Did you ever wonder whether life has a purpose?
What about your own life? Also, do you think that your belief system influences your ideas about purpose? If so, how?
Ponder a while about these questions and write your answers down below on a printout of this page, or in a notebook.
My purpose (or larger goal) in life is:
My beliefs influence my view on life as follows:
The reason I ask these questions is to start you on a journey of investigating your perception of life, your belief system. What did your parents, school, church, friends, and others, tell or taught you about the world we live in?
What was an implicit or hidden message that you got from them?
What did they teach you about religion, spirituality, death, love, work?
Write your answers down below.
My parents, school, church, friends, media told me about religion/spirituality: About life and death they told me this:
About love:
We will now dive into the world of consciousness and perception, with its many aspects, and start developing a view of things based on the ancient wisdom traditions.1 True wisdom never ages. It also incorporates new insights when circumstances change. So, universal principles never change, but the application of insights is adapted to specific situations as these invoke the necessary intuitions.
Intuition is the capacity to grasp a situation as a whole, in all its aspects. The intellect then can work out plans of action to be dynamically adapted when necessary.
The first thing to do now is to investigate belief systems.
Belief systems: the heritage of humankind
Philosophically speaking, one can divide belief systems in two great categories: materialistic versus spiritual belief systems, or views on life.
The materialistic view entails the belief that matter is all there is. Consciousness is seen as a by-product of matter, the mysterious something that is produced by the neural networks in one's brain. There is no good explanation of phenomena such as telepathy, clairvoyance, near-death-experience, out-of-body experiences, encounters with angels, origin of life, meaning of life, deep spiritual or mystic experiences, and so on. In fact, such view has little to offer to humanity but shallow pleasure, addictions, greed, ecocide, promises of a techno-paradise. Yet many people live in despair. One may wonder why so many people hold this view.
One might counter-argue that technology has brought us, at least in 1 The wisdom tradition is also known as the perennial wisdom and includes the best of the esoteric and mystic writings of several schools of philosophy (AdvaitaVedanta, Buddhism, Neoplatonism, Sufism, Kabbalah, Christian mysticism, theosophy, to name a few.
(post)industrial countries some affluence. True, but at what cost!
The combination of a wrong monetary system, based on eternal economic growth, with a neglect of ecological considerations, has brought the destruction of life on earth ever closer to us.
The spiritual view on life entails the belief that consciousness is primary to manifestation. It builds the vehicles it needs for its manifestation out of primordial elements. The human personality consists of just such vehicles, which are coupled with consciousness. This is a well-known vision in many religions. Some religions state it more clearly than others, like Advaita Vedanta. It should be noted that consciousness itself has a substantive side. The whole universe is a manifestation of One Life that penetrates all, a bit like an ocean that contains countless water droplets. It has a substantial side as well as a consciousness aspect.
More information about the spiritual view can be found in my e-book “Mysteries of the human mind”. In the following chapters I elaborate the spiritual view as well.
A short note on postmodernism
The postmodern philosophy has some good points, in my opinion. It analyzes things in its context and tries to deconstruct language, among other things.
It stresses the relativity of opinions. So far, so good. It is clear to see, however, that extreme postmodern views negate or contradict themselves. If all is but an opinion, than such postmodern views are just opinions themselves. Such a view negates itself. It is a hollow thing, meaningless.
Above opinion stands an informed opinion, based on facts and reasoning, and above an informed opinion stands direct knowledge of an object. The latter knowledge is known as pure intuition, which is a clear registration of the essence (vibration) of a person or object of perception. The philosopher Plato writes about that in his work “The Republic” , the so-called divided line. We will investigate these matters further in the next chapter.
One sees what one believes to be true
The parable of the snake and the rope
In the Indian Upanishads there is a nice story about a boy who walks in his village
at dusk and suddenly sees a snake. He starts shouting: snake! Snake!
After a while he looks closer and realizes that it is a coiled piece of rope where he nearly trampled on.
This is a perfect example of how our perceptions are colored and influenced by our beliefs about ourselves and the world. If one believes that others can't be trusted, one will see deceit everywhere. It is a self-fulfilling thing. One projects one's opinions and beliefs on situations one encounters. Perception and beliefs act like a filter on one's consciousness, blocking a lot of valuable information from our awareness.
