As mentioned several times, the purpose of the socio-religious system is to ensure that individuals do not increase their Individual Consciousness, for the trivial reason that a person with low Individual Consciousness is easier to control.
Just a few very effective strategies are sufficient for society to prevent people from increasing their individual consciousness: the creation of distance from the precept of the Here&Now and the creation of false goals.
To keep an individual at a safe distance from the basic conditions for an increase in Individual Consciousness (and from the path of serenity), it is necessary to create conditions that ensure that the Here&Now does not occur:
To do this, situations are engineered such that the individual's awareness is in the “not-Now”, projecting awareness into the future or the past: consumer and credit systems are created. The consumerist system is fed as much as possible, rendering unnecessary goods necessary and indoctrinating individuals into the culture of possession, at the expense of that of "being".
People grow up in a culture of living to buy new, ever improved (and ever less durable) products. To facilitate the immediate purchase of new products, society introduced a credit system: buyers can immediately have the object of their desire (which will not last long) with a deferred payment (which will be long-lasting). Purchase after purchase, credit after credit: people's debts increase dramatically, as do their concerns about not being able to repay them. Within a short time, indebted people live completely overwhelmed by worries of future payment instalments. Awareness, frustrated by these concerns, is projected into the future... diverting minds from the present moment and raising concerns for the future; this is the end goal of society, meticulously planned and perfectly executed. Not to mention that the mental stress caused by this uncertain situation can cause psychosomatic illnesses, even serious ones.
Even for those who manage their debts well, society has also created a system of deadlines to project people into the future: car tax and other taxes, the bills, course fees, and so on, always peppered with the fear of forgetting them.
Cases of individual awareness being in the "not-Here" have ramped up since the existence of social networks. People post their own thoughts and moments online under the pretence of sharing them with others, while the real reason is to feed their ego with a spasmodic search for the reader's approval. One no longer goes on holidays to enjoy the moment and the place, whether with relaxation or adventure, but to take photographs and "share" them... in doing so, awareness is estranged from the position to which the body is assigned by sharing something that has now passed, thereby losing the Here&Now.
Even worse is when awareness is completely estranged by reading the thoughts or events of people in our social-network: shut up on the bus, underground, or any other place, we are surrounded by beauty, including humans close to us, and our awareness travels elsewhere, to virtual pseudo-realities that do not exist.
The strategy of false goals is based on the alpha male model as interpreted by human society, according to which men are in eternal competition with one another to be the dominant male of the group. While in animals the alpha male has control of the group and priority over the group's food and females, in humans, for social and physiological reasons (women have a menstrual cycle and not an estrous one like animals), this model tends to be unconsciously interpreted as the quest to excel in society. The antagonism for the alpha male role is undoubtedly an animalistic recall that we have segregated into unconscious primordial instincts.
Feeding this unconscious primordial need and rendering it of primary importance is the easiest way to divert people from their spiritual journey. Thus, society has seen fit to create status-symbols to define everyone's social and economic position within society: type of vehicle, type of dwelling, clothes, gadgets, and so on.
Modern feminism born in the last century, in addition to its various positive aspects, has led women to also participate in this competition for the alpha role, or rather for an alpha role within society.
You dedicate your life to work, you try to prevail over others, to obtain a goal (or status symbol) that raises your position.
Having goals, whether they are noble or not, is not the real problem. The real problem is in the obsessive pursuit to achieve goals, which makes one loses awareness of the path to that goal.
If one loses the Here&Now along the way, achievement of the goal is meaningless, especially if the goal is not a noble one.
Almost all of us have achieved a social status symbol at least once in our lives: undoubtedly, one feels a certain happiness, but that happiness turns out to be ephemeral... within a short time, that fleeting happiness is replaced by the nascent desire for a new status symbol. We buy a car and after three months we want another one, we get a salary increase and after two months we want another one, we buy a mobile phone and after a month we want a more powerful one.
The status symbols put forward by society are false goals, created to divert people's attention from the Here&Now.
The system created to control people is ingenious and cunning: the ideal way to control a flock of sheep is not to have a good shepherding dog; it is to have sheep that control themselves.
People in societies are both controlled and controllers at the same time, with a very few puppeteers pulling the strings... in real terms, the society which is guilty of controlling and limiting Individual Consciousness is ourselves.
Almost everywhere on our planet, we grow up with religious indoctrination, which has little to do with science, spirituality, or the reality of the things like the ancients approached to: modern religions are based on fairy tales contrary to the history of the religion itself; stories which were written and then manipulated by people who have had nothing to do with true spiritual research... even the clergy of many modern religions have lifestyles opposite to the teachings of the messiah(s) of the religion itself.
Despite everything, there are still an incredible number of people in the world who blindly believe in religion and, even worse, make important choices and restrictions in their lives to adhere to the rules of their beliefs.
