Some people are convinced that they are inferior
and some people are convinced that they are superior.
Some people you meet look down on you and some look up to you.
You can’t change that.
How can you expect from others to change their beliefs
when you can’t even change your own?

Some people see themselves as miserable losers
when they actually are the winners in the game of life.
What a joke!
People with good jobs and family have to eat Prozac pills
because they are so unhappy with themselves and their life situation.
They expect more from life.

Extroverted people believe
that introverted people try to escape reality
and introverted people believe
that extroverted people are superficial and try to run away from themselves.

Some people live with terrifying beliefs.
They have to stay drunk or drugged until they die.

It is wrong to criticize people who deceive themselves.
Maybe they would have to kill themselves if they had not had their delusions.
Maybe they have nothing else to live for.
What do you know?

Most people don’t know that their thoughts are not theirs.
They don't know that they have got them from their parents, teachers and friends.

This means that the decisions you make are not really your decisions.
Your goals are not your goals
and your dreams about the future are not your dreams.
Isn't this weird?

Some people try to guide you because they think that you have fooled yourself
and you feel sorry for them because you think that they have fooled themselves.

We lived as apes and hunters and gatherers for millions of years. Then we suddenly settled down and became farmers. At some point we began to build cities, civilizations and empires. 500 BC or so, something happened. In China, India, in the Middle East and in Greece fundamental changes in our ways of looking at ourselves and the world took place. Logos replaced Mythos. Moral replaced sacrifice and rituals. Karen Armstrong speaks about this period in her book “The Great Transformation”.

Then the scientific revolution took us to another level. The age of enlightenment begun in the middle of the seventeenth century. Beliefs lost its meaning. Reason became important. We stopped listening to the Church when it insisted that the sun revolved around the earth. We had proof now that the earth is revolving around the sun and the church had to back down and admit that they were wrong. The church was no longer infallible and that was a very important realization. If they were wrong about this they could be wrong about other things.

Anyway, now we find ourselves again living in the beginning of a new era. We have left science, religion, superstition and ideology behind. We begin to wake up to the Now, as Eckhart Tolle puts it. It is not that science is wrong or bad, we still depend heavily on it, it is simply too limited because it is only dealing with what can be measured, the world of form. (The totality is so much bigger. We can only measure small, small fractions of the totality.) And what is also important, all scientists live their life according to an ideology. They are not unbiased. They are right-wingers or liberals or sometimes even socialists. They live comfortable upper middle class lives in comfortable upper middle class areas of the world. And they gladly sell their soul to anyone with power, like dogs. They don't care who the master is as long as he feed them. They don't mind working for the arms industry, for a Hitler or a Stalin, or for the Devil himself.
But their time is up now.

So. This is the dawn of the age of awakening. Though science, religion, superstition and ideology seem to be stronger than ever, wherever you go you will meet people who have had enough. I have met Arabs, Jews, Indians. Africans, Europeans and Americans who say: "I don't care about religion or politics anymore. I don't care about a career in any field. I simply want to live my life in peace."
Such people belong to a new kind of human being.

Rubin's vase



You can look at life and say to yourself: “Life sucks and then you die.”
And you can look at life and say: "It's amazing! A human being consists of forty thousand billion cells. How can all these cells be synchronized? Every second is a miracle."
These two ways of looking at life is like looking at "Rubin’s vase"- both ways makes sense.

One part of you comes up with one kind of explanation, another part comes up with something else. One part of you can easily deceive the other part. Whom is cheating whom? Isn't all this strange? A human being have so many different voices in his head and what is even more strange, they change over the years. Nothing is permanent. There is no permanent you.

It is therefore important to remind yourself, over and over again, that none of these explanations is the truth. They are explanations, mental speculations, concepts, theories, ideas, stories, maps, castles in the air, call them what you want, but don’t mix them up with yourself or the reality. Don't believe everything you hear from yourself. Don't trust yourself completely.

We left Africa 100 000 years ago and are now at the end of our journey. The Neanderthals died out 50 000 years ago and so did the Java man. A species is not forever.
We have had a long life. We are like an old man and old men don't change. So don't expect mankind to change. Old men are displeased and complain about high taxes. Old men certainly don't want to wake up from illusions. They don't love. They are proud of their war decorations but they don't want to talk about what happened there, in the in the villages.

A charter for compassion without religion

Cave paintings of Shamans


We lived as hunters and gatherers for more than 150 000 years. 70 000 years ago there was some kind of change in our ways. We began to decorate our axes. 40 000 years ago there was another big change in our way of living. Art, cave paintings and religious rituals began. The Shamans became our guides. This is the dawn of the human culture.
The agricultural revolution ten thousand years ago was another dramatic change in our way of living. (And it was not due to a genetic change, a mutation.) We suddenly became farmers and settled down for some reason. Maybe because the time was ripe. Who knows? Anyway, our religions changed. War, property and social class became important. Slavery was introduced. Narrow mindedness and egoism began to thrive. The masculine principle replaced a feminine or equal lifestyle. When we lived as hunters and gatherers private property did not exist. We spent less than two hours a day working. The rest of the day we simply chilled out, sang songs, danced and told stories. When we became farmers we did nothing but worked and complained, if we were not at war.

The industrial revolution in the nineteenth century was another change in our material evolution. The farm hands became workers in the factories. They began to look down on the country bumpkins, as the farmers looked down on the nomads 10 000 years ago.

Now, however, we are forced to change our ways again. Either we find a way to live in harmony with each other and the planet earth or we will be replaced by some other species.

I believe that this fundamental change implies that love and friendliness, which is also in our biology, must become our guiding lights, not competition, power and intelligence. I believe that many people today are aware that this change has already begun.

It is definitely possible, or maybe very probable, that we will ruin the planet before we wake up to a more conscious and harmonious way of living, but there is a small chance, I believe, that we will realize what is at stake before it is too late.

If there are other civilizations out there in space somewhere who are more advanced than our, they must definitely have found ways to overcome animosity, hatred and war. Otherwise, they would have killed each other long ago and disappeared.

Imagine that you have a job in the engine room at a big cruise liner when a fire starts. You rush off to wake up the engineer but he is drunk and tells you to fuck off. So you hurry to the captain but he refuses to let you in. Nobody is listening to you, not your fellow sailors and none of the passengers. Everybody seems to be drugged or drunk and caught up in silly fistfights. They tell you that you are ruining the trip with your endless goddamn complaining. They tell to be more positive and optimistic. So you find yourself standing there at the gunwale looking at the horizon. The sun has just set and amazing colors paint the sky and the sea. You feel lonely and because you're not exactly sober yourself you can't really complain about the other drunkards. You know that there are other people on the ship who know about the fire, it's just that you, for strange reasons, cannot get in contact with them and there is nothing you can do about it.

The true nature of a human being is to a very large extent silly. Take a close look at yourself. Listen to your inner voice. Are you impressed with what you hear? Are you impressed with your thoughts? Is it not amazing how much nonsense and stupidities a human brain can come up with, this masterpiece of the evolution? This is your true nature. The clever stuff is of course also in your true nature, but that is just a small portion of the totality.

When this information eventually sinks in you don’t have to be upset anymore when people around you seem silly, stupid, vulgar or blind. Of course they are. We are silly, stupid, vulgar and blind.