So, examine your beliefs carefully. Where did your get your ideas about society, education, work, relationships? From the media? From your parents or friends?
From experience?
Clear perception is not easy to attain. It requires a cleansing of the mind.
More about that that in chapter two where some techniques and methods are given to set the mind on a path of clear perception and thinking.
Values guide us in our thoughts and beliefs
It will not come as a great surprise that values exercise a great influence on our life.
After all, values play a role as diverse as to the importance of success, having good relationships, making money, looking attractive to the other sex, but also in ethical issues and moral decisions and developing virtues. One attaches value to things, persons, achievements. We give meaning to our sense-impressions, filtered through our belief system.
Which are your values? A short questionnaire
A quick way to discover your values is to ask yourself the following questions: what do I want or expect from a life partner? What do I like to do most of my time (paid or unpaid)? What kind of work would I like to do best? How do I spend my money? What kind of hobbies do I have? Do I like to work with people? Do I like to do research? Work in nature? Care for children? Repair cars? Why? Try to get an overview of your most important values. Make a note on the next page. It may pay off to revisit your notes some years later to see whether you have shifted your values in some respect.
Lately, I have been listening to the audiobook “Psychocybernetics” by Maxwell Maltz. It is published by Pinguin random House audio. I found it on audiobooks.com. Matt Furey, president of the psychocybernetics foundation gives a commentary in the audio.
I was pleasantly surprised to recognize many points of agreement with my own writings, which give a spiritual form of psychocybernetics. Some highlights, from the first half hour of the audiobook, paraphrased, are the following: 1. Work with visualization and mental imagery
2. The self-image and success
3. The theater of the mind
4. The goal-directed feature of the brain-mind
The self-image is defined in the (audio)book as “the individual's mental and spiritual concept or picture of himself”. It is “the real key to human personality and behavior”. See chapter one . Maltz/Furey state that “a mental blueprint in subconscious mind controls our future”.
If one gets stuck in the past and only remembers one's failures, then this is a sign of a poor self-image. The advice is “to relive your best memories, picture what you want and feel you can have it and do have it”. Do this on a daily basis.
Of course, you also have to set goals for yourself. In positive psychology (Seligman) and NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) there are helpful exercises as well to get on a positive track.
In the theater of the mind “remember, relive your best memories, victories, successes, happiest times”. Then comes an especially interesting point:
“imagine and feel achieving a goal in the future, but experiencing it now, almost like a memory of an accomplished goal”. That corresponds with an exercise I mention in my article on Roberto Assagioli, that is included in chapter six.
“You can be happy before you reach your goals”.
My comment: when you see life as a process, you can enjoy the moment and focus on the here and now.
The brain-mind is goal-directed. It is teleological. This is not mystical at all.
Cybernetics (science of steering and feedback) grew out of the (programmed) goal-
directed behavior of mechanical systems in and shortly after world war Two. Anti-aircraft missiles needed to be more effective in downing airplanes. So, feedback control was implemented in the machines.
Purposeful behavior of machines was studied and optimized.
The idea of teleology, or goal-directedness, was banned from science in the nineteenth century. It is still controversial, I believe, but will be the accepted wisdom of future times. Scientists are just humans, most of the time limited by a very narrow education and suffering from a tunnel vision. History shows this all the time. The greatest minds of science always realized this. No-one has ever been able to explain how exactly a person is able to pick up a pen from a table. How does a thought of the pen in your hand materializes in the action to accomplish this fact?
Nobody knows exactly. We must be humble in this regard!
Back to the audio: “self-image is the key to human personality and human behavior”. “Change the self-image and change the personality and the behavior”.
The self-image “is changed for better or worse, not by intellect alone or by intellectual knowledge alone, but by experiencing”.
“Our present state of self-confidence and poise is the result of our experiences”.
Indeed, and the exercises given here and in chapter two can help one to organize one's life and orientate it in a more positive direction.
“Use creative experiencing to create a better self-image”.
This is further explained in chapter two, where a visualization technique is given to transform negative thoughts.
Successes help build our self-confidence and from failures we can learn a lot.
So, be flexible and have an open mind. Self-acceptance is stimulated by the recognition that we form an integral part of the universe. Much more about that in the next chapter and appendix A, where the capabilities of the human being are discussed in light of the experience and knowledge of the great sages of all time.
