Self-knowledge

If you want to clarify for yourself your values, ideals, and worldview; what kind of God you believe in, or don't believe in; and what kind of person you are, the best way is to look at your actions and decisions. Your thoughts are not that interesting. Actions speak louder than words.

Examine your decisions and the paths you chose in life. Did you stay or did you go? Did you choose money over love? Did you think that it is better to be safe than sorry? Was your career more important to you than friendship? Did you work too much? Did you go the extra mile, or did you resign to find a less demanding job that gave you more time with your friends and family? 

Are you a Christian who stores up for yourself treasures on earth instead of in heaven? After all, are you a realist? 

Are you a hypocrite? Are you a pretender? 

Examine your actions. Do you abhor modern factory farming, but don't want to pay for organic? Are you a miser? Do you prefer escape, to get as far away from yourself as you can?

Self-exploration may be beneficial, but I don't care. I don't care whether my values and beliefs align with my actions. And I will certainly not try to change them.

Agnosticism

Modern scientists can only explain a small fraction of what is going on in the world. The universe consists of 95% dark matter and dark energy. They don't know what that stuff is. They don't even know what ordinary matter is. What is an electron? What is a quark? They don't know?

They can't explain how electrochemical reactions in the brain can produce consciousness and thoughts. They can't explain how life emerged 4 billion years ago. They don't know what was before the Big Bang. They come up with lots of different hypotheses, but they can't show any evidence to support them.

Religious and spiritual people create their own stories, myths, and fairy tales, and different religions and spiritual teachers offer different explanations.

Why is it so hard to accept that we don't have a clue what life is all about, and why we are here? We don't know if there is a God somewhere. We don't know what will happen to us when we die. We don't know if it is important how we live our lives.

Atheists and theists are of the same wool. They think they know, but they don't.

The inner voice

If you are sitting on a bus, looking out the window, and letting your mind wander freely, you can discover how the everyday mind works.

Isn't it amazing how much BS is going on there inside your skull? Are you talking to yourself or are you talking to someone else? Who are you talking to? Are you talking to an enemy or a friend? Are you explaining yourself to an old lover? Are you talking to your dead parents? Are you talking to your stupid brother? Are you talking to God? How can that be? You are not religious, not at all.

Who is this God that you are talking to? What does he look like? Is he a jealous and vengeful God? Or is it a she? Is she a kind and loving God? Is she a wrathful God, like Kali? Are you asking for help?

Right and wrong

Ethics and morals don't exist at nature's most fundamental level. No right or wrong exists in the realm of elementary particles. Insects and plants don't care about fairness or equality. Monkeys and apes can show some signs of concern for justice, but the battle between good and evil plays out in the human dimension.

The human brain consists of billions of nerve cells, which are interconnected through dendrites and axons. Moreover, all human brains are interconnected, forming an enormous mind-web that Teilhard de Chardin called the noosphere. Here is where the battle between the light and the dark forces unfolds.

You have to choose a side. You can't just sit there on the fence forever. The problem is that you don't know which side is good. Many decent middle-class Germans chose to support Hitler in the 1930s. They believed he would save them from Jews and communists. For those who survived, it took decades to come to terms with the fact that they had sold their soul to the devil.

Sodium and potassium ions flow in and out through the membranes in the axon, thus creating an electric signal that reaches a synapse, which then releases transmitter substances that activate another neuron.

Ions flowing in and out of neurons create all your thoughts, emotions, dreams, and fantasies. Even your true self is made in this way, like a genie that appears from a magic lamp when you rub it.

You are not the chemicals you are made of. Your mind and soul, as well as angels and demons, are not found in your neurons and their electrochemical reactions. You exist in another dimension.

These words consist of electric bits. But you are not reading bits; you are reading words. The letters in a book consist of ink, but you are not reading ink. Words mean something, while ink is just ink.

You are not your genetic code and the cells you are made of. The law of the jungle does not apply here in this dimension.

The geosphere is the inanimate matter, the biosphere is the animate sphere, and the noosphere is the mental sphere, but I believe there is also a fourth sphere: the mystic sphere. I am not a dualist; I am a quattuoralist.

What's wrong with Donald Trump?

Is Donald Trump a malignant narcissist or simply a selfish ashole? This question interests many people in both mainstream and alternative media. I think it's more interesting to understand why so many people vote for him. And why do evangelical Christians vote for him, a man whose main interests are money, women, and power? 

Is it because people want a strong leader who can guide them, a father figure, a commander, a boss, like the chimpanzees? It doesn't matter where they end up; someone has to take the lead. He can lead his flock straight into hell if he wants to. And everyone is happy that they have a group to belong to. This social behavior is, I suppose, an inheritance from our distant ape past. We share many similarities with our close chimpanzee relatives.

However, some people don't want to lead, and they don't want to be led. They didn't vote for Trump, and they didn't vote for Kamala Harris. They didn't bother to vote. How do you explain this fact from your evolutionary biological perspective?

Defense

Humanity's defense spending now exceeds $2 trillion annually. But this isn't enough; massive military rearmament is now the top priority. The whole world is rearming again. We need more nuclear weapons, more missiles, more drones, and more fighter jets. We must defend ourselves against each other. Even the left has jumped on the bandwagon. The fight against climate change has been downgraded.

Meditation

Old cats are excellent meditation teachers. They know the art of just sitting there, being. In that state of 'no mind', they don't bother with whether life has meaning, whether there is a God, or whether consciousness is a construct of the brain. They don't speculate about life after death or complain about their neighbors.

Logic, scientific explanations, philosophical and religious explanations, or simply everyday nonsense are all mental constructs made of words. And words are only a tiny part of a human being.

God

Do you believe in God?

What do you mean by God?

I mean a higher power.

