Pure Brutality

[Angrboda]

Spirituality is a form of self-help. With equally dubious premises and results.

[The Grand Nudger]

That's where I feel like I so often get off the bus with people who want to discuss the subject. If the contents of spirituality boil down to the contents of new age self help then there's probably no better use case for the theory of religious economy. The truth-maker in the religious market is not the veracity of the claim, or ancient wisdom transmitted impartially and inaccurately, or transformative change, none of that. It's demography and retail/service value.

In the religious economy, you can see that and how, for example, a single publisher can circumscribe and define what "spirituality" means for it's target market. LLewellyn did as much for nature focused seekers. It started in 1901 with astrology as it's main source of revenue and branched out from there - defining "new age" itself. In the 60's and 70's dion fortune and aleister crowley are what sold books. By the late 80's they'd settled on wicca and had the tremendous fortune of having made that business decision during the development of the nones. A group of people who are more nature focused and describe themselves spiritual but not religious.

At first glance of the contents of these books you'd think the authors and publishers can make up whatever they want - but this isn't so. Continuity is currency, and llewellyn as a century old publisher trades in it. And so, the contents of an enlightened mind today in turkey from reading deepak chopra will be formed by what sold books to females between 16 and 45, depending on the sub genre and decade. All of it a giant constellation of fuck you to the end consumer. Who doesn't realize that the value is based on being cheaper than college tuition, a trip to the doctors office, or a tongue bathing session with a sex worker.

Rinse and repeat with churches and mosques and temples of all sorts. They have always been providers. They will tell you whatever you want to hear because this enables their very existence. The notion of successive revelation is itself an evolving sales pitch seeking out the level of their respective economies. A list of disclaimers and asterisks for past failures of products as a person is contemplating some future purchase.

[Leonardo17]

According to Aristotle, the soul is the form of the body.

According to Aristotle, the Earth is the center of the universe.

Perhaps ai isn't faking anything Leo?  You declined to speculate on which of a set of quotes was legit deepak and which were from the deepak generator.  

Your idea of what a soul is boils down to fairy tales and bedtime stories.  There's no point beating around that bush.  If knowing what soul is defines a person as spiritual, there's a distinct possibility that would suggest that you and the rest of the new agers are as far from spiritual as could be possible.  Not only do you not know what soul is, you reject what it is in favor of a range of wild eyed fantasies for any number of dubious reasons.

As I said. Understanding “The Soul” makes you a mystic of a true spiritual master. That’s what spiritual growth means. We are growing from a largely ego-based personal identification toward a more universal one (and that’s the meaning of Aham Brahmasmi / “I am the Universe” declaration). And that’s something that we experience directly. So we have our reasons to believe in it on some individual level.
 
On AI:
 
Here is an AI abomination I just found on the Internet:
 
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/11-i...02101.html
 
I’ve studied these paintings in my Art History classes. So I can tell you directly. AI doesn’t get it right. It misses the context, the hidden meanings and the beauty of those paintings to the human eye. If you click on the link you will see modern interpretations of classical painting by the AI software and you will see how grotesque they are.
 
On the other hand AI is still good at generating let’s say advertising images and other types of arts like fantastic pictures etc. My YouTube is full of 1950’s style interpretations of well-known movies. Here is an example:




 
 
So AI is rather good at these things. I believe we will have AI generated professors at some point. But it still seems to skip on the “Soul” thing.
 
In fact “Soul” means consciousness. That’s the true nature of it. The weird thing is that animals and even flowers are said to have it. But I’m going to stop here before the conversation gets really spiritual.

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Ahriman:
 
- Not so much no. Think of all the money you spend on so many things. If you happen to be interested, Yoga classes don’t cost that much. Books are very cheap and accessible in our time. And adopted a regular schedule of meditation or other practices is completely free of charge
            
                                         

This also means that it’s not normal if you spend a lot. There are many fake Guru’s on the market too (especially in third world countries). The main thing is: You don’t need any of it. Hippies in the 60’s had Guru’s in Nepal etc. because the whole thing was very new at the time. I’m my own Guru (since many years now) SO that’s how I see it

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GrandNudger:

 

- Sadhguru himself says that “There are all sorts of Guru’s”. You really may end up spending a lot of time and resources on things that are not so beneficial. So that’s why I understand why some Christians in the US use the term “New Age” as a largely negative and useless phenomenon.

