Considering the vast complexities of spiritual ideas and their scientific interrelationship, as they have been outlined by Mary Baker Eddy, Dante's work comes to light as merely an introduction to the theme.  Here the question arises: What are we going to do with these vast complexities that far supersede the vision of even some of history's brightest pioneers?  What practical value do the higher complexities have?  How do we live with them?  Where is the proof of the pudding?

Oh, you may answer that we live in an age in which no one expects positive results anymore, where failure are common.  The trend in modern times has been that people feel more and more impotent.  Even the democratic process of electing governments has become a joke, as only half of the eligible voters bother to register, and this in the leading democracies, and only half of those who are registered bother to turn out on the day of voting, so that governments become selected on the strength of no more than 15% of the popular vote.  In other words, many people regard the whole democratic process as but a useless exercise.  It appears as though people have withdrawn themselves from the reality that underlies their existence and have chosen to live in a lower dimension, the mythical artificial world of imaginary cyberspace.

In some cases the withdrawal from reality has become an active denial.  Today's financial crisis is an excellent example.  It is no longer a secret that the world is filled to the brim with financial aggregates that have no real cash-out value.  For as long as investors manage to steal from each other and thus reap a profit, market values will rise even though they are not backed up by reality.  If new money isn't constantly pumped into the market, the stolen profits will disappear and the markets will crash.  This happens whenever productive economies, which alone produce value, do no longer produce enough to maintain themselves, much less are able to feed the rising financial bubbles.  Then the illusion of wealth, created by inflated market values, ends.  In this case the investors will realize that the trillions in outstanding financial aggregates that they own, are claims against a nonexistent source of wealth, whereby they become valueless.

If we lived in an environment of sanity this differential between reality and fantasy would have been corrected long ago.  But it hasn't been corrected.  To the contrary.  The reality is carefully ignored except when it becomes too obvious, in which case it becomes actively denied.  Thus, the speculative game continues that produces nothing except illusions and undermines the physical platform that support's people's existence.

Some animal species act in a similar fashion.  Naturally, with animals it is hard to determine whether they act out of conscious denial, or out of ignorance.  Some species of monkeys are captured with ease by a process that exploits this trend.  A box is constructed with narrow slots in it, just wide enough for a monkey's arm to pass through.  Then the box it bated with the monkeys' favorite food.  The animal will grasp the food, but will no longer be able to withdraw its hand.  The fist, holding the food, has become too large to pass through the narrow slot.  At this point the monkey's fate is sealed.  The monkey needs to drop the bait and run to save its life, but it can't.  The higher dimension of consciousness where a larger range of facts become examined lies beyond the animal's capability.  So the monkey looses its life without ever getting to taste what it had risked its entire existence for.

The Malaysian Monkey Trap, as it is called, of course, comes in many variations, all employing the same trick.  One finds its biggest application in the financial markets.  People are self-condemned to stay in these markets as they have failed to recognize their situation from the vantage point of a higher dimension of perception.  They remain captivated by an illusion of wealth that they can, collectively, never cash out.  The only way they can save themselves is to let go of the illusions that they cling to.

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Stories about War from novels by Rolf A. F. Witzsche