Considering religious belief from an external point of view, it is almost surreal that rules imposed in remote times, when humanity was different from the present, are still in force and applied to individuals who are different from one another: simple analyses such as this should suffice to encourage a religious follower to re-evaluate his own creed.
Through indoctrination, religions have controlled populations since the dawn of time.
The control implemented by religion has the same purpose as society's control: to divert populations from the Here&Now to prevent them from evolving spiritually and developing Individual Consciousness.
Unlike society's control, which is based on ego and echoes of primordial instincts, religion's control is based on credulity, spiritual poverty, fear, and a deficiency of logical fortitude on the part of followers. It relies on the unconscious fear of the unknown; in this case, death.
Some religions more than others, with the false excuse of raising the value of the human being's spiritual part (about which they do not even have the faintest idea), encourage the faithful to deny their own bodies. Denying their bodies, they interpret some aspects of which negatively by classifying certain natural needs of as sins, causing suffering and creating concepts of sinful desires. In this way, religions create an even more flagellating sense of guilt in their believers and establish psychological prohibitions that cause uncomfortable hardships in life.
The believer becomes a victim of their own religion because of their own body... a true hell!
On the other hand, anyone following their own Anandayana understands well that they are a Mens, a Spirit, and a body, and thus unconditionally accept their own body, taking care of it; attending to its needs, necessities, and desires; enjoying its pleasures and accepting its negative moments, such as illnesses and injuries... simply put, those who follow their own Anandayana love their own body.
Most religions attach human characteristics to the entity they define as "god". Some of these characteristics are far from noble, such as harshness, rage, inflexibility, and so on.
Practically all religions dictate behavioural norms, lifestyles and religious rituals for their believers, who adhere to such precepts to appease their god.
Religions assign god the role of supreme judge over the final destinies of human beings: sooner or later, god will judge the outcome of single individuals' earthly lives... and given that believers are well-informed of god's less noble characteristics, an awe of god, or rather the fear of god's judgement, is consequently created. If god is pleased with the believer's earthly life, it will reward them with a pleasant, eternal post-mortem, which is a future reincarnation into a better life, or a place in paradise in the heavens above, or in an earthly resurrection.
Religions carry both positive and negative consequences for people.
The most significant negative consequence was probably unexpected by the founders of individual religions. Believers, who are indoctrinated into the dogma of an existence after death, live their entire lives following regulations and precepts that they would not have otherwise followed, for fear of god's judgement. The believer then leads a life of restriction, projected into the future, hoping for god's future grace and making choices oriented towards god's satisfaction. In this way, the believer creates their own hell on earth, and spends their whole life without realising that they could have lived their heaven Here&Now.
Religion and society manipulate all of our lives, whether we want them to or not.
Maybe you yourself are not religious, but by living in a religious society, one's lifestyle is to an extent moulded by the religion or religions of the place in which we grow up.
Ever since we were little children, we have been instilled with a sense of wrong and right. Schools, parents, and the mass media give us the false belief that we are in a free world, but this is absolutely not the case. They tell us how to live, how to dress, what to eat, for whom to vote. They also want to give us an image of happiness: career, money, sex, the approval of others; but in reality, they are creating obstacles to possible spiritual development.
The only way to succeed in seeing the control of the socio-religious system is to exit the system for a certain period. With an external perspective, one can see and understand the system of control's entire organisation. By remaining within the system, however, one's analytical capabilities are limited and, with limited analyses, one finds alternative answers which would lose their validity following a comprehensive analysis of the system.
Some people succeed in distinguishing society-religion's control while remaining within the system: in any case, however, their vision is distorted, unclear and fallacious.
In order to gain a clear vision, we must, therefore, exit the system and purify ourselves of all mental structures that have inculcated and indoctrinated us, thus achieving our own freedom of thought: from that moment, we will be able to see the entire, stunning organisation of control.
Once we gain pure freedom of thought, looking at people from outside of the system, it will seem incredible to us to see how some intelligent and cultured people within the system are conditioned by System's Control without even realising that they are being controlled... and then we will realise that we were the same as them. You can shout all you want, you can try alert individuals in any way, then explain the reasons or try to make them open their eyes, but it will all be in vain; they will not listen to you. The only way to see control is to exit the system and liberate oneself from its psycho-cultural structures: these, like other processes of awareness acquisition, are processes that a person must do on their own; no one can ever do it for another person.
Since the dawn of human existence, there have always been those who, in one way or another, have been lost to a completely mistaken goal: obtaining eternal life.
All living beings in Our Virtual Reality have one common feature: there comes a certain moment when they cease to exist.
In Our Virtual Reality, death is an essential part of Planet Earth's (and the universe's) equilibrium, and we can do nothing but accept this. The search for possible eternal life is simply foolish, and as a result leads only to disorientation, disillusionment and a confusion of one's spiritual path.