Lastly:
Remember your successes, however small or great, and let these inspire you to go
on with the challenges you face in your daily life.
Chapter two: an analysis of the thinking process2
What are thoughts? A new perspective
Did you ever wonder where your mind came from? How did it come about that humans can construct elaborate mathematical systems, anticipate future events and plan accordingly? What are thoughts? Are you the originator of thoughts or are you a passive receiver of thoughts originating from others? What about telepathy? We will consider the process of thinking in some detail in the next sections. Take some notes of what follows and try to connect the ideas with situations you encounter in your daily life. Where not mentioned otherwise, quotes are from my book
“Mysteries of the human mind”, that is freely available on the archive.org or academia.edu.
Character of thoughts
Scientists have no idea what a thought actually is. They seem to assume that the network of neurons in one's brain somehow produces thoughts, but have no idea how that works, let alone how abstract thinking comes about.
Thoughts come in a wide variety and are of different quality. For example, one aspect of thought is desire. There is lust, and gross passion, but there can also be lofty aspirations.
People can be obsessed and even possessed by thoughts. A thought can grow so strong that one can't resist it.
Let's have a look at the characteristics of living beings. What is required for something to be called alive?
Criteria differ among biologists, but we can use the following ones: 1.
Living beings are subject to the processes of birth and death.
2.
Living beings require food of some kind.
2 Much thank for this chapter goes to D.J.P. Kok, a former leader of the Dutch branch of the Point Loma theosophical society
Living beings have a character of their own.
4.
Living beings can procreate in some way.
5.
Living beings do have some consciousness of their own.
Analysis of thought will learn, that thoughts conform to all of these points: 1.
Regarding history, one often talks about the 'birth of an idea' in a certain era.
Many examples can be given. Not only such dramatic events as the French Revolution but many other gradually unfolding episodes like the Renaissance, the industrial revolution, the computer era, the information superhighway, etc., can be seen in this way. After the birth of an idea, it will grow, evolve to some extent and finally die, to be replaced by another idea (thought).
2.
We all know that we often have some desires, maybe to buy something or so.
If we fulfill this desire, the associated thought often quickly dies. If we can't fulfill it, one of two things can happen: we either forget about it or this desire becomes really strong, up to the point that we have to fulfill this desire. We almost drive ourselves crazy until we have got this wish fulfilled. We are constantly feeding this thought with our desire-energy (the fourth aspect of thinking, see further on), making this thought really strong and big. Many examples can be found of this process, showing that we can loose control of ourselves and get entangled in some acts resulting in a really messy situation. Oh, how do we desire that we never had done these things..Thoughts take form and last longer corresponding to the degree to which they are sustained. They will die sooner when we spend little attention to them.
3.
Thoughts having a character of their own can be understood as follows (my paraphrase of Kok’s line of thought): when we recall the fact that we are sometimes confronted with strange or incomprehensible thoughts, which we soon forget, then we can understand this to be due to the deviant character of these thoughts from our own character. These thoughts simply cannot find a proper soil in us to root and sprout.
Inversely, a thought or idea will strike a note in our consciousness much easier if the character of this idea conforms to the character of our personality.
Racist ideas will easier resonate in one's mind if one has an element of or a tendency towards racism already in oneself. Art will be more appreciated if we
have a sense of beauty or harmony developed in ourselves.
4.
The procreation of thought might seem a little odd at first sight. Yet, we all know about this. If a teacher tells us about something, and we 'buy' it, then these thoughts find a fertile soil in our minds, enabling them to grow, flower and come to fruition. On our turn we can transfer these ideas to others ('sow these thought-seeds'), where they can find a new life. Nowadays, we hear about 'memes', but I take this one step further saying that thoughts are more than just information floating in the air.
5.
A thought has its own consciousness. We all know, that we can be quite
'obsessed' by thoughts sometimes. We have great difficulty to break out of some strong thought-influence. The thought has grown to gigantic proportions, blocking other thoughts out of our consciousness. How to deal with such a situation? We must concentrate with all our efforts on other thoughts; especially we must get into action, to break out of this iron hold. A constructive approach is given in the next section.
