you go after it by repeating a phrase, by concentrating upon an image, by breathing, and so on.

That whole process implies advancement, becoming something, achieving a result. That is what we are all interested in - we want to be successful in meditation. And the more successful we are, the more we think we have advanced. So obviously, such forms of concentration, which we call meditation, are mere gratification; they are not meditation at all. So, mere concentration on an idea is not meditation.

What, then, is meditation? Is prayer meditation? Is devotion meditation? Is the cultivation of a virtue meditation? The cultivation of a virtue only strengthens the 'me', does it not? It is I who am becoming virtuous. Can the 'I', the 'me', ever become virtuous? That is, can the center of resistance, of recognition, which is a process of isolation - can that ever be virtuous? Surely, there is virtue only when there is freedom from the 'I', from the 'me', so the cultivation of virtue through meditation is obviously a false process.

But it is a very convenient process because it strengthens the 'me', and as long as I am strengthening the 'me', I think I am advancing, becoming successful spiritually. But obviously, that is not meditation, is it? Nor is prayer - prayer being mere supplication, petition, which is again a demand of the self, a projection of the self towards greater and wider satisfaction. Nor is meditation the immolation of oneself to an image, to an idea, which we call devotion, because we always choose the image, the formula, the ideal, according to our own satisfaction. What we choose may be beautiful, but we are still seeking gratification.

So, none of these processes - concentration, repeating certain phrases, breathing in a special manner, and all the rest of it - can really help us to understand what meditation is. They are very popular because they always produce results, but they are all obviously foolish ways of trying to meditate.

Now, what is meditation? The understanding of the ways of the mind is meditation, is it not? Meditation is the understanding of myself, it is being aware of every reaction, conscious as well as unconscious - which is self-knowledge. Without self-knowledge, how can there be meditation? Surely, meditation is the beginning of self-knowledge, because if I do not know myself, whatever I do must be merely an escape from myself. If I do not know the structure, the ways of my own thinking, feeling, reacting, of what value is it to imitate, to try to concentrate, to learn how to breathe in a particular way, or to lose myself in devotion? Surely, in that way I will never understand myself; on the contrary, I am merely escaping from myself.

Meditation, then, is the beginning of self-knowledge. In that there is no success, there are no spectacular processes. It is most arduous. As we do not want to know ourselves but only to find an escape, we turn to Masters, religious books, prayers, yogis, and all the rest of it, and then we think we have learned how to meditate. Only in understanding ourselves does the mind become quiet, and without understanding ourselves, the tranquillity of the mind is not possible.

When the mind is quiet, not made quiet through discipline - when the mind is not controlled, not encased in condemnations and resistance, but is spontaneously still - only then is it possible to find out what is true and what is beyond the projections of the mind. Surely, if I want to know if there is reality, God, or what you will, the mind must be absolutely quiet, must it not? Because, whatever the mind seeks out will not be real - it will merely be the projection of its own memories, of the things it has accumulated; and the projection of memory is obviously not reality or God. So, the mind must be still, but not made still; it must be naturally, easily, spontaneously still. Only then is it possible for the mind to discover something beyond itself.

Source: from the book   
“Total Freedom”

Eustace Mullins: Secrets of the federal reserve (1923-2010)

Eustace Mullins - Public Enemy No. 1, circa 1952    

Chapter Ten

      The Money 

               Creators

        

