Saturday, February 22, 2025

Beliefs

I believe that God created the world about 13.8 billion years ago, but after some time, he was overthrown in a palace coup, and since then, he and his associates have been fighting a guerilla war trying to regain power.

I don't think humanity has a future. We will die out, and the planet will become uninhabitable due to climate change or nuclear war. Some other species will take over after us, perhaps cockroaches or flies.

I believe it's all in the mind. There is practically nothing outside the mind. This is not solipsism. I'm not talking about my mind only. I believe all minds are connected into one mind, like raindrops forming an ocean. Nothing important is left when all lifeforms with a mind have died out. Well, elementary particles are there, perhaps. Or, maybe it's just waves? Who cares? Gods, angels, and demons, love and hate, confusion and clarity, exist in the mind only. The battle between good and evil is taking place in the human mind.

I believe it's essential to get off the train you happen to find yourself on, whether it's a religious train, a particular philosophy, a political ideology, or an idea about what you should strive for in life. Many people have succeeded in leaving their religious cult or their drinking buddies. It's hard, but it's possible. It's possible just to be a human being. You don't need any dogmas or teachings.

You can leave the train at the next station, but you can't spend the rest of your life at a train station; you have to go somewhere. If you jump on another train, you will be in the same situation you just left. So, what shall you do? I don't know. You have to find out for yourself. Maybe it will unfold naturally; maybe it won't.

Friday, February 14, 2025

Reality doesn't care about philosophy

Birds don't care about ornithology, and the stars don't care about astronomy. Plants don't care about biology, and God doesn't care about theology.

Monday, January 20, 2025

Thinking meditation

In most forms of meditation, you have to learn to let thoughts come and go. They are like cars passing by in the street outside. They are nothing to pay attention to. You notice them and then continue with your practice.

Another way of dealing with thoughts is to listen to them carefully. What is going on here? How can my brain produce so much crap, nonsense, and nasty stuff? How can I be so grumpy, small-minded, petty, and stupid? I want to be a good person.

So, because you don't want to listen to all this BS, you turn on the internet on your mobile phone or your TV set. If you are driving a car, you will probably turn on the radio. I have used this strategy all my life, and it works quite well. I don't want to hear all the stupid shit my mind produces.

However, if you continue listening to your mind a little longer, you can learn more about yourself. You can also challenge yourself, your ideas, beliefs about the world, lies, pretexts, justifications, rationalizations, and spinning. You can discover that you also have genuinely warm and not stupid thoughts. You can find that you don't have just two voices inside your head, one good and one bad. Moreover, you can also discover that one part of you is observing the internal debates.

This is thinking meditation.  

Thursday, January 2, 2025

Miracles

Brain scientists and Buddhists claim that the sense of self, the ego, is an illusion. But isn't the world itself an illusion? Isn't the world as we know it created in the brain? Your eyes detect light waves and convert them into nerve impulses that are transported to the brain, where an edited video is formed. But this is not the reality—it's just an edited tiny fraction of it. As Kant said, what you experience is not the reality itself but the reality for you.

What would the world look like if no one was there who could perceive it? More than 99% of an atom consists of space between the nucleus and the electrons. According to the physicists, "the real world" is an endless empty space with a few elementary particles here and there bouncing about.

Are synchronicities, ESP, and miracles real, or are they delusions? Isn't everything a miracle? The more you learn about life and how a living cell and living organisms are constructed, the more astonished you will become.

So, you conclude there must be a superior intelligence behind it all, and you become religious. You become a Christian, a Muslim, a Hindu, or something New Agey. This is a mistake, I think. You don't need all the junk that comes with religion to marvel at the great mystery.