A positive example of this own consciousness is when we are caught by some grand, inspirational thought, leading us into unselfish acts we normally would not do.
Kok draws the conclusion that " thoughts are living beings."
"Besides having a vibratory aspect they have life in themselves. "3
Then follows Kok’s argument that the stream of thoughts that pass through our minds consists of hosts of living beings. He adds that our faculty of thinking is so to speak the capability of perceiving thought-forms or images. We will soon see that we do not have to passively undergo the influences of these beings.
Kok continues: "The concept of the stream of thoughts as a host of living beings provides an important key to changing our lives! By applying this knowledge (see also subsequent sections) we can open new vistas of perception and experience. Of course, we have to experience the correctness of this point of view in our own thinking, before we can apply this key."
The following part up to the elaboration is a loose paraphrase and translation of a non-public document from D.J.P. Kok I have in my possession.
3 Nowadays, the philosophy of panpsychism is gaining ground among philosophers, because scientists cannot explain consciousness at all. Panpsychism actually was universal among ancient and modern people as well. It was put aside after Descartes fancied his dualistic scheme and materialistic philosophy took over.
In order to investigate the nature of thoughts as living beings, it is advised to see oneself more as a witness of thoughts than as a creator of thoughts. Think of yourself as part of the One Life that is the essence of all beings. That will make it easier to get into the state of witnessing thoughts.
The process of thinking
Here, I repeat, with minor alterations, a part of what I wrote in my first book
“Mysteries of the human mind”.
The wisdom-tradition “makes a division between conscious thinking and unconscious thinking.”
“Unconscious thinking is what we all do too often. We uncritically accept the dogma's of science, commercial slogans, technological innovations, political propaganda, etc. It's quite easy for strong personalities to force idea's into the minds of people, as long as these last ones don't know anything about the effects of thoughts on themselves and the situation in the world. Yet, we should know better.
We all know how war propaganda can drive people crazy. Propaganda, slogans, advertisements and the like, can easily influence people when they are not conscious of the effects of these messages.”
“This ignorance about the process of thinking and the effects of thoughts on others and selves has brought many disasters to mankind. We are in the illusion that we think consciously, that we control our thoughts, while the facts point in another direction. Fact is that we are drifting on the waves of thoughts projected and amplified by strong personalities who have clear reasons to do so (for personal gain, political power, commercial reasons, etc.). Mind, that this is all cleverly done.
We are made to believe to have so many rights (what about our duties?), are made to believe that we need this or that latest object of technology (do we need it really?), made to belief almost anything. It's a scary situation.”
“How can we break out of this passive kind of thinking? By conscious or clear thinking.”
Conscious thinking: observing the stream of thoughts
“The recognition of thoughts as living beings is an important step towards conscious thinking, because it leaves no room for doubt respecting the responsibility one has for one's thoughts. Thoughts are simple, elemental beings that follow slavishly the impulse that is given to them. They mostly express their own consciousness when the process of thinking gets out of control.
Many psychological disturbances could possibly be prevented if these facts were known and the knowledge of these things would be correctly applied.”
“In order to illustrate the process of thinking, one can think of the technique of transmitting radio or television waves. A receiver can pick up certain frequencies and by attuning to one of the channels messages are made visible and can be understood. Likewise, a person picks up thought-waves that lie within his bandwidth of thought frequencies. In the case of the human thinking faculty it is clear that this can function both as a transmitter and receiver of thoughts.”
“When we look at a child, we can observe that it has its own character already at birth. Gradually it starts expressing its character during the first years of its life.
This character forms so to speak the bandwidth within which thoughts can be received or perceived.
Nurture, education, and all kind of other factors influence the child and limit this bandwidth further by offering a narrow perspective on life. Not that the child doesn't resist tradition and prejudice, for example in puberty, but the environment's influences are usually too strong to resist. And so another 'decent' citizen is born, neatly adapted to the utilitarian way of life.”
Note: today that education will not do any longer since a transition to a healthy, harmonious way of life has become a bare necessity for humanity's survival.
“This explains why new, refreshing ideas have so much trouble to enter into the human mind. Our minds are just too crystallized in traditional concepts and notions of life. The receiving brain-mind can only pick up thoughts of certain frequencies and re-transmit them. This fact is unconsciously or even consciously misused for commercial and political ends.”
