Chapter 10 The Men Who Would be Gods

Chapter 10

The Men Who Would be Gods 

Emperor Hirohito; the Dalai Lama; the Reverend Sun Myung Moon; the Reverend Jim Jones; Emperor Haile Selassie; Elvis Presley

Emperor Hirohito (1926-1989)

As a young man, Emperor Hirohito of Japan was not unlike King George VI of Britain. He was described as being high strung, a pacifist at heart, weak willed and bull headed. He was timidly afraid that he could never live up to the great legacy of his grandfather or the formidable expectations of his traditionally minded father, but just like King George VI, as soon as these imperious controlling men disappeared out of his life, Emperor Hirohito began to find himself as a man.

The problem with being Emperor of Japan was the belief that the emperor was a direct descendant of the sun goddess and this line of descent is what made Emperor Hirohito a son of heaven. In other words both he and the Japanese people believed that he was an actual God. This created a never ending conflict within Hirohito’s mind because he wanted to become a dynamic military leader, but at the same time he was supposed to be a wise, dignified, God type of person. It was an especially difficult task for the emperor because by nature he was a Choleric, and he wanted to wage war.

The Japanese people did resemble the Germans in the same way of thinking about other ethnicities. Both nations believed themselves to be superior to all other nations. The Japanese firmly believed that the Chinese were incredibly inferior people, the worst of the worst. Just like the Germans who decided to wipe the Jews off the face of the earth, the Japanese tried to wipe the Chinese off the face of the earth.

Japan needed more territory. In 1931, Japan first invaded Manchuria, a large region in Northeast Asia, and then in 1937 it invaded the rest of China. The Japanese were notoriously brutal to the Chinese peasants, they burned people alive, they used poisonous gas and they raped tortured and pillaged the land. It looked as if they were going to succeed in conquering this vast nation but just like the Germans the Japanese made a huge mistake. Whereas the German mistake was to attack Russia, the Japanese mistake was to attack The United States of America.

When the Japanese invaded China, many Europeans fled the country, but some Europeans were captured by the Japanese and were imprisoned in internment camps where they suffered great deprivation, torture and starvation. But Japan wasn’t satisfied with just conquering China; they wanted to own the whole of Asia. This little nation decided to join World War II by aligning itself with Germany and Italy, and thereafter it attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

Throughout the entirety of these wars, Emperor Hirohito, the Shinto God, stayed in his Imperial Palace consulting with his Prime Minister and his cabinet. In effect he gave his imperial permission to wage war, but at the same time he wanted to believe that he was at heart a pacifist, a man who really tried to pursue international cooperation.

Just like choleric, King George V of Britain, Hirohito valued his public image above all. He valued his image so much that with the help of American General Douglas MacArthur, he managed to pull off the biggest personal coup of his life.

After the United States dropped its atom bombs on Japan, Japan agreed to an unconditional surrender. Twenty eight Japanese military men were accused of being war criminals and were to be brought to trial, but just like their Nazi counterparts, some of the accused Japanese war criminals committed suicide by ingesting poison, or they shot themselves to death. Six of them were found guilty and were hanged, but the Emperor escaped relatively unscathed.

The Americans weren’t stupid. They knew full well that Emperor Hirohito was guilty of committing war crimes because just like Hitler, it was Hirohito who gave the orders. But politics were at work. Russian communism was looming over Europe and it was feared that if the Emperor was deposed, Russian communism would reach its strong arm into the Pacific and take over Japan. The United States decided to leave the emperor as head of state as long as he agreed to allow democracy to rule. Emperor Hirohito also agreed to renounce the claim that he was a God.

But before Japan surrendered, Emperor Hirohito agreed with his military commanders that his people were to be given orders to commit suicide rather than let themselves be captured by the American barbarians. Incredibly many Japanese citizens did commit suicide just because their Emperor God ordered them to do it.

Just like some Nazi officials, Japanese officials killed their own families before the arrival of the American troops. They killed their mothers, they killed their fathers and they killed their own children, but like the cowards they were, some of these Japanese officials did not get around to killing themselves. They survived and they lived to talk about it.

Hirohito had a long life. He lived on as Emperor of Japan until he died of cancer at the age of eighty eight, still believing that his image was intact, and not knowing that the annals of history would eventually reveal the true part he played in contributing to Japan’s aggressive war tactics.

When he was a baby Hirohito was taken from his parents and handed over to a set of guardians who were instructed to raise him fit to be an emperor. His guardians described the choleric toddler as shy, serious and somewhat clumsy. Later in life he was given to having temper tantrums and it was said that he would turn red in the face when he became angry with his advisers. At age three the child was returned to his parents but as a future Emperor God, he was kept secluded from the world and ordinary people.

But although his own Japanese people were forbidden to look at him and were obliged to turn their backs whenever his official car passed by, the young Hirohito wanted to see the world. Before the war broke out, he travelled to England where he was introduced to the British royal family. This young man was so impressed by the casual and warm relationships that were put on display for him that he resolved to try to create this same kind of warm family atmosphere for himself when he returned to Japan.

On his return to Japan, the emperor abandoned the practice of keeping concubines but he didn’t abandon the practice of summoning eligible young females to be paraded before him so that he could choose a bride. He chose for himself a wife who was distant cousin, a wife who had the correct bloodline but just as did happen in the British monarchy, his son the crown prince married a commoner. Bloodlines have lost their importance in today’s modern world.