The editorial page of The New York Times, January 18, 1920, carried an interesting comment on the Federal Reserve System. The unidentified writer, perhaps Paul Warburg, stated, "The Federal Reserve is a fount of credit, not of capital." This is one of the most revealing statements ever made about the Federal Reserve System. It says that the Federal Reserve System will never add anything to our capital structure, or to the formation of capital, because it is organized to produce credit, to create money for credit money and speculations, instead of providing capital funds for the improvement of commerce and industry. Simply stated, capitalization would mean the providing of notes backed by a precious metal or other commodity. Reserve notes are unbacked paper loaned at interest. On July 25, 1921, Senator Owen stated on the editorial page of The New York Times, The Federal Reserve Board is the most gigantic financial power in all the world. Instead of using this great power as the Federal Reserve Act intended that it should, the board....delegated this power to the banks, threw the weight of its influence toward the support of the policy of German inflation." The senator whose name was on the Act saw that it was not performing as promised. After the Agricultural Depression of 1920-21, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors settled down to eight years of providing rapid credit expansion of the New York bankers, a policy which culminated in the Great Depression of 1929-31 and  helped paralyze the economic structure of the world. Paul Warburg had resigned in May, 1918, after the monetary system of the United States had been changed from a bond-secured currency to a currency based upon commercial paper and the shares of the Federal Reserve Banks. Warburg returned to his five hundred thousand dollar a year job with Kuhn, Loeb Company, but he continued to determine the policy of the Federal Reserve System, as President of the Federal Advisory Council and as Chairman of the Executive Committee of the American Acceptance Council. From 1921 to 1929, Paul Warburg organized three of the greatest trusts in the United States, the International Acceptance Bank, largest acceptance  bank  in  the  world,  Agfa  Ansco  Film  Corporation,  with headquarters in Belgium, and I.G. Farben Corporation whose American branch Warburg set up as I.G. Chemical Corporation. The Westinghouse Corporation is also one of his creations. In the early 1920s, the Federal Reserve System played the decisive role in the re-entry of Russia into the international finance structure. Winthrop and Stimson continued to be the correspondents between Russian and American bankers, and Henry L. Stimson handled the negotiations concluding in our  recognition of the Soviet after Roosevelt’s election in 1932. This was an anti-climax, because we had long before resumed exchange relations with Russian financiers. The Federal Reserve System began  purchasing Russian gold in 1920,and Russian currency was accepted on the Exchanges. According to Colonel Ely Garrison, in his autobiography, and according to the United States Naval Secret Service Report on Paul Warburg, the Russian Revolution had been financed by the Rothschilds and Warburgs, with a member of the Warburg family carrying the actual funds used by

Lenin and Trotsky in Stockholm in 1918. An article in the English monthly"Fortnightly", July, 1922, says:

"During the past year, practically every single capitalistic institution has been restored. This is true of the State Bank, private banking, the Stock Exchange, the right to possess money to unlimited amount, the right of inheritance, the bill of exchange system, and other institutions and practices involved in the conduct  of private industry and trade. A great part of the former nationalized industries are now found in semi-independent trusts." The organization of powerful trusts in Russia under the guise of Communism made possible the receipt of large amounts of financial and technical help from the United States. The Russian aristocracy had

been wiped out because it was too inefficient to manage a modern industrial state. The international financiers provided funds for Lenin and Trotsky to overthrow the Czarist regime and keep Russia in the First World War. Peter Drucker, spokesman for the oligarchy in America, declared in an article in the Saturday Evening Post in 1948, that:

"RUSSIA IS THE IDEAL OF THE MANAGED ECONOMY TOWARDS WHICH WE ARE MOVING."

In Russia, the issuance of sufficient currency to handle the needs of their economy occurred only after a government had been put in power which had absolute control  of the people. During the 1920s, Russia issued large quantities of so-called "inflation money", a managed currency. The same "Fortnightly" article (of July, 1922) observed that:

 "As economic pressure produced the ‘astronomical dimensions system’ of currency; it can never destroy it. Taken alone, the system is selfcontained, logically perfected, even intelligent. And it can perish only through the collapse or destruction of the political edifice which it decorates." "Fortnightly" also remarked, in 1929, that:

"Since 1921, the daily life of the Soviet citizen is no different from that of the American citizen, and  the  Soviet  system  of  government  is  more economical."