“How to change all this? First of all, the process of change should begin with the individual himself, because he must realize in which mental situation or state he is
in. Then only he can decide to change his or her way of thinking. He or she can tune in to other frequencies of thought, that is, the higher aspects of thinking (see seven aspects of thinking below), finer qualities of thought. Where I write 'he' you can substitute 'she', of course.”
A simple technique to neutralize negative thoughts
“Now, we won't book any success if we try to combat our character-faults.”
“Why not? This is because by combat we feed our thoughts, which are living beings. So they will grow stronger instead of starve to death. Instead of combat, we should forget about the unwanted thoughts, let them die. For this we need recognition of these thoughts and give them a positive impulse by simply thinking an opposite, positive thought. By thinking and acting according to this positive thought we outweigh, outbalance, the effects of the negative thought. By persisting in this practice we can change the quality of thoughts and also make our thinking faculty function on other frequencies, more altruistic, spiritual, positive, etc. After some practice we will even no longer receive these negative thoughts (we may notice or observe them but do not allow them to upset us). I’m addressing myself to reasonably healthy people here. Others may need psychotherapy to effect an integration and positive orientation towards life.”
The seven aspects of thinking
The wisdom-tradition enumerates seven aspects of thinking, as follows: physical, emotional, vital, desire, intellect, intuition, inspiration.
In my first book (see above), I have described these aspects in some detail.
Here, I will summarize some of that material. Quotes are from my book as mentioned above.
The physical aspect of thinking is concerned with bodily care and necessities.
This is obviously necessary to some degree. Too much attention to body detracts from other aspects, as will be clear.
The emotional aspect of thinking refers to the sense-impressions on the mind, and the reaction one gives to one's perception. Too much of this can degenerate into
sentimentalism. It might be a good idea to read some of the writings of followers of the Stoa (Stoicism), like Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. Nowadays, the ideas of the Stoa gain some traction to help people get some peace of mind. I will get back to Marcus Aurelius further on.
The vital aspect of thinking refers to activity of mind in concrete action. For an example of excess expression of vitality, think of managers that want to plan and deal with about everything in business. Otherwise, it is a good thing to follow up on one's plans.
The desire aspect of thinking is often misunderstood. Desire is a neutral force, like electricity that flows through a wire. It can be used for good and for bad.
In my first book, I wrote:
'Understanding the motive for our actions is of fundamental importance in the process of acquiring self-knowledge. This motive can be selfish or selfless. Rather than talking about 'good' or 'bad', which are relative terms, different in each culture and historical period, we can better use the terms "selfish" or "selfless" as a criterion for judging our own acts and thoughts. We can deceive ourselves, however, by subtle motives, for example, ambition that may be altruistic, or, on the other hand may involve quite a bit of egoism, pride, etc.
It takes a lot of sincerity to see our motives clearly for what they are. According to the degree of developed discernment or understanding we will recognize these subtle motives.
Are we slaves of our passions or do we control our mind's activities? This important subject is part of the discussion Krishna has with Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita.
Example of higher form: Lofty aspirations . Example of lower form: Gross passions.'
The intellectual aspect of thinking “ is only one aspect of thinking, and not the highest. Intellect works mostly with isolating problems out of their context. It gives fragmented, partial, knowledge. It has a limited ability to get to the core or essence of things, unless coupled with real understanding. It often leads to fighting against symptoms, solving nothing.
Higher form: use of intellect to work out practical solutions in the context of really
understanding what the core of a problem is or what a situation is really about.
Lower form: blindly relying on models in science or wherever, without the necessary understanding of their inherent limits and shortcomings.”
The intuitive aspect of thinking refers not to pure intellectuality, but to a deep understanding of things, people, situations. One can grasp a situation in a flash of insight and see a solution to the problem at hand.
“We see this with the 'mental eye', so to speak. It can take considerable time after this flash of insight occurred to us to work this out in a systematic fashion by use of one's intellectual aspect.”
“Understanding is involved with grasping the relationship between parts and the whole. One sees the relationship between science, spirituality and philosophy. One appreciates the fact that one cannot really separate the individual from the collective, etc. One recognizes the builtin harmony and order in man, nature, and, in the cosmos in general.”
This aspect of thinking can be called the enlightenment aspect.
“If one