Hirohito’s wife was often referred to as the ‘Smiling Empress’ and most likely she had a sanguine temperament. She held on to the old traditions and felt that it was her duty to hold up her emperor husband and provide an heir to the throne. She outlived Hirohito but they probably both died still believing him to be a God.

Emperor Hirohito is quoted as having said, “I experienced freedom for the first time in England.” It seems that being a human God in Japan is a lot like being a prisoner cooped up in a jail cell.

The Dalai Lama (Born 1935)

Tensin Gyatso who was born with the name Lhamo Dondrub, is the fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet. The Dalai Lama is both the political leader and the spiritual leader of his people, but because of the Chinese takeover of Tibet, he has been forced to live in exile in the northern part of India, for the most part of his life.

Communist China does not recognize Tibet as a separate country, and it does not recognize Buddhism as Tibet’s national religion. China invaded Tibet in 1950 and over the years, the invading Chinese have destroyed most of the Buddhist temples and many of its religious treasures and Buddhist texts. What Japan did to China during the Sino Chinese war, the Chinese did to the Tibetans. As a result of the Chinese invasion, approximately one sixth of the Tibetan people were either slaughtered, imprisoned or they died from starvation. Their reincarnated Dalai Lama couldn’t save them.

Chinese rulers do not believe, as most practicing Buddhists do, that the Dalai Lama is the reincarnation of the Bodhisattva of compassion (the Lord who looks down), and this exiled, fourteenth Dalai Lama has been a thorn in the flesh of the Chinese, communist government for more than half a century. What makes it worse for the Chinese is that the Dalai Lama is a smiley, friendly Sanguine who laughs frequently, and who has made himself famous and popular throughout the world.

People have described the Dalai Lama as a shrewd politician, a clever fundraiser and a great peacemaker. In 1989 he became a recipient of the “Nobel Peace Prize” and he has become a favorite of the Hollywood movie star set. Hollywood even produced a movie about the life of the Dalai Lama and the movie was well received.

The Dalai Lama has travelled the world to promote his cause; the independence of his homeland Tibet, and he has done it with relentless strength and energy. Like most Sanguines with a cause, he keeps going and going.

At his home in India, the Dalai Lama lives surrounded by approximately one hundred thousand Tibetan refugees who also escaped from Tibet and who settled down with him to live in India until they can return to their homeland, a Tibet that hopefully will manage to throw off the ever tightening Chinese yoke.

This man is a beloved spiritual leader and he will not give up his fight for freedom. In fact, while in exile one of his self appointed tasks was to write a new democratic constitution for his homeland. Because he is trained to be a man of peace, the Dalai Lama has tried a few times to negotiate with the Chinese for some kind of truce, but he has never been able to persuade the Chinese to let him remain as the spiritual leader of Tibet.

In his youth, one of the Dalai Lama’s heroes was Mahatma Gandhi, the great spiritual leader and freedom fighter of India who stood his ground against the British government and won. Without the use of violence, the great Mahatma Gandhi gained independence for India, a country that had been under the British yoke for one hundred and fifty years.

The Dalai Lama owes his life to Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Indian Prime Minister who in spite of opposition from the Chinese gave the Dalai Lama sanctuary after he escaped across the border from Tibet. But in 1962 when the Chinese army crossed over the border and grabbed territory that previously had belonged to India, Nehru was so distressed by the criticism he received from his own countrymen for losing territory to the Chinese, that he died shortly thereafter. 

People have asked the Dalai Lama why he doesn’t just give up the fight. It has been suggested to him that he could just stop being the Dalai Lama and that would solve a lot of his problems. This great, sanguine peacemaker/warrior always replies that he could never do that because so many people in Tibet would be devastated. But he is looking forward to retreating from public life so that he can spend more time in study and prayer.

Like Emperor Hirohito, the Dalai Lama did not choose to be a deity, but in this modern age, the belief that some ordinary human beings are real Gods, is still alive and well. When the thirteenth Dalai Lama died, a group of Buddhist monks were given the task of finding his reincarnation on earth. They searched Tibet and with the help of signs and symbols they found a little two year old boy living with his family high in the Himalayas. This child belonged to a simple farming family but because their son was chosen as the new Dalai Lama, the whole family was relocated to Lhasa, the capital city of Tibet.

Unfortunately or fortunately for the toddler, he was taken from his family to live and learn in the great palace where he would be cut off from the world until he was ready to be the leader of his country, but because of the Chinese invasion he was named leader of the country at the very young age of fifteen.

This was an impossible task at such a young age but the new Dalai Lama tried his best to deal with the situation. At first he was excited about the prospect of Tibet being modernized and being changed from an impoverished country into a modern functioning society. The Dalai Lama even visited Mao Zedong in China when Mao invited him to see how progressive China was.

In the beginning, the ideals of Marxism and Socialism appealed greatly to the young monk because Marxism seemed to promote equality and sharing of resources. But it wasn’t until he was a few years older that the young Dalai Lama realized that he had been tricked into believing that the Chinese government was prepared to retain him as spiritual leader of Tibet. The soft spoken Mao informed the Dalai Lama that religion was a poison and that he intended to wipe Buddhism right out of the country.