Admiral Kolchak, leader of the White Russian armies, was supported by the international bankers, who sent British and American troops to Siberia in order to have a pretext for printing Kolchak rubles. At one time in 1920, the bankers were manipulating on the London Exchange the old Czarist rubles, Kerensky rubles and Kolchak rubles, the values of all three fluctuating according to the movements of the Allied troops aiding Kolchak. Kolchak also was  in possession of considerable amounts of gold which had been seized by his armies. After his defeat, a trainload of this gold disappeared in Siberia. At the Senate Hearings in 1921 on the Federal Reserve System, it was brought out that the system had been receiving this gold. Congressman Dunbar questioned Governor W.P.G. Harding of the Federal Reserve Board as follows: 

DUNBAR: "In other words, Russia is sending a great deal of gold to the European countries, which in turn send it to us?"

HARDING: "This is done to pay for the stuff bought in this country and to create dollar exchange."

DUNBAR: "At the same time, that gold came from Russia through Europe?"

HARDING: "Some of it is thought to be Kolchak gold, coming through Siberia, but it is none of the Federal Reserve Banks’ business. The Secretary of the Treasury has issued instructions to the assay office not to take any gold which does not bear the mint mark of a friendly nation." Just what Governor Harding meant by "a friendly nation" is not clear. In 1921, we were not at war with any country, but Congress was already beginning to question the international gold dealings of the Federal Reserve System. Governor Harding could very well shrug his shoulders and say that it was none of the Federal Reserve Banks’ business where the gold came from. Gold knows no nationality or race. The United States by law had ceased to be interested in where its gold came from in 1906, when Secretary of the Treasury Shaw made arrangements with several of the larger New York banks (ones in which he had interests) to purchase gold with advances of cash from the United States Treasury, which would then purchase the gold from these banks. The Treasury could claim that it did not know where its gold came from since their office only registers the bank from which it made the purchase. Since 1906, the Treasury has not known from which of the international gold merchants it was buying its gold. The international gold dealings of the Federal Reserve System, and its active support in helping the League of Nations to force all the nations of Europe and South America back on the gold standard for the benefit of international gold merchants like Eugene Meyer, Jr. and Albert Strauss, is best demonstrated by a classic incident, the sterling credit of 1925. J.E. Darling wrote, in the English periodical, "Spectator", on January 10, 1925 that:

"Obviously, it is of the first importance to the United States to induce England to resume the gold standard as early as possible. An American controlled Gold Standard, which must inevitably result in the United States becoming the world’s supreme financial power, makes England a tributary and satellite, and New York the world’s financial centre." Mr. Darling fails to point out that the American people have as little to do with this as the British people, and that resumption of the gold standard by Britain would benefit only that small group of international gold merchants who own the world’s gold. No wonder that "Banker’s Magazine" gleefully remarked in July, 1925 that:

"The outstanding event of the past half year in the banking world was the restoration of the gold standard." The First World War changed the status of the United States from that of a debtor nation to the position of the world’s greatest creditor nation, a title formerly occupied by England. Since debt is money, according to the Governor Marriner Eccles of the Federal Reserve Board, this also made us the richest nation of the world. The war also caused the removal of the headquarters of the world’s acceptance market from London to New York, and Paul Warburg became the most powerful trade acceptance banker in the world. The mainstay of the international financiers, however, remained the same. The gold standard was still the basis of foreign exchange, and the small group of internationals who owned the gold controlled the monetary system of the Western nations. Professor Gustav Cassel wrote in 1928: "The American dollar, not the gold standard, is the world’s monetary standard. The American Federal Reserve Board has the power to determine the purchasing power of the dollar by making changes in the rate of discount, and thus controls the monetary standard of the world." If this were true, the members of the Federal Reserve Board would be the most powerful financiers in the world. Occasionally their membership includes such influential men as Paul Warburg or Eugene Meyer, Jr., but usually they are  a rubber-stamp committee for the Federal Advisory Council and the London bankers.

