Misconceptions of The Mind

I believe that we must approach “magickal” or “divine” subjects with a bag of salt.

Or, more accurately, we should approach them with the understanding that we are trying to extract gems from misunderstood, misconceived and misconstrued collections of knowledge.

Perhaps some of this knowledge that reaches us, had a completely different meaning and intention behind it, which got lost through the ages of human transmission.

For instance, perhaps the elaborate rituals performed in the Vedas are not rituals of worship but encoded recipes for developing psychic technology…

While the ignorant humans memorize and perpetuate such knowledge across generations, and trap it within their superstition, the illuminated observers can decode and enjoy the benefits of such knowledge.

Or perhaps, some of the knowledge that reaches us is nothing more than simple misconceptions of our ignorant ancestors.

For instance, all building blocks of matter were thought to be the four (or five depending on your tradition) elements. But this paradigm turned out to be incorrect. And we now know of things like atoms, quarks and even strings.

In other words, the ancients turned out wrong…

Or, for instance, the four cardinal directions were imagined to lead to other dimensions (Yes, that’s why people call the corners). And now, we know, the earth is round and there is no watchtower at the edge of any direction…

Or, for instance, astrology was invented at a time when the stars were conceived to be god/spirits, who directed our destinies.

Today, we know better…

Thanks to science, our perceptions have both advanced and broadened. And in many parts of our society, we have digested the fact that the ancients simply didn’t know all that much.

But, unfortunately, our culture, especially our magickal-mystical culture has not caught up with the times and swallowed these facts.

And instead of facing reality and leveraging science, much like religion, our magickal-mystical culture has been fighting a losing battle with the times…

For instance, as soon as we started to observe that the moving luminaries of the sky happened to be other planets, much like the one we are living on, the story about god/spirits got spun, and other hypotheses emerged to protect our outdated beliefs.

It didn’t matter that an “all knowing science” didn’t know the most basic facts about our solar system… No we didn’t focus on that and realize that perhaps all that tradition was nonsense.

After all, we were convinced that what Aunt Jyotishi or Uncle Juju were right about all sorts of things, And we *felt* that we should continue to believe hearsay about the correlations between shiny objects in the sky and what our destiny beheld.

Who cared if their tradition had a few egregious misconceptions about the cosmos. We could simply invent creative ways to over look them.

And that’s exactly what we did…

So… We started to imagine that the planets were sending “energies” or “vibes”, according to their corresponding resonance to mess with our lives and bring karma and justice to us all.

But this paradigm didn’t last long. And when it lost its luster, we weren’t troubled.

We simply changed our story. And we started to profess that planets in the sky were like the arms of a cosmic clock, which kept time in synchronicity with the events of our lives.

In other words, we imagined another excuse as a hypothesis for why astrology was valid, and allowed it to retain it’s validity as a tradition despite it’s dissonance with our scientific culture.

And we’ll keep doing this. When the synchronicity theory falls out of fashion, we’ll invent some other reason why unrelated bodies of mass exert vaguely agreed upon effects on our personalities, or influence the events of our lives.

But, I digress…

The point isn’t the bogus nature of astrology. I’m only using it to make a point:

When it comes to mystical and magickal subjects, the problem isn’t with their study or use.

The first problem is with our ignorant, unscientific and biased approach towards these subjects, which is an approach that does not leverage any of our modern knowledge.

Yes, we may use computers to plot the positions of the planets. Yet, we still don’t dare touch Kepler’s equations to compute their positions – we still rely on almanacs. Most astrologers would not even know who Kepler is…

Or we still don’t use concepts like general relativity in our considerations, without the use of which even the most rudimentary GPS system would not work.

The problem isn’t the fact that we are continuing to use astrology. The problem is that we are still perpetuating an ignorant tradition, without the slightest effort in modernizing it and incorporating it into our science.

At least, that is the first problem.

There is also a second problem. And I’d dare say, the second one is a bigger problem…

As if being scientifically outdated wasn’t enough, these magickal-mystical bodies of knowledge – like astrology – are also contaminated with moralizing judgments.

In other words, these subjects contain tons of misinformation for every gram of useful information.

And they infect you with endless streams of “wisdom”, for every drop of empowering knowledge.

This second problem is such that, many occult bodies of knowledge have underlying belief structures which get imposed onto practitioners through their study.

Today, for instance, when you learn astrology, baseless and incredibly unscientific concepts like karma and destiny tend to infiltrate as well.

Or when you study any form of magick, even magick of a supposedly “satanic” nature, god and worship infiltrates!

I believe this is the real problem for mystical and magickal traditions, and it is even a bigger problem than the unscientific nature of these traditions: these bodies of knowledge have become contaminated streams.

Their original teachings have either been lost (i.e. ancient technology confused as religion) or the original teachings were wrong to being with (i.e. ignorant ancestors believes stuff that science and experience proves to be BS).

As a result of all this, rather than becoming a useful tool, many magickal-mystical teachings have turned into propaganda…

This becomes most evident, when you do some research into what “spiritual” teachers lecture about…

For instance, if you study concepts like left-brain-right-brain division or how we only use 10% of our brain, both of which happen to be incorrect, you get a sense of what I’m talking about.

I bring this up, because it’s important to see how these misconceptions persist and what their persistence they implies…

For example, the left-brain-right-brain BS is used as a criticism of dominance hierarchies. It is also criticism of a kind of rational thinking.

And this left-brain-right-brain BS persists because of people with lower IQs need some other, seemingly equal, dimension of comparison that makes them feel good.

Similarly, the 10% of our brain BS is used to make us feel bad and work harder for not living up to our potential.

And it persists because it gives us hope that we are meant for more.

Karma is a concept like this as well. It is used to make us behave, and it persists because of our yearning for a fair world.

God is similar as well. God is used to limit our development, and it persists due to the fear of the unknown…

Here’s what I’m getting at. Concepts like God, Karma, left-brain-right-brain, we only use 10% of our brain; all of these concepts are being used to shape us.

And, knowingly or unknowingly, magickal traditions are also using such concepts to shape us according to some will that is other than our own!!!

This is my main frustration and the entire point of the article: a body of knowledge (i.e. magick) that is supposed to empower us and shape the world according to our will, is in fact laden with superstitions and misconceptions that is being used to shape us into some other person’s or group’s value system!

And what does all this mean?

It means that you must be especially vigilant when you study these occult subjects.

You must guard your mind so that other people’s doctrines, life philosophies and inaccurate paradigms don’t infect your mind.

You must remain sovereign to yourself, so that their philosophies don’t reign over you.

You must refuse to become the person these teachings are trying to turn you into.

That is what I mean when I say “you must take every teaching with a bag of salt”.

You must observe every implication in the light of your attention.

And you must put every claim to the fire of experimentation.

This way, you can discard the dross, and retain that which empowers you.

Because, amidst the muck of brainwashing and spiritual social conditioning, there are powerful tools to be discovered in these traditions.

In that direction, I leave you with the following questions:

If the stars and planets are merely objects in the sky, how is it possible to invoke them?

If correspondences and symbols are different across different cultures, why do they all work?

If no god is listening, why do recitations of charged up texts manifest results?

I point these out, because pulling on this loose thread will unravel all the sham…

Magick seems to produce results. The question is “why?”…

It doesn’t work because some god is watching us and rewarding/punishing us according to it’s will.

It doesn’t work because the world is made up of four (or five) elements that listen to us.

It doesn’t work because we have good karmas from the past… Or because spirits “owe” us…

Something else is going on.

Reality is not what we think it is. Explore this, and you’ll understand why…