The Dalai Lama was appalled because Tibet is Buddhism and without Buddhism Tibet would cease to exist. The Tibetan culture is totally centered in the Buddhist religion and Tibet would cease to exist as a separate ethnic nation, if their all-encompassing religion was taken from them.

The Dalai Lama became so fearful and anxious that one night he slipped out of the country unnoticed because he felt sure that the Chinese were planning to murder him. He is a refugee without a country, but he is also welcome in most countries around the world where he is recognized as not only a great spiritual leader, but a wise and wonderful teacher.

   More than once, this head of the Buddhist religion has made the remark that he views himself as just an ordinary man. But Sanguines love to be the center of attention and the life the Dalai Lama leads gives him just that. He is the center of attention wherever he goes and he has the security of knowing that about five hundred million Buddhists believe him to be a God on earth.

The reason the Dalai Lama did not become a despotic ruler is threefold. First and foremost he has an easy going, relaxed, sanguine temperament. Second, just like Queen Elizabeth II he was trained from almost birth by Buddhist monks, how to be a wise leader of the people, and third he was inundated from birth with the Buddhist principles of peace. Just like Queen Elizabeth II, the Dalai Lama was raised knowing himself to be of royal birth (descended from the Gods) and as such there was no need for him to pursue a higher estate in life because according to the Buddhist religion there is no higher estate.

From the age of two, the Dalai Lama has been taught that he is a God, and it is his duty to pray daily for his people. He accepted his deity without question and he will continue to be viewed as a deity until the day he dies. It has been rumored that the Dalai Lama has predicted that, after his death the one who will fill his place might be a woman, but he is probably just being diplomatic because so many women worship and adore him. The Dalai Lama has been quoted as saying, “We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace in the inner world.”

The masses cling to religion because it gives them hope. It is impossible to wipe religious beliefs out of the human race because of the real existence of death. When communism fell in the Eastern block, the people reverted back to the religious faith that they had never let go of; it was just hidden under the wraps. Death is a fearful thing that looms around the corner for every single person on earth and without a belief in something better than life on planet earth, the human race would quiver like a jelly at the thought of absolutely nothing but darkness waiting for them on the other side of life.   

The Reverend Sun Myung Moon (1920-2012)

Mun Yong-myeong was born in North Korea at a time when Korea was laboring under the brutal rule of its Japanese invaders. It is reported that Moon spent many years of his life first being persecuted by the Japanese, and second being persecuted by the North Koreans right after Korea gained independence from Japan. This was the time in history when Korea was divided into two separate countries. At the end of World War II, North Korea became a communist country under Russian authority and the Republic of South Korea became a democratic nation under the authority of the United States of America.

The Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s family started out in life as true Confucians. The family believed deeply in the social and ethical philosophy laid out in the writings of Confucius, a Chinese philosopher who lived circa 500 B.C.E. Confucianism is not exactly a religion but it is very similar to what is called Buddhist enlightenment. Buddhist enlightenment encourages the basic principles of all religions, i.e. Love thy neighbor, be a good person, and worship heavenly things as befits any and all religions.

This Confucianism was a very good foundation for the Reverend Sun Myung Moon to lean on, and when he converted to Christianity, and because he had a phlegmatic temperament, he became a lifelong God worshiper. It became Moon’s life’s work to try to do everything within his power to please God. Moon wanted to help poor suffering Jehovah, and he wanted to make up for the failures of Jehovah’s son, Jesus Christ.

In his own eyes, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon felt that Jesus had failed to deliver on his allotted task of creating a new superior race of beings. Jesus failed by allowing himself to be captured and crucified. According to Moon, this son of God was supposed to have married an ordinary human woman and then he was expected to produce many children.

Like the Dalai Lama, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon was steeped in both religion and humanism, but unlike the Dalai Lama, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon was not adopted at the age of two by Tibetan monks in a belief that he was a reincarnated God. As a young healthy man, Moon had places to go, things to do and a there was a fortune to be made. He was phlegmatic by nature and he loved to make money.

This man rose from his humble beginnings to become a multi millionaire. He had a finger in hundreds of financial pies around the world and his holdings at one time were estimated to be worth millions. Moon was one of the elite businessmen of the world, and because of his immense wealth, he was able to rub shoulders with presidents and politicians alike.

The Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s calm and peaceful phlegmatic temperament made him a welcome guest everywhere he went, that is until he decided to start a new religion. It wasn’t enough for him to be wealthy beyond belief; Moon decided that he could fix the world all by himself. He proclaimed himself to be a Messiah (anointed one) and he announced that he had been specially chosen by Jesus Christ himself to carry on the work that Jesus had failed to finish.

According to the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, the reason that Jesus Christ was supposed to marry and have many children was so that the earth could be populated with a new superior race of people. This supposed, new breed of people were slated to be purer than pure, because of the simple reason that they had not defiled themselves with premarital sex, not even with a simple kiss. The ensuing generations were supposed to follow the same rules of purification and then they were to spread themselves across the earth. After three generations, the resulting children would supposedly turn out to be just like God.

For an intelligent man, it was an unintelligent theory, because what Moon didn’t understand was that every human being is born with a specific temperament type embedded in their genes, and that temperament contains both positive and negative tendencies that can only be controlled but not erased.   