       In May, 1925, the British Parliament passed the Gold Standard Act, putting Great Britain back on the gold standard. The Federal Reserve System’s major role in this event came out on March 16, 1926, when George Seay, Governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, testified before the House Banking and Currency Committee that:

"A verbal understanding confirmed by correspondence, extended Great Britain a two hundred million dollar gold loan or credit. All negotiations were conducted between Benjamin Strong, Governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Mr. Montagu Norman, Governor of the Bank of England. The purpose of this loan was to help England get back on the gold standard, and the loan was to be met by investment of Federal Reserve funds in bills of exchange and foreign securities." The Federal Reserve Bulletin of June, 1925, stated that: "Under its arrangement with the Bank of England the Federal Reserve Bank of New York undertakes  to  sell  gold  on  credit  to  the  Bank  of England from time to time during the next two years, but not to exceed $200,000,000 outstanding at any one time." A two hundred million dollar gold  credit had been arranged by a verbal understanding between the  international bankers, Benjamin Strong and Montagu Norman. It was  apparent by this time that the Federal Reserve System had other interests at heart than the financial needs of American business and industry. Great Britain’s return to the gold standard was further facilitated by an additional gold loan of a hundred million dollars from J.P. Morgan Company. Winston Churchill, British Chancellor of the Exchequer, complained later that the cost to the British government of this loan was $1,125,000 the first year, this sum representing the profit to J.P. Morgan Company in that time.

The matter of changing the discount rate, for instance, has never been satisfactorily explained. Inquiry at the Federal Reserve Board in Washington elicited the reply that "the condition of the money markets is the prime consideration behind  changes in the rate." Since the  money market is in New York, it takes no imagination  to deduce that New York bankers may be interested in changes of the rate and often attempt to influence it. Norman Lombard, in the periodical "World’s Work" writes that: "In their consideration and disposal of proposed changes of policy, the Federal Reserve Board should follow the procedure and ethics observed by our court of law. Suggestions that there should be a change of rate or that the Reserve Banks should buy or sell securities may come from anyone and with no formality or written argument. The suggestion may be made to a Governor or Director of the Federal Reserve System over the telephone or at his club over the luncheon table, or it may be made in the course of a casual call on a member of the Federal Reserve Board. The interests of the one proposing the change need not be revealed, and his name and any suggestions he makes are usually kept secret. If it concerns the matter of open market operations, the public has no inkling of the decision until the regular weekly statement appears, showing changes in the holdings of the Federal Reserve Banks. Meanwhile, there is no public discussion, there is no statement of the reasons for the decision, or of the names of those opposing or favoring it."

The chances of the average citizen meeting a Governor of the Federal Reserve System at his club are also slight. The House Hearings on Stabilization of the Purchasing Power of the Dollar in 1928 proved conclusively  that the Federal Reserve Board worked in close cooperation with the heads of European central banks, and that the Depression  of 1929-31 was planned at a secret luncheon of the Federal Reserve Board and those heads of European central banks in 1927. The Board has never been made responsible to the public for its decisions or actions. The constitutional checks and balances seem not to operate in finance. The true allegiance of the members of the Federal Reserve Board has always been to the central bankers. The three features of the central bank, its ownership by private stockholders who receive rent and profit for their use of the nation’s credit, absolute control of the nation’s financial resources, and mobilization of the nation’s credit to finance foreigners, all were demonstrated by the Federal Reserve System during the first fifteen years of its operations. Further demonstration of the international purposes of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 is provided  by the "Edge Amendment" of December 24, 1919, which authorizes the organization of corporations expressly for "engaging in international foreign banking and other international or foreign financial operations, including the dealing in gold or bullion, and the holding of  stock in foreign corporations." In commenting on this amendment, E.W. Kemmerer, economist from Princeton University, remarked that:

 "The federal reserve system is proving to be a great influence in the internationalizing of American trade and American finance." The fact that this internationalizing of American trade and American finance has been a direct cause for involving us in two world wars does not disturb Mr. Kemmerer. There is plenty of evidence to show how Paul Warburg used the Federal Reserve System as the instrument for getting trade acceptance adopted on a wide scale by American

businessmen. The use of trade acceptances,  (which are the currency of international trade) by bankers and corporations in the United States prior to 1915 was practically unknown. The rise of the Federal Reserve ystem exactly parallels the increase in the use of acceptances in this country, nor is this a coincidence. The men who wanted the FederalReserve System were the men who set up acceptance banks and

profited by the use of acceptances.

