My Suggestion for a New Kind of Activism

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.

Related:

Self-help and the Mythology of Authenticity

My Teaching in a Nutshell

Links to Idlers