This new religion that Moon created has rules that are remarkably similar to all the other puritanical religions that have swept across the centuries. Divorce is prohibited, consuming alcohol and smoking cigarettes are forbidden, using drugs and being promiscuous are totally forbidden and of course every member of the new church is obligated to tithe ten percent of their income to the church.

 The Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s first wife divorced him and like most power magnates he soon found himself a new wife who was both young and beautiful. It has been rumored that over his lifetime Moon has also had a few mistresses and he is also the father of one illegitimate son.

Moon and his second wife had fourteen children but reports are that some of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s children who were born into wealth and privilege, and who were not trained from birth how to control themselves, have succumbed to the pleasures of modern society, i.e. drugs, alcohol and promiscuity.

Two members of Moon’s immediate family have actually spoken out publicly about the ongoing debacle in the Moon family. In a televised interview, one of Moon’s daughters was brave enough to offer her opinion that her father was definitely not the Messiah; he was just an ordinary man and she knew because she lived with him.

The Reverend Sun Myung Moon declared himself to be the new Adam and he also declared his wife to be the new Eve. They believed themselves to be the founding parents of a new and superior breed of people who will eventually finish off what Jesus Christ didn’t even start. Because he was not born into wealth, and because he was at heart a peace loving Phlegmatic, the power of enormous wealth together with a lifetime of religious fervor, corrupted the Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s common sense.

Moon should have been satisfied with his many philanthropic endeavors. He created and financed hundreds of peace promoting organizations, he built schools, he created dance troupes, he encouraged sporting events and he was a great benefactor to many deserving groups of people. But that wasn’t enough for him. This selfish, greedy, phlegmatic man wanted to be a God. He wanted to make people worship and adore him and he did succeed in doing that for a while.

The most incredible part of Moon’s Unification church was the world famous marriage ceremonies. These were arranged marriages for his young converts. Young men and women from around the world travelled to South Korea to be formally married to partners who had been chosen for them by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, at a cost of two thousand pounds sterling (approx. $3,200), payable to the church.

As he grew older Moon allowed the parents to choose spouses for their children but they always had to follow his rules. No dating was ever allowed, no sex before marriage was ever allowed, no kissing before marriage was ever allowed and all the couples had to promise to wait forty days after the wedding ceremony before consummating the marriage.

This second generation of young people had been brainwashed from birth by their own parents and they had been taught to adhere to the belief that the next generation, their own particular children, would be born sinless, just because the new children were the third generation of a line of premarital virgins.

The theory of the three generations does not work to produce sinless people because there is no such thing as a sinless person. The best that can be hoped for is a line of people who have been raised in loving family environments, have been taught how to keep their negative emotions under control, and who have been educated in the principles of high moral standards and adherence to duty, somewhat like Queen Elizabeth II and the Dalai Lama.

But this system of trying to raise perfect children seems to alternate in successive generations because of a missing link. These moralistic parents don’t know how to raise moralistic children. The parents just assume that their children will inherit the same moral values by virtue of being exposed to these moral values. But what usually happens is the children rebel against the strict moral code of the parents and the children quite often go awry.

On the surface, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s motive for creating a new religion was world peace. But he was incredibly naïve. He didn’t understand that he was practicing Nazi idealism by trying to create a pure lineage, albeit a multinational spiritual lineage and not a Nazi physical lineage that would result in blue eyed Nordic blonds.

The Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s underlying motive was that of a true Phlegmatic. He wanted the adulation of being seen as the great Messiah, the bringer of peace to a troubled world. He was faithful to his own vision, he was dedicated to promoting himself as a God, and he was stubborn as a mule when it came to controlling his followers. The Reverend Moon would not budge from his stance and his motto was, “Look at me; I’m a perfect being; try to be like me and follow my orders.” But it was more like ‘do what I say, not what I do.’

The Unification Church that was started by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon has few remaining members. Estimates are about half a million at most, because just like every other cult, the cult dies with the death of the leader.

The Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s wanted to be a peacemaker like the Dalai Lama, but he wasn’t able to be celibate and he did not have the power of Buddhism or the power of Hollywood behind him. He did not live a simple existence but instead draped himself in crowns and royal robes just like the pope. He adopted the paraphernalia of Roman Catholicism, he adopted the non-aggressive principles of Buddhism and he adopted the legalism of Judaism. His new religion wasn’t really new. The concept of producing a chosen race has been around since time began and can never materialize because of the inherited sins of the flesh.

The art of practicing mind control over others is not something that is admired in any culture except communism, and communism might only stand for a few more years because Western influences are creeping in. Communist societies want to experience the same prosperity that affluent cultures enjoy and that prosperity can only be achieved by converting to Capitalism. The Reverend Sun Myung Moon has been quoted as saying, “The whole world is in my hand, and I will conquer and subjugate the world.”  

The standard of proof of a real prophet of God has never changed. A real prophet’s predictions always come true.  

Jim Jones (1931-1978)

James Warren Jones was an American man who gained notoriety as the leader of a cult that ended with the murder of a group of five people including a congressman, and the mass suicide of nine hundred and nine people, two hundred and sixty of whom were children.