As early as 1910, the National Monetary Commission began to issue pamphlets and other propaganda urging bankers and businessmen in this country to adopt trade acceptances in their transactions. For three years the Commission carried on this campaign, and the Aldrich Plan included a broad provision authorizing the introduction and use of bankers’ acceptances into the American system of commercial paper. The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 as passed by Congress did not

specifically authorize the use of acceptances, but the Federal Reserve Board in 1915 and 1916 defined "trade acceptance", further defined by Regulation A Series of 1920, and further defined by Series 1924. One of the first official acts of the Board of Governors in 1914 was to grant acceptances a preferentially low rate of discount at Federal Reserve Banks. Since acceptances were not being used in this country at that

time, no explanation of business exigency could be advanced for this action. It was apparent that someone in power on the Board of Governors wanted the adoptance of acceptances.

The National Bank Act of 1864, which was the determining financial authority of the United States until November, 1914, did not permit banks to lend their credit. Consequently, the power of banks to create money was greatly limited. We did not have a bank of issue, that is, a central bank, which could create money. To get a central bank, the bankers caused money panic after money panic on the business

people of the United States, by shipping gold out of the country, creating a money shortage, and then importing it back. After we got our central bank, the Federal Reserve System, there was no longer any need for a money panic, because  the banks could create money. However, the panic as an instrument of power over the business and financial community was used again on two important occasions, in 1920, causing the Agricultural Depression, because state banks and trust companies had refused to join the Federal Reserve System, and in 1929, causing the Great Depression, which centralized nearly all power in this country in the hands of a few great trusts. A trade acceptance is a draft drawn by the seller of goods on the purchaser, and accepted by the purchaser, with a time of expiration stamped upon it. The use of trade acceptances in the wholesale market supplies short-term, assured credit to carry goods in process of production, storage, transit, and marketing. It facilitates domestic and foreign commerce. Seemingly, then, the bankers who wished to replace the open-book account system with the trade acceptance system were progressive men who wished to help American import-200

export trade. Much propaganda was issued to that effect, but this was not really the story. The open-book system, heretofore used entirely by American business people, allowed a discount for cash. The acceptance system discourages the use of cash, by allowing a discount for credit. The open-book system also allowed much easier terms of payment, with liberal extensions on the debt. The acceptance does not allow this, since it is a short-term credit with the time-date stamped upon it. It is out of the seller’s hands, and in the hands of a bank, usually an acceptance bank, which does not allow any extension of time. Thus, the adoption of acceptances by American businessmen during the 1920’s greatly facilitated the domination and swallowing up of small business into huge trusts, which accelerated the crash of 1929. Trade acceptances had been used to some extent in the United States before the Civil War. During that war, exigencies of trade had estroyed the acceptance as a credit medium, and it had not come back into favor in this country, our people preferring the simplicity and generosity of the open-book system. Open-book accounts are a single-name commercial paper, bearing only the name of the debtor.

 Acceptances are two-name paper, bearing the name of the debtorand the creditor. Thus they became commodities to be bought and sold by banks. To the creditor, under the open-book system, the debt is a liability. To the acceptance bank holding an acceptance, the debt is an asset. The men who set up acceptance banks in this country, under the leadership of Paul Warburg, secured control of the billions of 201 dollars of credit existing as open accounts on the books of American businessmen.

