There are some things in my previous article that require clarification, because they could create a misapprehension if taken out of context.
It is true that the attainment of the highest possible spiritual initiation, or quality of consciousness, is the greatest priority, and all else is secondary to that. However, the problem with this world is that the secondary things can be of greatest importance, to the point where to neglect them is to risk losing all the primary ones, where one needs but take note of the prominent examples of failure to do so, to understand that sometimes it would be better to have one’s head filled with intellectual understanding of things, and not rely solely on spiritual experiences of the highest order, because failure to ground them into material life with proper understanding of theory and its implications to all sorts of things means to have a chasm between experience, understanding and life, and this chasm usually means detachment and loss. Basically, if you don’t ground your spiritual experience into layers such as politics, economy, nutrition, sexuality, and many nuances of social life, it will exist in a detached, ungrounded sphere called “meditation time”, and the steeper the gradient between the two, the greater the chance that everything in your life will basically work on destroying your spirituality with much greater effectiveness than any kind of meditative or spiritual practice could possibly remedy. In simple terms, if you keep destroying your consciousness for 16 hours every day with wrong ideas about practical things, and with wrong actions based on those wrong ideas, it is unlikely that any amount of meditation that you could conceivably fit into your daily schedule could save you.
A great number of supposedly spiritually advanced yogis has insanely stupid ideas about a great number of practical things, which opens the question of actual validity of their “spiritual advancement” in an absolute sense, because it is quite possible that they had a few genuine experiences, which they interpreted through the lens of philosophy and religion they were brought up in, proceeded to suspend their intellectual faculties and replaced them with religious dogma, at which point the entire thing can hardly be called “spiritual advancement”, and rather be seen as a serious deviation from a true spiritual path. You see, if all the yogis keep saying the same things, and they all originate from the ancient scriptures of Yoga and Vedanta, it’s actually more likely that they are all copying the same homework, and not that they are merely channeling the same eternal wisdom that needs no innovations. Sure, I actually bought the latter explanation once, but in the meantime I discovered so many things none of them even mentioned, things of great importance, things that possibly question even the Vedantic interpretation of samadhi, which is the basis of its entire theology and cosmology, that I just no longer find that explanation plausible. It is much more likely that most of the “enlightened masters” are in fact beginner yogis who fell into the same trap: saw their experience as a confirmation of ancient theology, and replaced their personal spiritual research with a pre-recorded database. Sorry, but turning yourself into someone else’s parrot is hardly spiritual advancement, especially since the stuff they are parroting is sometimes completely wrong. For instance Vedantic understanding of karma is completely and irredeemably wrong, to the point where it’s actually opposite to the actual reality of things that can be perceived in yogic practice. The concept of gunas is intellectually cute, but does in fact explain only very high-level phenomena, such as emotions and behavior, not the deep structure of reality. For all intents and purposes, there are no gunas; it’s a weak attempt to counter the Buddhist deep theory of kalapas, which can actually be perceived because, unlike the gunas, they are real. Considering how many of the foundational elements of Vedantic dogma were disproved by my personal experience and experimentation, one must ask how is it possible that everybody else failed to notice those quite obvious issues, and instead they just repeat the dogma verbatim? Sorry, but from my perspective they don’t look like enlightened sages; rather, they resemble beginners who strayed into a typical cultist brain-freeze. The problem is that they don’t see Vedanta, or any other dogmatic system, as a starting point. They see its full acceptance as a symptom of enlightenment and an end-point of the spiritual path, which is why they are extremely resistant to any mental process that could challenge or disprove it. I actually understand the mentality because I was there: if you were taught certain things by people you see as authoritative and beyond reproach on any level, you just don’t question the fundamentals of a theology that no only comes from multiple authoritative sources, but whose cornerstones seem to be proven by your personal experience. The problem is, things a, b and c were proven by your personal experience, and then you just accepted validity of everything from d through z, bliss-drugged by the “fact” that you got it all, finally. You have the final answers to the eternal questions, you understand the core of all religions, of all genuine spirituality. That’s a difficult drug to wean yourself from. The feeling that you don’t understand the meaning of life and universe is painful, and if you get to be convinced that you actually have the answers, you’re basically fucked, because that “knowledge” anchors you into spiritual standstill with almost unbreakable strength. You’d rather eat shit ten times a day for the rest of your life than go back to admitting that you don’t get it. It’s too painful, too defeating, and the arrogance that grew from the “deep knowledge” that you have and others don’t is too intoxicating for you to let go easily. For me, admitting I was wrong about something fundamental is actually easy, because I was never into it for social standing and impressing others with how right I am, I was always in it only because I actually wanted to figure it out. So, when something is disproved, I can easily let go and try out other ideas. However, for those who see spirituality as a game of attaining social status, admitting fundamental errors is absolutely spirit-crushing. Also, the core of who I am was never defined through cult membership or acceptance of dogma. It was always “I practiced things, experienced things, and here’s what it all looks like”. If the layer of “what it looks like” changes, so what; it’s like changing a theme in Windows, not formatting the system drive and reinstalling the OS. I always knew that my interpretations of experience exists on a different spiritual layer than the actual experience, and are thus “false” by definition – the only truth is the experience itself, and interpretations are dime a dozen. I used to say that one should change the interpretative layer through which experience is filtered just for shits and giggles every six months or so, just to avoid taking it too seriously, but, apparently, people don’t take it seriously when I say it, and when I actually do change the interpretative layer, they think nothing I say can be true because I “change my mind all the time”. Well, it’s actually failure to do so that should be highly suspicious, because if someone can’t change the interpretative layer, it probably means there is too little actual experience underneath to survive anything so dramatic. Too much filler, not enough substance.