For some strange twisted reason Jim Jones decided to be a preacher although he was not actually a religious man. In actual fact Jones was a socialist and a Marxist who seemed to lean towards being an atheist, but because he had a melancholic temperament, just like Josef Stalin, his pendulum swung back and fro between atheism and Christianity. Jones reasoned to himself that the best way to gain power over people was from the pulpit of a church and so he started his own church. He called his church the ‘People’s Temple,’ and just like the Rev Sun Myung Moon his big idea was to change the world and bring peace to the nations. He also wanted to abolish segregation in America and Jim Jones was going to show the world how it should be done.

Jim Jones grew up in Indiana and because he was poor and because he was treated as an outcast by society, Jones developed an affinity for black Americans who he also perceived to be outcasts from white American society. In his sermons Jones was extremely vocal about the evils of discrimination and because of these sermons he was despised by many white people who lived in the same area. It was generally bantered about that Jones was a white preacher in a black church.

Exactly like Moon, Jones wanted to integrate people of all skin colors and at the same time he wanted to feed the poor, take care of the sick and create a heaven on earth. Jones and his wife were the first white couple in Indiana to legally adopt a black child. To show Americans how integration could be accomplished, just like Joséphine Baker, the Joneses went on to adopt six more racially mixed children. They also had one biological son of their own.

When he was at his peak as a leader of a forward thinking congregation, those who knew Jones well described him as a man who was charismatic, full of fire, eccentric, irrational and a total paradox. Jim Jones was a melancholic man who was fast becoming mentally unstable but he was still clever enough to know how to practice mind control over the thousands who flocked to his church. His pendulum swung back and fro. He couldn’t decide what he believed in except that he believed in his own power to control and manipulate his faithful followers. His sermons were reported to be a mixture of religion and atheism.

It was the desire for power, sex and money that propelled Jim Jones on towards glory. He was sexually promiscuous with his church members, both male and female, but he decried emotional relationships between others. One of his tenets was that sexual intercourse was a selfish act and should be avoided, but Jones was a hypocrite and did not practice what he preached.

Jones persuaded people to hand over their paychecks, their welfare checks and their retirement checks. People sold their houses and gave him the money in exchange for a promise that he would look after them and take care of their needs until the day they died. He actually did fulfil that promise for nine hundred and nine of his followers. He took care of them until the day they died en masse, at his deadly hand in the jungles of Guyana.

Melancholic Jim Jones was deathly afraid of the threat of nuclear annihilation. First he moved his congregation to California and then he decided that his people would be better off and would stand a better chance of survival if they lived in Guyana, a country situated on the northern coast of South America.

Incredibly, the people who believed in him as their savior followed Jones to Guyana where they set up a notorious settlement called Jonestown, the place where they started to build their Utopian dream. The big escape to freedom from American government interference seemed to work until a government official named Congressman Ryan, together with some news reporters decided to pay Jonestown a visit.

By this time melancholic Jim Jones was considered to be extremely paranoid about the government’s so called plan to destroy him and his community and it was this visit by Congressman Ryan that set off the series of events that would lead to mass murder. Jones had resorted to using threats of violence in order to control the people who were living with him in Jonestown, but many of them wanted to leave the compound in Guyana. 

Congressman Ryan stirred up the fermenting pot. When he and his news reporters and cameramen reached the airport for the return trip home, they were gunned down by Jones’s riflemen. Five people died from gunshot wounds but some managed to escape to nearby Georgetown where they alerted the authorities. 

Meanwhile Jim Jones’s pattern of thought followed the same route as Emperor Hirohito and his military commanders who ordered Japanese civilians to commit suicide. Jim Jones prepared large vats of grape flavored poison, administered it first to all the children and then just like Emperor Hirohito he ordered the others to commit suicide by drinking the same poison. The purple colored drink was laced with cyanide and everyone in Jonestown died. Jones himself was found with a gunshot wound to the head that was believed to be self inflicted; he did not drink the poison himself. The suicides were premeditated because Jones already had in his possession enough cyanide to kill his entire flock.

As a child Jones had been a voracious reader. His favorite reading materials were books about Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Mahatma Gandhi and Karl Marx. He learned about the effectiveness of cyanide poisoning from reading about it as it pertained to Hitler and his Henchmen. He got his ideas about socialism from Karl Marx and Josef Stalin and he absorbed ideas about taking care of the poor downtrodden people, from Mahatma Gandhi.

Jones did not swallow the cyanide laced drink himself, but decided to go out in like manner to Adolf Hitler who also shot himself in the head. It is generally believed that Jim Jones had convinced himself that the American government would capture his followers and he also believed that the American soldiers would brutally rape, torture and kill his people. Just like Emperor Hirohito, Jones thought that it would be better to die before the Americans arrived. But it is questionable whether he really believed that or not; his real motive was revenge.

By persuading over nine hundred people to kill themselves, Jones believed that he was exacting revenge on not just the American government, but also on those people who had abandoned his movement, as well as the relatives of the dead who had spoken out against him. But he was a Melancholic and would never have been able to own the crime he committed; it was mass murder of the innocents.

Jim Jones grew up in poverty. His father was a drunkard and his mother was unstable enough to believe that she had given birth to a Messiah. Other children who grew up in the same neighborhood, described Jones as a weird boy who ran wild and liked to kill animals. As a child Jim Jones was obsessed with death and he used to play at having mock funerals and this is another case where childhood fantasies materialized into adult life.

