On mysticism and spiritual materialism

Is there something more to a human being than the body and the personality? The word personality originates from the Latin word persona, which means mask. Is it possible to find someone or something behind the mask? What do you think?

The mystics of all religions have much in common. They claim that they have experienced what is behind the ego, behind the personality and the body, behind the psychological and physiological functions, but they can not really communicate it because language is not made for this purpose. They try the best they can by using words like: the formless world, Brahman, pure existence, existence beyond all existence, Nirvana, God or Dao, but those words doesn't explain much to us everyday people.

I am not that interested in the existence beyond all existence. I am interested in what is here in this world and what I can experience with my senses, what I can see with my own two eyes and what I can understand with my limited little mind. The time will come, for sure, when I no longer have any senses and no sense of I. I will cross that bridge when I come to it. When I am dead, as I see it, the time is ripe to "experience" existence beyond all existence. Sometimes I feel that many so called spiritual people do not care much about what is going on here in this world. They don't care much about the play. They are like actors who leave the play to search for the truth behind the scene. They search in the basement of the theater and in the attic. They do not seem to care if a decent man’s pension is dependent of how many land mines Raytheon Company manage to sell. They do not know about such things. They never speak up against injustice, exploitation and the insane greed of the rich. Why do those who have seen the reality behind the reality, neglect to explain that it is evil to sell land mines or exploit poor people to become richer?

Kissinger and the peace prize

You cannot change your personality. You have to accept the way you are, like you have to accept the way you look. If you miss an arm or a leg you have to accept it. To be gay is as normal as being left-handed. To be very empathic is as normal as being a psychopath. You cannot change a psychopath to make him more kind. And a psychopath cannot change himself to become a kinder person. An artistic and bohemian kind of person cannot change himself into a well-structured social climber just because his family wants him this way. Fifty years ago, they tried to force left-handed kids in school to use their right hand when writing and they tried all conceivable ways to make the gays straight. It did not work. You have to accept your own personality and you have to accept that all people have different personalities. Animals have also different personalities. Some dogs are hyper sensitive and some dogs are lazy.

Anyway, Hitler was a psychopath, but the Germans in general were not. So why the hell did they vote for him. Why the hell did they get so hysterically enthusiastic about him? Henry Kissinger is a psychopath. How the hell could he be rewarded with the Nobel’s peace price after the Christmas bombings of Hanoi 1972? 40 000 tons of bombs were dropped in 12 days due to his advise. As I see it: Those who were fanatic Nazis during the Second World War and those who gave Kissinger the peace price were in a deep hypnotic trance. They lived in a fog or a deeply unawakened state of mind.

In the old days, and maybe even today, many gays were forced to create a false straight personality. They married someone they did not love and produced children just to please their parents. Many are the artistically bent people who have tried to make themselves into bankers or lawyers just to please their demanding mothers. Many are the left-handed people who have through big efforts learned how to write with the right hand. Many, many people have, through the years, been forced to change their personality into a false but more accepted personality. So many people have been forced to live their life with an false identity. Even today many people yearn to to come out from the closet.

Nothing is strange with this. All people are sleepwalkers. All people know what it feels like to pretend. All people have spent years of their life pretending that they are someone else. I am by no means different. Sometimes though, for short periods, I feel like I can see the sky. To wake up, I believe, is not impossible, and it is not like trying to change ones personality. Awakening is, I think, a change in the way we look at the world and ourselves.

I do not think, though, that awakenings or changes in the way we look at the world, is something that comes about through psychotherapy, meditation practice or by reading self help books. Some people meditate for years and years or spend years and years in therapy, and read tons of self help books, but still don't wake up. Why is it so? If people wake up, they seem to wake up because of no particular reason at all.

Well, an awakening can be small and concern only minor things and it can be dramatic and change a person’s life completely. An awakening can come and go; it can last for a few seconds or it can change someone for the rest of his or her life. In real life nothing is written in stone.

Some people believe that they will go to heaven when they die, some believe that they will reincarnate. Some believe that on the judgment day the dead will rise up from their graves, some believe that the dead turn into ghosts or spirits. I do not believe that any part of me will go anywhere when I die. I believe that I will simply disappear, disintegrate, dissolve. However, all these different beliefs are nothing but thoughts. All beliefs are made of thoughts, also my beliefs. I can see this now. All beliefs are nothing but speculations and imaginations. Not even science is of much help. They care only about things that can be measured. And what they know for sure today will be considered a misunderstanding tomorrow. Nobody knows for sure about anything, not even the great gurus. Gurus only pretend that they know. They are like priests or popes or mullahs, make-believers. This is of course also a belief. I am serious. Don’t try to understand what is going on. It is meaningless. It is ridiculous. Live life as you please. But don't be too egoistic. You will never find any happiness if you are too egoistic.

Where do all crazy ideas come from? Fundamentalist Christianity, Islamism, Neo-liberalism, all the weird religious and political crazyisms, neo-Nazism, libertarianism, biologism … What is wrong with us? Why do we feel that we absolutely have to invent a belief system to make life worth living? Why is it so difficult to live without a fantasy about how life ought to be lived? Why is it so difficult to be here and now without an explanation to it? Should I get myself a pair of Buddhist glasses or a pair of psychological middle class self-improvement glasses? Maybe I should try the tantric Hindu glasses? How am I supposed to look at the world?

In our western liberal culture, it is of utter importance to be someone. You cannot be just anybody. You have to be a lawyer, a doctor or a teacher; you have to be a movie star, a rock star, a poet or an artist. You have to be something. You cannot just be what you are, even if you have enough money. To simply be a human being is to be a loser. We are like ducks: Above the surface we look cool and calm, beneath the surface we paddle like hell.

Most people will eventually wake up from this hypnosis and realize that they have been completely crazy and that they have been driven by completely crazy ideas. Though it is probably not until we have to face death, our own or someone near to us, that we realize the futility with beliefs and ideas.

Marijuana is not harmless

Pot smokers hang out with other pot smokers and vinos hang out with other vinos. Left- wingers hang out with other left-wingers and neo-Nazis hang out with other neo-Nazis. A society consists of many different communities, religious, political and social.

Marijuana is not habit forming like nicotine or cocaine but an confirmed pot smoker will still find it almost impossible to give up his pot. Why would he like to give up his pot? I mean, most doctors consider it to be fairly harmless. Well, one reason could be because pot makes it impossible to experience the now clearly. Pot smokers live their life in a haze. It is meaningless to practice meditation if you are stoned or if you have smoked marijuana the past days. Anyway, it is difficult to give up marijuana for someone who has been smoking for many years, whatever reason he may have. Why is that? What makes it so difficult?

I think one reason is that marijuana has a numbing effect on unpleasant emotions, another more important reason is that the pot smoker is loosing his pot smoker identity when he give up his beloved drug. He do not belong to a group anymore. He is expelled, or rather,he has expelled himself. He feels like a wolf without a pack or a bird without a cage. He feels lonely and miss his friends.

It is ,for the same reason, difficult for a neo-liberal to give up his neo-liberalism and for a Catholic to give up his Catholicism. It is difficult to give up cigarettes and it is difficult to give up racism or judgementalism. It is a matter of identity. It is a matter of giving up a mental construction or illusion. The question is: What do you have to give up?
What do you have to realize?