Another important thing that needs to be said, and which apparently contradicts everything I said up until now, is that intellectual anchoring of spiritual concepts and experiences is of utmost importance. If you lack a coherent intellectual framework for your spirituality, it will remain detached from your intellectual and practical layers, and that isn’t good. Our civilization is, for all intents and purposes, insane. It is devoid of true spiritual purpose and identity, and therefore prone to all sorts of idiocy. It rejected Christianity, but failed to replace it with anything better. If you don’t have an intellectual framework that will encompass not only spiritual realities and experiences thereof, but also practical things such as politics, economy etc., you will depend on the unworthy people to provide you with opinions, and that won’t end well. This is the reason why I write about all sorts of things, because this writing is not unrelated or separate from my spiritual understanding; rather, it’s a manifestation of said understanding, applied to different things. For people who can’t meditate directly, those are the stepping-stones, and are in fact more useful than any super-advanced text about energetic yoga that I could think of. When you understand why something is wrong, your mind follows a thread out of the labyrinth, and you gradually pick up things. It’s not “red pill” or some other arrogant bullshit that’s talked about on the Net, because truth is never a switch you turn on or off. Rather, it’s sunlight that is slowly absorbed by a plant and is gradually transformed into fruit. You need exposure, and you need to absorb, work with it, wrestle with it a bit, test it, think about it, and as it applies pressure to your mind, your mind changes its nature. You don’t just “get it”.
This means that spiritual progress isn’t merely something that exists in the context of energetic Yoga or spiritual practice in the narrowest sense; it’s also something that happens when you’re exposed to ideas, when you think about things, when you’re in contact with something subtle and sophisticated and it touches you, and you are changed. People who think about subtle and sophisticated ideas tend to get more subtle and sophisticated, because mind appropriates the qualities of that which it dwells on. Also, people who solve actual problems tend to be more resistant to bullshit than people who just sit in their parents’ basement and check reddit all day.
Perhaps the most controversial of all the things I am about to say here is that, contrary to what you might have assumed from my previous writing, I actually think that cults and social connections are quite useful. No, they are not useful for the purpose of attainment of genuine spirituality, but there’s much more to one’s life than genuine spirituality, as blasphemous as people might find this statement. For instance, brushing your teeth regularly has nothing to do with genuine spirituality, and yet if you neglect it, you will suffer consequences at the hands of dentists. Association with like-minded people is not useful for attaining genuine spirituality, and is in fact detrimental, but if you are in trouble of some kind, it is essential to be able to rely on people who like you and are willing to help you, either by pooling resources or otherwise, and without such aid you will be forced to rely on very general and diluted resources of your state and civilization, which will be useless if not outright harmful. Also, if you’re trying to find a sexual partner, finding them in a pre-selected pool of people who share your general worldview gives you an almost certainty of a good match, compared to trying to find someone in the unfiltered general population where likelihood of finding someone compatible is minimal. Basically, if you’re trying to find someone to marry, your church meeting is a much better place than a dating site. That’s why those social games are so prominent in human genetic makeup: they work. They improve your chances to survive and thrive significantly, and of course I’m aware of their usefulness. The problem is, those connections “attack” the same spiritual resources that need to be focused inwards in order to attain a vertical spiritual connection, like a WiFi card that can be connected to only one SSID, and if it’s connected to Facebook, it’s not connected to God. That’s the main reason why I hate those social networking sites so much – those connections are a replacement for genuine spirituality, and they saturate the essential “connectivity layer” to the point where you are so hooked into this garbage, you stop being a true person, because you saturate the link that’s essential for Soul/God/Reality/Meaning connection with human social bullshit that’s not just inconsequential and useless, but actively harmful. That’s another reason why I write: I basically work with your connectivity layer and reprogram it. I slowly modify your thinking and expose you to content that not only repairs the damage, but enhances the vertical connection. I think that everybody who’s here long enough is aware of some of that.
Also, don’t be afraid to admit that you don’t truly understand or accept some of the things I’m talking about. Of course I’m aware of that, and it would actually piss me off more if you pretended to understand everything I’m saying about Sanat Kumar, higher planes of existence or “jewels” that are a “root ssh” interface to the “world engine”. I don’t care if you don’t get it, and I don’t expect you to pretend that it makes sense to you. Some of the things I write took me decades of very hard work and breakthroughs that were few and far apart to formulate, and of course you’re not just going to read it and get it. The purpose of me writing it is akin to that of Bardo Thodol: it’s not meant for the narrow consciousness of the living, but for the expanded consciousness in the afterlife, where things will just snap into place and you’ll have some intellectual framework to make some sense of it all. Just look at the NDE experiences: they always utilize the mental concepts that you already have in place, as vessels for knowledge of a higher order. I’m creating the vessel, I don’t expect you to put anything in it, and in fact, I will be annoyed if you do and it’s garbage.