Like Joséphine Baker, Jones called his family the ‘Rainbow Tribe’ and his one biological son as well as three of his adopted rainbow children were believed to have escaped the slaughter. Jones’s son was of the opinion that his father knew himself to be a charlatan but things had progressed too far for his father to be able to pull out of his predicament.

An undercurrent of dysfunction had always resided in the mind of this would-be savior who was never able to shake off his religious upbringing. Jones was never able to convince himself that God really existed nor could he convince himself that there was no God.

Jim Jones has been recorded saying, “If you see me as God, I’ll be your God…” and, “I represent divine principles.” He also spoke the words, “They see God in my body and they see Christ in me.” Before they drank the poison, he advised the people to die with dignity and said, “Death is just stepping over to another plane.”

A letter was found explaining that the members of the People’s Temple had committed revolutionary suicide. It was Jim Jones last attempt to go down in history as a grandiose revolutionary, but this attempt failed miserably. To this day, his name sends a shudder of horror through the annals of history.

Religious cults attract people who want to feel special. These people desperately want to have a father figure in their lives because they don’t really want to grow up and take responsibility for themselves or their offspring. Senior citizens were attracted to the prospect of having this charismatic leader take charge of them in their retirement years as opposed to relying on friends, relatives or government assistance for help. African Americans were attracted to a white man who was so much on their side against the racism they had experienced at the hand of white America. Young women were attracted to his good looks and young men were attracted by his idealism.

What these people failed to do was to study the documented histories of other known cults. Sheep always follow other sheep and sheep always need a shepherd to lead them or they get lost. But people are not sheep, they have brains and they have reasoning power. One man alone cannot lead the world or even lead a single country. One man rule always leads to anarchy and a breakdown of civilization. This is the reason the founding fathers of The United States of America wrote the Constitution.

The American Constitution is the Supreme Law of the United States of America and it was designed to impose limitations on the power of the government. It was also designed to protect the fundamental rights of the people. But the members of the Jim Jones cult gave up their fundamental rights and by doing this they relinquished their right to choose to live. Unfortunately the children who were murdered did not have the chance to exercise their fundamental right to life, liberty and happiness.

In 1950, as a result of World War II, the United Nations issued the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In this declaration, an emphasis on the inherent dignity and equal rights of all members of the human family was agreed upon as the foundation for freedom, justice and peace in the world. It is a document that lays down what should be the highest aspirations of the human race. It also explains that contempt for human rights always results in outrageous barbarous acts. These concepts apply to every situation where men and women rise to positions of absolute power over others.

The United Nations (UN) has failed miserably to act in this spirit of brotherhood. It has failed to stop acts of genocide, it has failed to abolish slavery and it has failed to prevent crimes against humanity. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought and the residents of Jonestown failed to exercise their freedom to think for themselves.

Haile Selassie (1892-1975)

Tafari Makonnen Woldemikael was an Ethiopian emperor who supposedly could trace his ancestry back through the centuries to King Solomon of Judah, a Hebrew king who lived circa 970 B.C.E, and to the king’s lover the Queen of Sheba. Archaeologists trace the Queen of Sheba’s roots back to Yemen, a country located on the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula.

Among Jamaican Rastafarians, a movement that accepts both Jewish and Christian beliefs, Haile Selassie is still revered as the black Messiah. To this day he was considered to be a God in the flesh, and some of the Rastafarians still believe that he is alive and that he is waiting to lead the world to salvation in the forthcoming new, golden age, as described in the Biblical book of Revelation.

When Emperor Haile Selassie, who was also head of the Ethiopian Orthodox church, was crowned Emperor of Ethiopia he was given a new name. His new, given name was translated as “Power of the Trinity.” But his full title was “His Imperial Majesty, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, Elect of God.” It was said that later in life, after he had become known to foreign leaders throughout the world, the emperor did confide to some of his educated friends that he wasn’t really the Messiah, but in order to maintain his position as absolute ruler of Ethiopia, it was essential that the populace should continue to truly believe that he was the Messiah.

Haile Selassie was a politically astute, hard working, choleric emperor. It was his mission in life to modernize his backward country and his only faults were that he would not give up the power and he kept the myth of his divinity alive when he knew it wasn’t true. He was a choleric man who had had lots of previous political experience. At the age of fourteen the boy Haile was first charged with ruling an Ethiopian province, and by all accounts he did a very good job. He was guided and tutored in the practice of governing the country and like King George VI, he did accomplish much.

Emperor Haile Selassie’s platform was education and he vowed to educate the children of Ethiopia and bring them up to the same standards of their European counterparts. The emperor was a very dutiful ruler. He visited the sick, he handed over one of his palaces to be turned into Ethiopia’s first university and he is credited with starting Ethiopian Airlines, an airline that brought much wealth into the country.

Another of Haile Selassie’s claim to fame was that he was the first black African to be treated as an equal by the white dignitaries of Europe. When visiting European countries, the Emperor was given deference due to his dignified stature, his controlled manner of speech and his regal line of descent. He was also credited with abolishing slavery in Ethiopia in order to set an example to the rest of the African continent.