Governor Marriner Eccles of the Federal Reserve Board stated before the House Banking and Currency Committee that: "Debt is the basis for the creation of money."

Large holders of trade acceptances got the use of billions of dollars worth of credit-money, besides the rate of interest charged upon the acceptance itself. It is obvious why Paul Warburg should have devoted so much time, money, and energy to getting acceptances adopted by this country’s banking machinery.

On September 4, 1914, the National City Bank accepted the first timedraft drawn on a national bank under provisions of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. This was the beginning of the end of the open-book account system as an important factor in wholesale trade. Beverly Harris, vice-president of the National  City  Bank  of  New  York,  issued  a pamphlet in 1915 stating that: "Merchants using the open account system are usurping the functions of bankers." In The New York Times on June 14, 1920, Paul Warburg, Chairman of the American Acceptance Council, said: 

"Unless the Federal Reserve Board puts itself heart and soul behind the untrammeled development of acceptances as a prime investment forbanks of the Federal Reserve Banks the future safe and sound development of the system will be jeopardized."202

This was a statement of the purpose of Warburg and his bunch who wanted "monetary reform" in this country. They were out to get control of all credit in the United States, and they got it, by means of the Federal Reserve System, the acceptance system, and the lack of concern by the citizens. The First World War was a boon  to the introduction of trade acceptances, and the volume jumped to four hundred million dollars in 1917, growing through the 1920s to more than a billion dollars a year, which culminated in a high peak just before the Great Depression of

1929-31. The Federal Reserve Bank of  New York’s charts show that its use of acceptances reached a peak in November, 1929, the month of the stock market crash, and declined sharply thereafter. The acceptance people by then had gotten what they wanted, which was control of American business and industry. "Fortune Magazine" in February of 1950 pointed out that: "Volume of acceptances declined from $1,732 million in 1929 to $209 million in 1940, because of the concentration of acceptance banking in a few hands, and the Treasury’s low-interest policy, which made direct loans cheaper than acceptance. There has been a slight upturn since the war, but it is often cheaper for large companies to finance imports from their own coffers." In other words, the "large companies" more accurately, the great trusts, now have control of credit and have not needed acceptances. Besides the barrage of propaganda issued by the Federal Reserve System itself, the National Association of Credit Men, the American Bankers’ Association, and other fraternal organizations of the New York bankers devoted much time and money to distributing acceptance

propaganda. Even their flood of lectures and pamphlets proved insufficient, and in 1919 Paul Warburg organized the American Acceptance Council, which was devoted entirely to acceptance propaganda.

The first convention held by this association at Detroit, Michigan, on June 9, 1919, coincided with the annual convention of the National Association of Credit Men, held there on that date, so that "interested observers might with facility participate in the lectures and meetings of both groups," according to a pamphlet issued by the American Acceptance Council. Paul Warburg was elected President of this organization, and later became chairman of the Executive Committee of the American Acceptance Council, a position which he held until his death in 1932. The Council published lists of corporations using trade acceptances, all of them businesses in which Kuhn, Loeb Co. or its affiliates held control. Lectures given before the Council or by members of the Council were attractively bound and distributed free by the National City Bank of New York to the country’s businessmen. Louis T. McFadden, Chairman of the House Banking and Currency

Committee, charged in 1922 that the American Acceptance Council was exercising undue influence on the Federal Reserve Board and called for a Congressional investigation, but Congress was not interested. At the second annual convention of the American Acceptance Council,  held  in  New  York  on  December  2,  1920,  President  Paul Warburg stated:

"It is a great satisfaction to report that during the year under review it was possible for the American Acceptance Council to further develop and strengthen its relations with the Federal Reserve Board." During the 1920s Paul Warburg, who had resigned from the Federal Reserve Board after holding a position as Governor for a year in wartime, continued to exercise direct personal influence on the Federal Reserve Board by meeting with the Board as President of the Federal Advisory Council and as President of the American Acceptance Council. He was, from its organization in 1920 until his death in 1932, Chairman of the Board of the International Acceptance Bank of New York, the largest acceptance bank in the world. His brother, Felix M. Warburg, also a partner in Kuhn, Loeb Co., was director of the International Acceptance Bank and Paul’s son, James Paul Warburg, was Vice-President. Paul Warburg was also a director on other important acceptance banks in this country, such as Westinghouse Acceptance Bank, which were organized in the United States immediately after the World War, when the headquarters of the

international acceptance market  was moved from London to New York, and Paul Warburg became the most powerful acceptance banker in the world. Paul Warburg became an even more legendary figure by his memorialization as "Daddy Warbucks" in the comic strip, "Little Orphan Annie". The strip celebrated a homeless waif and her dog who are adopted by "the richest man in the world", Daddy Warbucks, a takeoff on "Warburg", who has almost magical powers and can accomplish anything by the power of his limitless wealth. Those in the know snickered when "Annie", the musical comedy version of this story, had a highly successful run of several years on Broadway, because the vast majority of the audience had no idea that this was merely another Warburg operation.

It was the transference of the acceptance market from England to this country which gave rise to Thomas Lamont’s ecstatic speech before the Academy of Political Science in 1917 that: "The dollar, not the pound, is now the basis for international exchange." Americans were proud to hear that, but they did not realize at what a price. Visible proof of the undue influence of the American Acceptance Council on the Federal Reserve Board, about which Congressman McFadden complained, is the chart showing the rate-pattern of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York during the 1920s. The Bank’s official discount rate follows exactly for nine years the ninety-day bankers’ acceptance rate, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York sets the discount rate for the rest of the Reserve Banks. Throughout the 1920s the Board of Governors retained two of its first members, C.S. Hamlin and Adolph C. Miller. These men found themselves careers as arbiters of the nation’s monetary policy. Hamlin was on the Board from 1914 until 1936, when he was appointed Special Counsel to the Board, while Miller served from 1914 until 1931. These two men were allowed to stay on the Board so many years because they were both eminently respectable men who gave the Board a certain prestige in the eyes of the public. During these years one important banker after another came on the Board, served for awhile, and went on to better things. Neither Miller nor Hamlin ever objected to anything that the  New York bankers wanted. They changed the discount rate and they performed open market operation with Government securities whenever Wall Street wanted them to. Behind them was the figure of Paul Warburg, who exercised a continuous and dominant influence as President of the Federal Advisory Council, on which he had such men of common interests with himself as Winthrop Aldrich and J.P. Morgan. Warburg was never too occupied with his duties of organizing the big  international trusts to supervise the nation’s  financial structures. His influence from 1902, when he arrived in this country as immigrant from Germany, until 1932, the year of his death, was dependent on his European alliance with the banking cartel. Warburg’s son, James Paul Warburg, continued to exercise such influence, being appointed Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Director of the Budget when that great man assumed office in 1933, and setting up the Office of War Information, our official propaganda agency during the Second World War. In The Fight for Financial Supremacy, Paul Einzig, editorial writer for the London Economist, wrote that:

"Almost immediately after World War I a close cooperation was established between the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve authorities, and more especially with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.* This cooperation was largely due to the cordial relations existing between Mr. Montagu Norman of the Bank of England and Mr. Benjamin Strong, Governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York until 1928. On several occasions the discount rate policy of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York was guided by a desire to help the Bank of England.

* William Boyce Thompson (Wall Street operator) commented to

Clarence Barron, Nov. 27, 1920, "Why should the Federal Reserve Bank

have private wires all over the country and talk daily by cable with the

Bank of England?" p. 327 "They Told Barron".There has been close cooperation in the fixing of discount rates between London and New York."

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86 Paul Einzig, The Fight For Financial Supremacy, Macmillan, 1931 

From SECRETS OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE

The London Connection 

By Eustace Mullins

http://thetruthnews.info/secretfed.pdf