To discuss religion with a Jehovah’s Witness is a waste of time. His views, opinions and ideas are written in stone. He has no other intention but try to change your mind. The same thing happens if you discuss politics with a neo-liberal economist or women’s rights with a fundamentalist Muslim. Well, the same thing happens if you try to discuss almost anything with anyone. We all have our views written in stone.

To rid oneself from opinions, ideas and ways of looking at things is extremely difficult. We just can’t give them up. And still, this is what we have to do. Without this crucial step no further awakening is possible. To be able to question one’s own “thinking”, to be able to question oneself is extremely important. To have a strong self-confidence can create a huge problems if ones ideas are misunderstandings. And to doubt everything can sometimes be very healthy.

What if God is not very powerful? What if he’s not like a king? Maybe he is more like Homer Simpson.

A mean and evil old man can easily convince himself that he has always been too kind.

A woman can think of herself as a smart woman with class. She can be convinced of that her good manners is because of her good upbringing. However, in reality she is just a pain in the neck; in reality she is carrying herself like a sulky teenager on her shopping rounds.

Even complete idiots can think of themselves as clever.

This is how the human mind works. To wake up from delusions is not easy, it is in fact incredibly painful.

Think of a man who has devoted his life to Nazism. Maybe he did terrible things in a concentration camp during the second world war. To him it doesn’t pay off to wake up. Or think of a man who has spent his life teaching the benefits of egoism. Or think of an alcoholic who has ruined the life of his children. It's not hard to understand that such guys feels a resistance to waking up, but isn't it strange that also normal every day people with fairly clean consciences also feel a strong resistance to waking up. Why is that?

Why is it so hard to wake up? Is there any point in waking up, really? Isn’t it better to snuggle up somewhere and try to make the best of the situation?

Think of a Caribbean cruising ship. It has been hired for the purpose of a psychological experiment. Imagine that you invite two thousand subjects for the experiment. To qualify they have to be susceptible to hypnosis and agree to take part in this experiment. OK, on boarding this wonderful cruise ship all the guests are hypnotized. Some are hypnotized to believe that they are deeply religious; Catholics, Protestants, Jehovah’s Witnesses, fanatic Muslims, fanatic Hindus. Some are hypnotized to believe that they are atheists. Some are made to believe that they are extreme right-wingers, some are made to believe that they are left-wingers, some are made to believe that they are artists, some are made to believe that they are ordinary office clerks. Some are made to believe that they are superior, some are made to believe that they are inferior. Some are made to believe that nothing is important but money…

Well, this is quite a job and will take some time I guess, even if a dozen good hypnotists are there to help.

Now, if you invite a few people as a control group, people that you don’t hypnotize and that are totally unaware of the experiment, do you think that they would smell a rat?

And, if you on the second day of the trip woke them all up, do you think that they would feel like they had just woken up from a dream? Would they feel like they are in one of those dreams, you know, when you in the dream, dream that you wake up from a dream?

Are all people, really hypnotized sleepwalkers?

The Nazis in Germany was possessed by weird ideas. Today the Islamists are possessed and so are fundamentalist Christians and neo-liberals. We can be possessed in so many different ways. We can get all sorts of crazy ideas in our heads. We can be deeply convinced about things that we later understand was completely idiotic. To wake up from such misunderstandings is very painful.

If you think of how we have ruined this planet with our incredible greed, evil and stupidity, you will feel depressed. The holocaust, the gulag, the slave trade, the inquisition trials… It is terrible to think of it. So don’t. Don’t think of it. Put your attention somewhere else. On love, maybe, or something fun. Become like a child. Don’t worry. Be happy. Be optimistic. Positive thinking can do the trick. Bring in the clowns. Or train your mind like you train a dog. Teach him to sit, teach him to avoid shit and, for Christ’s sake, teach him not to eat it. If you happen to see an ugly street fight, just walk away and pretend you didn’t see it. Try to become innocent again. Try to become like an idiot: I don’t see anything, I don’t hear anything. I don’t say anything. You have to have an strategy.

Maybe all the different scientific and philosophical ways of looking at life, as well as all the different religious ways, are just different fantasies, mental constructions, castles in the air.
You are born somewhere and you will die somewhere and in your life you just wander about, like a hen or a rooster. When you die your body will disappear in a furnace, your thoughts will disappear, your feelings, your fantasies, your ego, everything.

Pim van Lommels near death studies are interesting, but still, he is studying near death experiences, not death itself.

When I observe “my” thoughts and you observe yours, the I that is observing is a neutral, non individual onlooker. Your I and my I and all the I’s in the world is really one and the same. What makes us different is our thoughts, my story and your story, my body and your body.

In Hinduism this non individual I and the great universal I is of the same substance and it is eternal. In Buddhism this I, the observer, is just a thought among all the other thoughts. As long as there are humans on this planet the I will survive. But if we blow this planet to pieces also the I will disappear. The "I am" is dependent of brain matter. So no part of “you” is reincarnating? Your thoughts, your story, your ego, nothing is reincarnating, but the non individual observer will look at the world through other eyes. The theories of reincarnation is like the theories of heaven and hell, it is meant for the uneducated masses.
The only thing that is real, is this moment. This is it. You stare at these words. There will be no future reincarnations, no heaven or hell, no nothing, This is it.

What makes humans different from the animals is the mind, the stories, the philosophies, the speculations, the fantasies, the mythologies, the misunderstandings, the jokes… It seems to me that many “spiritual” people try to get rid of all that "mind stuff". Why is that? Isn’t it that what makes us human?