Do you mean electricity of sorts?

What an idiot you are! Do you believe that we have a father who cares about us?

Do you mean someone like Donald Trump or Homer Simpson?

Something is seriously wrong with you. 

Do you believe in the God the Israelites believed in 2500 years ago, or do you believe in a nice and kind old gentleman up in the clouds somewhere?

Do you believe in Jesus?

Yes, I believe in Jesus. But who was he? Was he God? I believe that he was a Jewish preacher who taught that the end times were near and that God would overthrow the evil forces and create a new kingdom on earth. But the evil forces grew tired of him and killed him. I believe that there is a God somewhere, but he is like a guerrilla commander hiding in the mountains, waiting for an opportunity to overthrow the evil dictator. The Devil is a powerful and cruel dictator, a psychopath. What is your God like?

God is like Jesus. Jesus is God, I believe.

Okay, but how do you explain that all the different churches throughout history have always sided with the evil emperors, kings, dictators, and presidents? How do you explain the witch hunts, the Inquisition trials, and all the horrible religious wars? 

Nonduality

The inner world and the outer world are, in fact, one and the same.

13.8 billion years ago, the universe was a tiny, tiny dot. This mysterious little dot exploded, releasing enormous heat. After some time, the heat cooled down, and galaxies and stars formed. Ten billion years later, life emerged. Then came multicellular organisms, and eventually love and hate, right and wrong, words, dreams, fantasies, and delusions.

And now you are here, right here, reading this.

What if you are a dope?

Throughout history, people have held beliefs and convictions that later proved to be wrong: the Earth was not flat, the sun did not orbit the Earth, the world was not created 6,000 years ago, and witches and gnomes did not exist. The Germans were not a superior race, and sins did not cause cancer.

What if your convictions and beliefs also turn out to be wrong? What if also your ideas about God and how life must be lived are delusions? What if your firm conviction that spirituality is pure nonsense is simply small-mindedness? What if there actually is a God somewhere, but all religions have it completely wrong? What if human authorities created the religions to make you obey them?

You're aware of only a small part of yourself and a tiny, tiny part of the world.

Who am I, really?

Sometimes I am an atheist, other times I am an agnostic. Sometimes I am deeply religious, but it is a religion of my own invention, not someone else's. Sometimes I believe there is an afterlife, other times I don't. Sometimes I am convinced that it is important how we live our lives; other times I believe it doesn't make any difference: we simply die one day and that's it. There is nothing more to it. Sometimes I have a naturalistic worldview; other times, I think there is also a spiritual dimension. 

Each one is saved by his own faith

There are approximately 4,000 different religions on this planet. Moreover, there are thousands of different kinds of Christianity, thousands of different kinds of Hinduism, different kinds of Islam, and different kinds of Buddhism. There are thousands of different creation stories and beliefs about the nature of God.

This implies that you can also invent a creation story and an idea about God. Your story is as valid as anyone else's. In fact, it is essential that you develop your own belief system rather than simply adopting someone else's. It can be dangerous to let someone else take over your mind. You must be cautious to avoid downloading malicious software.

But it is also essential to question your story as thoroughly as you question others. Your mind can also cook up crazy stuff. You must ask yourself, "Does this make any sense?"

Free will is only for the rich

We may have free will, but we can seldom use it. Throughout history, people have been forced to do things they hate. They have been slaves, serfs, and cannon fodder. Today, most people have to work doing things they don't want to do to make a living. Some women are trapped in a marriage because they don't have the funds to leave. Some are trapped in a belief system; they are stuck in a labyrinth where they can't find the exit. Some are addicted to alcohol and drugs. They want to stop drinking and drugging, but they can't.

Brain scientists and philosophers can debate if free will exists until they get blue in the face, but who cares? Free will is irrelevant to most of us.

God isn't All-Powerful

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

But one of his favorite angels betrayed him and overthrew him. God fled with his closest associates and set up a camp in a deep forest. The new evil God claimed that he was the original God, the lord of everything, and that he is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving. Humankind was fooled by his charismatic narcissism and began worshiping him, which they still do.

However, the original God and his associates are still alive. They fight guerrilla warfare against the evil God, like Robin Hood fighting the Sheriff of Nottingham.

Which side are you on? Do you support Robin Hood or the Sheriff of Nottingham?

Spirituality

I believe there is a spiritual dimension. But you can't get in contact with it through mediums, spiritual sessions, or Ouija boards.

I also doubt that you can get in contact with angels and gods through prayers. Most people are praying to a fantasy God. Some worship a God with an elephant's head and four arms, others worship a right-wing evangelical God, and some worship the sun as a God. I believe if you get in contact with the spiritual dimension, it's because someone there has contacted you. 

You may notice this in a synchronicity or some other mysterious event and realize that something strange happened to you. You are an idiot, and someone in the spirit world was trying to help you, or maybe punish you, because you are an idiot who refuses to understand something. A spirit directed your steps and the steps of someone else, which caused you to bump into each other.

Some people believe that there is no spirit world. Well, that may be so. There are many different kinds of beliefs in the world.

Beliefs

Some people believe that God is vengeful and jealous. Others believe the universe was created from nothing fourteen billion years ago.

Some still believe that they belong to a superior race and that they must kill or exploit inferior races because this is the law of life.

Some believe that human history is now coming to an end, while others believe that a fantastic future awaits us.

There are many beliefs floating around in the world. Some are harmless and innocent, while others are destructive and dangerous.

My beliefs

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. 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 it could be 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 mind.

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 need love, food, and shelter, but you don't need dogmas or teachings. You can live very well without them.

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.

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 botany, and the Gods don't care about theology.

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.  

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, which are then transmitted 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 were there who could perceive it? A gigantic electromagnetic field of sorts?

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.