This Ethiopian Emperor travelled to a total of one hundred and sixty seven countries pleading his case for international funding and development so that he could bring his country into the twentieth century. He did accomplish much during his lifetime. Haile Selassie was financially shrewd, popular and open minded, but like some Cholerics he was so open minded that he expected other people to be just like he himself, and he was often sadly disappointed.

In 1935, the fascist regime of Italy’s Mussolini decided to invade Ethiopia, thereby forcing Haile Selassie into exile. He was widely criticized for fleeing the country but he was intelligent enough to realize that the Italians would win this war and he would most likely be assassinated. It was better to stay alive and fight for his country from a safe place. Haile Selassie fled to England where he lived an unhappy exile for five years, until he was able to return to his homeland. But he did make an attempt to fend off the Italians.

In 1920, at the end of World War I, a precursor to the United Nations was set up in Geneva, Switzerland. This precursor was called the League of Nations and its purpose was to promote world peace and prevent any more world wars from breaking out. Naïve Haile Selassie went before the League of Nations to plead his cause firmly believing that the League would muster some armies and force Mussolini to give Ethiopia back to its rightful leader.                 

But the League was powerless and had no interest in helping this small, backward African country that had nothing to offer the world at large. Haile Selassie’s last words to this group of delegates were, “Us today, but tomorrow it will be you.” This earnest, intelligent man was full of wisdom. The League of Nations failed to prevent World War II and as a result of the war, Mussolini and his army were chased out of North Africa and Ethiopia was set free.

But after the war, as one man in Ethiopia explained it; the Italians had only been able to capture a few major towns in Ethiopia because the country was too rugged and too inaccessible for the Italians to be able to conquer the land. Haile Selassie believed in the divine right of kings to rule the land and like King George VI of Britain, Haile Selassie was a good king. He tried to please everyone but he could not satisfy all the demands of such a diverse nation.

 Ethiopia has eighty three different ethnic groups and they all wanted to keep their own traditions. Not everyone wanted their children to be educated for fear of them being corrupted by Western influences, and although Haile Selassie was a popular king, and his people worshiped him like a God, he wanted more for his country and his continent. Like most of his choleric counterparts, Haile Selassie was a man of action and he tried to empower each individual African country. He encouraged modernization by setting up an organization called the African Union (AU) and before his death Muammar Gadhafi of Libya was actually head of the African Union which is still headquartered in Ethiopia’s capital city, Addis Ababa.    

Like the Dalai Lama, Haile Selassie was born to be a divine leader of his people, and just like the Dalai Lama his education was handed over to people who had been specially chosen for the task. He received instruction from an Ethiopian, capuchin monk and also from a surgeon who hailed from Guadeloupe, an island in the Caribbean. Like the Dalai Lama, Haile Selassie was trained from birth how to handle himself properly, and just like the Dalai Lama, he was treated like a precious gift from God although the Dalai Lama was a Sanguine and the emperor was a Choleric.

The King of Kings was deposed in 1974 by a military coup, and the last few months of his life were spent in prison. It is not known how he died but it was the end of the Solomon dynasty. His body was not discovered until 1992 but in November of the year 2000, as a mark of respect his body was given an imperial funeral by the Orthodox Ethiopian church. He went down in history as someone special, an interesting man who tried his best to make his country a better place to live.

Haile Selassie, the idealist, has been quoted as saying, “Throughout history it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.” Like many morally upright Cholerics, Haile Selassie pursued justice throughout his lifetime and in the end was sadly disappointed by his fellow men.

Elvis Presley (1935-1977)

Elvis Aaron Presley was a man who seduced the entire world, although initially he didn’t set out with that purpose in mind. Elvis actually wanted to become a Hollywood screen actor and he did manage to star in a few movies, but he was never able to accomplish his dream of becoming a great actor because his singing career took over.

Elvis’s singing career not only took over his life, it defined his life, and his singing career actually ended his life prematurely, much to the dismay of his admiring public. This man turned out to be a phenomenon the like of which the world has never seen since. Elvis Presley had a melancholic temperament.

Many people have tried to copy Elvis Presley and there have been thousands of performers who did become as famous as he was, but there has never been anyone who was so absolutely adored that he could send millions of screaming teenagers over the edge of reason into near insanity. He was accused of copying the African American, nightclub singers of his day, but in actual fact it was the African American singers who ended up copying him.

Other performing artists can incite audiences to scream, and some of them came close to mimicking his success, but Elvis Presley blazed the trail and he still sits on the throne of the King of Kings, the man who never died, the man who lives on. His performances triggered reactions in the youth of America, performances that paved the way for other musical artists. Screaming at rock concerts has become the norm but it started with Elvis the king. 

As with Emperor Haile Selassie, there are still some people today who insist that Elvis did not die, even though his closest friends were there at the scene when at the age of forty two, he was pronounced deceased. He died of cardiac arrhythmia, an irregular heartbeat that was made worse by his addiction to prescription drugs and also because he was grossly overweight.                      

Elvis Presley was an American rock and roll singer who changed the world. His on-stage performances, the songs that he sang and his almost pornographic gyrations released the youth of the whole world from the bondage of protocol, morality and duty to the strict religious upbringings that were a leftover from Victorianism, Puritanism, Catholicism, Protestantism, and Socialism.

