Mystical,
by Kevin Miles and Wendy
Schaefer-Miles
We are slaves to the modern culture, we are the
modern culture. I have suggested that this culture is characterized by a new
mythology, which I have called, The Mythology of Authenticity. This
mythology has two specific pedagogic methods: psychotherapy and coaching. These two
methods are again rooted in the counterculture, which are inspired by
philosophers such as Nietzsche, and occultists, such as Aleister Crowley. Quite
central are concepts such as will and choice.
It is easy to see how much the
modern management theory and coaching industry is inspired by Nietzsche: the
relativistic and subjectivistic ideas about that it only is the individual
himself who, through his interpretations, or stories, can supply the world with
values – or rather, not supply, but directly create it like a God; the denial
of the past, and the orientation towards future; the superhuman idea about
being a winner, a success, a person standing on the top of the mountain; the
preaching about that it is not facts, but the best story, which wins.
Also existentialism can be
used to justify these thoughts. The act-oriented ideas of existentialism match
as hand in glove with a capitalistic-liberalistic ideology about being the
architect of your own fortune, the right for each individual person to seek his
own idea of happiness – the philosophical point of view, that there isn´t any
objective value-goals for the human life, only individual subjective choices. That
is: value-subjectivism.
Heidegger and Sartre both
think from Kierkegaard´s philosophy of existence, but without his Christianity
and humanism, and therefore they end in subjectivism and irrationalism. They
both show, in different ways, what the danger is in subjectivism and its
belonging irrationalism. Irrationalism led Heidegger to Nazism, though only for
a shorter period, and Sartre had difficulties explaining why you not as well
could choose an anti-humanistic project of life such as Leninism or Nazism.
Aleister Crowley
has supplied Nietzsche´s ideas with occultism. In 1898 he joined
the esoteric Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, where he was trained in
ceremonial magic. In Cairo, Egypt, where Crowley claimed to have been
contacted by a supernatural entity named Aiwass, who provided him
with “The Book of the Law”, a sacred text that served as the basis for
Thelema. Announcing the start of the Æon of Horus, The
Book declared this:
DO WHAT
THOU WILT SHALL BE THE WHOLE OF THE LAW
A fall
into complete subjectivism (Aiwass seems very inspired by Nietzsche).
The modern culture,
which in many ways builds on all this, is therefore accentuated by
ego-inflation, which is contra-balanced through pollution of the environment,
war, terrorism, illness, etc. We therefore need another form of activism than the
activism based on will and choice.
Krishnamurti talked about choiceless
awareness. Here he referred to the higher functions of the mind. The Ego´s functions constitute what you could
call the ordinary consciousness. You can talk about four such, lower, functions
of the ordinary mind:
1. Evaluation (accept/denial,
yes/no)
2. Focus
3. Activity
4. Language (words, images)
These lower functions have to
do with choice.
The source of awareness, the
naked consciousness, is hidden because it has melted together with these four
functions. They have become a kind of veils, or conditioned layers of reality.
Meditation, or choiceless
awareness, is in all simplicity about separating and dismantling the
consciousness´ automatic identification with these functions. Then you can talk
about four higher functions of the consciousness, which are becoming activated
through meditation:
1. Neutral observation
2. Passive listening presence
(defocus)
3. Non-activity (non-action)
4. Non-language (wordless)
The whole process is like a
flower opening itself.
But we still need to use the
lower functions of the mind. So, how are we to use them?
I have called my
teaching Meditation as an Art of Life. Philosophy means “love of
wisdom” and a philosopher, in the original sense, is a person who is in love
with wisdom, and has invested his or her life totally to this. This is mainly inspired
by Greco-Roman philosophy, where philosophy was a spiritual practice with a
spiritual purpose.
In a nutshell my
teaching consists of five spiritual exercises:
1) Learning
to Live
2)
Meditation
3)
Critical thinking
4)
Investigation of the Shadow
5)
Learning to Die
It is
critical thinking that has to with a training of the lower functions of consciousness.
Critical thinking (kritikos) has to do with three virtues: A) refutation of
sophisms (elenchos), B) discrimination (the ability to discriminate between
reality and illusion, good and evil, true and false - emphilotekhnein), and C)
flexible thinking (learning to see, or rather, think about, things "from
above", from alternative viewpoints, and, when doing this, focusing your
thoughts on Beauty, Goodness and Truth).
If there is to be a
different kind of activism, a different kind of life and so a different kind of
culture altogether—not the counterculture, but something entirely different—one
must understand this whole question of will. Today will belongs to the modern culture
in which is involved ambition and drive, the whole assertion and aggression of
the ego. If there is to be a totally different way of living, one has to
understand the central issue, which is: can there be activism without formula,
concept, ideal, or belief?
An action based on knowledge, which is the conditioned
layers of reality, is not action. Being conditioned and dependent on the ego,
the family, the society, the personal and collective images in time, action
must inevitably create discord and therefore conflict.
So, I want to find out if
there is an action in which there is no will at all and choice does not enter.
The lower functions of the
mind create confusion. Choice is based on
this confusion. A man who sees things very clearly (not neurotically or
obstinately) does not choose. I believe this is what Krishnamurti talked about.
So choice, will, resistance—the
ego in action—is wastage of energy.
Is there an action unrelated
to all this so that we live in this world, functioning in the field of
knowledge and yet free to act without the impediment of the limitation of
knowledge?
Yes,
there is. There is such an action due to the higher functions of the mind. There
is an action in which there is no resistance, no interference of the
conditioned layers of reality, no response of the ego. That action is
instantaneous because it is not in the field of time—time being yesterday, with
all the knowledge and experience which acts today, so that the future is
already established by the past.
Yes,
there is an action which is instantaneous and therefore complete, in which will
does not operate at all. To find that out we must learn how to observe, how to
see. If we see according to a formula of what you should be, or what I should be,
then the action is of the conditioned layers of reality.
So, we must learn how to look.
That, for me, is the central problem. Can we, who are the
result of the images in time, of various cultures, experiences and knowledge,
look with eyes that are not conditioned? That is, can we operate instantly,
being free of our conditioning?
In order to find out we must
learn to look at our conditioning without any desire to change, to transform,
to go beyond it. I must be capable of
looking at it as it is. If I want to change it, then I bring about the action
of will again. If I want to escape from it, there is again a resistance. If I
keep one part and reject others, again it means choice. And choice, as we
pointed out, is confusion.
So can I, can this mind, look
without any resistance, without any choice? Can I look at the mountains, the
trees, my neighbour, my family, the politicians, the priests, without any image?
To do this, we must be able to
use the higher functions of the mind. When I look at the facts in myself and in
the world, without resistance, then out of that observation there is instant
action which is not the result of will. This action comes out of the higher
functions of the mind. And this is true activism.
But of
course, it must be channeled through the lower functions of the mind. It is
here critical thinking is coming in. The interplay between the three virtues of
critical thinking ensures the balance between logic and imagination, rational
and irrational, philosophy and storytelling.
So, I claim, that a new
kind of activism must be philosophy in the ancient sense. We must become
philosophical rebels and spiritual anarchists, who not are afraid of, for
example, practicing loafing and civil disobedience; or said differently: who
not are afraid of rejecting psychotherapy and coaching in order to find our
true calling in life.
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