Eternal life: there are those who have sought it through the sciences and those who pursued it studying ancient esoteric beliefs, but in most cases, people crave it for their entire lives, being led astray by the promises of a religious creed.
The promise of eternal life is probably the most devastatingly damaging aspect of religion, although the majority of people are unaware of it.
Religions rely on ignorance, credulity, fear, and the spiritual misery of people.
In general, religions promise to those who follow certain behavioural rules, certain lifestyles, and certain religious rituals, that when they die, their own Individual Consciousness will be worthy of an eternal post-mortem existence, which may be rebirth in paradise, with or without a body, a passage to an ill-defined spiritual entity in an ill-defined location, or a succession of reincarnations in better lives.
Modern religions generally associate only one spiritual entity with the individual generally known as "soul” or "spirit", not distinguishing between the two terms.
The majority of believers do not stop to dwell on the fact that among religions' various promises, there exists no clause mentioning their own Individual Consciousness.
Religions speak of the dead individual's "soul" (or "spirit") going to heaven, to some kind of limbo, or reincarnating.
If this "soul" (or "spirit") is something that reincarnates or that was in the presence of god, or that will live in post-mortem with others like it, the "soul" (or "spirit") must have a personal consciousness; otherwise, it would be equivalent to a stone.
Followers of religions should dwell on the concept of the "soul"'s (or "spirit"'s) consciousness: is this consciousness of the "soul" (or "spirit") the same as Individual Consciousness or is it a separate consciousness?
It must be emphasised that the eternal post-mortem inculcated by religions is always linked to the believer's Individual Consciousness in order to leverage their weaknesses and fears: religions tell their followers - if you do this and that, you will deserve eternal post-mortem - . It is precisely that you that is the connection to the believer's Individual Consciousness (an ordinary state of consciousness is also implied).
Even when religions speak of "soul" or "spirit", they are certain to draw completely erroneous assumptions: any spiritual entity of which they speak, whether "soul" or "spirit", carries with it the consciousness of the individual, which will live in the post-mortem for eternity... But Spirit, and above all, Soul, have their own consciousnesses distinct from that of the individual.
Let us suppose for a moment that this concept expressed by religions is true; that is, that the eternal post-mortem is of the believer's Individual Consciousness, and in an ordinary state of consciousness. In this case, once one understands that memory is not housed in the brain (chapter on The Brain ⇒) but rather in an Extramental Dimension, there is reason to suppose that the individual would have some memories, some knowledge, an understanding, or at least a perception of the spiritual world, of their own existence before life, and of the "divine" (whatever entity may be for those who believe). The lack of such knowledge or memories could only be justified if one believed that at birth the eternal spiritual component was also created, but this would attribute divine parenting skills to the woman. [32]
Even believers in the classical concept of reincarnation of the soul have an incorrect idea of death. According to such a concept of reincarnation, the soul passes from one individual's body to the body of another individual with another independent Individual Consciousness, so that the reincarnating soul does not carry with it the Individual Consciousness of the deceased person. Believers in the classical concept of reincarnation should reflect on why one should suffer their whole life for a later life that has nothing to do with the previous one: in fact, if Individual Consciousness ends with death and a new Individual Consciousness begins after reincarnation, the two individual consciousnesses have nothing in common; if the two individual consciousnesses do have something in common, the Individual Consciousness of the most recent individual should have clear memories or knowledge of his previous life and possess a similar character profile. [33]
If believers in the eternal post-mortem are convinced that the eternal spiritual part has its own separate consciousness, distinct from Individual Consciousness, and with which one has never anything to do, why suffering all life to make the eternal spiritual part gaining eternity?
As altruistic as a person could be, could he ever renounce for the rest of his life all of life's pleasures, a chance to be fully happy, and to have all kinds of experiences, purely to please an unknown person on the other side of the world whose Individual Consciousness will never have anything to do with his Individual Consciousness? Surely not, so why do it for a spiritual part that would have a distinct consciousness from his own?
If believers of whatever faith reflected appropriately, they would conclude that whatever happens, their Individual Consciousness ends with death.
The most ruinous consequence of religion is its control of believers with the hope of the post-mortem, leading them to restriction and suffering in their current life and, above all, distracting them from the fundamental point for living peacefully and fully: the philosophy of the Here&Now.
This topic is taken up in the Here&Now chapter ⇒, highlighting the fact that believers project their hopes and efforts into the future, ignoring the concept of the Here&Now and thus letting the serenity of the present slip by.
Anyone pursuing the ideal of eternal life requires an immediate awakening of their Individual Consciousness so that they can take control of their own life and begin to live it properly.
Seeking to live your life to the fullest, taking advantage of every moment to be happy, Here&Now: that is the easiest way to begin to accept that one day you will cease to exist.