But Elvis Presley’s rock and roll started long before he was born. It started in the jungles of Africa where the native populations hammered out their haunting drumbeats and danced their fierce tribal war dances. With the advent of the black African slave trade, these tribal traditions were transported across the Atlantic Ocean where they took root in Southern American society amid the cotton plantations of the old south.

It was the passage of time that transformed the jungle rhythms of Africa into the African American, spiritual music that Elvis grew up with. He loved to listen to gospel singers and he was frequently exposed to the sound of gospel music in the church that he and his parents attended. He absorbed the beat and the sway of those who belted out their favorite religious songs spiced with deep, throaty enthusiasm and a promise of exciting, suggestive, primitive freedom.

It is believed that Elvis also liked to frequent the segregated nightclubs of the south where he could listen to a new type of music called Rhythm and Blues, the precursor to Rock and Roll. With the help of some savvy managers, Elvis Presley started out on a singing career that took the world by storm. At first he was called the ‘King of Rock and Roll,’ but soon people were just referring to him as the ‘King.’ This melancholic young man from Memphis, Tennessee evolved into a seductive, glittering star that was idolized by men, women and children alike. They worshipped him as if he was a God.

Not everyone loved Elvis Presley. The Roman Catholic authorities in America demonized him as a great threat to the youth of America, and the establishment was profuse with character assassinations. He was condemned for inciting girls to lose their decorum, and middle aged America saw him as rude, crude and totally vulgar. But eventually the stuffy, television hosts, the prudish middle aged parents and even his scornful peers in the music industry came to admire and respect him.       

There were three reasons for Elvis Presley’s phenomenal success. He could sing, he was extremely handsome and he was a seductive Melancholic.

Elvis was described by his friends as a smart man who sometimes acted like a little kid. He had a massive appetite for food, drugs and sex but he was also generous, charming, humble and kind. But as these prescription drugs took over his system, his melancholic traits also took over and these traits were greatly exacerbated by his drug dependency.

Elvis became subject to scary melancholic mood swings. He was trapped in his lifestyle, he refused to make any attempt to wean himself off the drugs and he refused to give up eating the rich, fatty, fried foods that he loved so much. Nobody was going to tell the king of the world what to do or how he should live his life because he was so contrary natured.

Elvis Presley didn’t like to be alone. He surrounded himself with male friends although he had difficulty cultivating close friendships with any of them. He had a restless spirit that drove him on, always looking for new things to do, and because he was always wired up, he actually did drive himself to death. The man had everything. He had a beautiful wife, a beautiful child, he was adored by his fans, he lived a lifestyle of luxury fit for a king, but he wasn’t happy.

Elvis discovered that fame and fortune weren’t enough to satisfy his soul and in his last few years he was constantly searching for the truth. He wanted to find out the reason for his existence on planet earth. Beautiful women flocked around Elvis no matter where he went. Even when he was ill he radiated electricity, and his jewel bedecked image was everywhere. But his health was starting to fail.

Elvis suffered from glaucoma (a loss of vision that gradually occurs over time), hypertension (high blood pressure) and he had a spastic colon commonly known as irritable bowel syndrome. He was bigger than life but he dwelt in an only too human, flesh body. One of his friends said it best, “He came, he sang, he conquered and he had no right to die.” But Elvis did die and he died young leaving a whole world in mourning.

Just like Princess Diana, the world loved Elvis Presley; his friends loved him, his parents loved him and his child loved him, but that wasn’t enough. Like everyone else he wanted more; but he was searching for love in all the wrong places. The old adage is true. In order to find true love you must look inwards, not outwards, because no other human being can give enough love to satisfy the demands of the human soul.

Elvis was a twin but the other half of him was stillborn. The parents drew close to their only surviving child and although they were poor, the family bonds remained tight. Elvis and his parents lived in in a poor black neighborhood in Memphis, and that is where Elvis set down his roots.

Because of where the family lived, Elvis grew up without prejudice and his unprejudiced outlook on life served him well. This mama’s boy was described as a white boy with a black soul and in this respect he was like Jim Jones. Elvis Presley has been quoted as saying, “I’m not trying to be sexy. It’s just my way of expressing myself when I move around.” He didn’t want to own his own seductive behavior because mama might disapprove.   

Drugs have been around ever since the time of recorded history, although they weren’t always considered to be dangerous or illegal. People take drugs for two reasons, the first is to escape from physical or mental pain and the second is to be able to get high. But in ancient times people took drugs in order to experience Nirvana, communication with the Gods, or to have an out of body experience. The end result is always the same, i.e. addiction.

Drug addiction is not an illness; it is a weakness that anyone can easily fall into. Why face the pain of everyday life if there are drugs around that can give a little respite from the pain? The reason everyone should avoid taking drugs except in medical cases supervised by a doctor, is because drugs alter the functioning of the brain. Just like alcohol, a mind altering substance is sure to bring to the surface exactly the same kind of mental pain that a person is trying to avoid.

Drug addiction is a fuel that drives people to rape, murder and torture others because drugs open the door to the deep rooted need to dominate and control. Quite often drugs make the killer instinct rise up, and lives are destroyed in this search for an alternative way to survive. Life is supposed to be painful because as the Dalai Lama said, pain and suffering is the greatest teacher in the universe. If a person takes drugs in order to escape life’s lessons then nothing can be learned and nothing can be accomplished and the pain will always come back.