 

The main thing here is that “There is no rush”. But still, we live in a time in which many different types of resources are available to us. So interested people can and are taking advantage of it. Like: I can listen to newly published spiritual books while exercising and I can do it with a very affordable price. This didn’t even exist some 20 years ago.  

 
But still: If this is not your poison then it not. End of story

[Angrboda]

So AI is rather good at these things. I believe we will have AI generated professors at some point. But it still seems to skip on the “Soul” thing.
 
In fact “Soul” means consciousness. That’s the true nature of it. The weird thing is that animals and even flowers are said to have it. But I’m going to stop here before the conversation gets really spiritual.

If soul and spirit mean consciousness, then spirituality is the province of psychology and neuroscience, not religion. Like a lot of reformists, you're equivocating upon the meaning of terms, implying the older meaning while explicitly referencing the modern equivalence. This is retconning to avoid having to face the fact that your religion and spirituality have nothing of substance to say about the things they claim to have something to offer regarding.

[The Grand Nudger]

New age is how the genre self defined, not a derogatory term applied by christians. It existed here twenty years ago (and more, obvs) - but it's fallen out of favor at the moment, leading authors and publishers familiar to us usians to look for other markets (like yours). You've hit the nail on the head, though. New age stuff is more affordable than it's competition - which tends to be education, health, and personal affirmation.

As I described at some length before - when people talk "spirituality" I want to talk about why we think the human spirit can overcome things, more so the worse the odds or situation. Whether there's a cultural spirit, or a national spirit, or the spirit of an age. About consciousness and control, awareness and interaction. Not deepaks treadmill audiobook club.

[Leonardo17]

So AI is rather good at these things. I believe we will have AI generated professors at some point. But it still seems to skip on the “Soul” thing.
 
In fact “Soul” means consciousness. That’s the true nature of it. The weird thing is that animals and even flowers are said to have it. But I’m going to stop here before the conversation gets really spiritual.

If soul and spirit mean consciousness, then spirituality is the province of psychology and neuroscience, not religion.  Like a lot of reformists, you're equivocating upon the meaning of terms, implying the older meaning while explicitly referencing the modern equivalence.  This is retconning to avoid having to face the fact that your religion and spirituality have nothing of substance to say about the things they claim to have something to offer regarding.

   I think will agree with that too. Marianne Williamson says that True spirituality is actually the same thing as true psychotherapy. Besides, one of the reason we are promoting spiritual practices like regular meditation is that there is some amount of scientific research on the subject. We know that meditation activates our frontal lobes, the region of the brain that is responsible for impulse control, rational thinking and creativity.
 
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2...-patients/
 
https://stanfordmag.org/contents/what-ha...u-meditate
 
And I’m not a reformist. I believe that ordinary theists are the reformists because, during all those centuries, they are the ones who gradually shifted from the original teachings of all religions and managed to creates some mostly ego based nonsense that has very limited benefits in spiritual terms.
 
Grand Nudger:
 
- I believe that the way of seeing thing as I do existed long before the 1960’s and 1970’s. As you said the 90’s style New-Age thought is mostly over. But that’s not because it’s over. It’s mostly happening because there are increasingly better books on the market. So although some older books are not completely outdated, we simply have much better stuff now than some UFO theory based, fantastical, wishful thinking books of the late 20th century.
 
On Spirituality:

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I do understand the anti-theism movement more then you can imagine. I’m currently seing this 2014 German Movie called “Stations of the Cross” (Ger: Kreuzweg).

 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3465916/
 
It’s only available in in Amazon Prime (in the US) and on Apple TV if you have it. But it should be available illegally if you are good at these things

Anyway, as we see in this 2014 movie, religion can and is being used as some sort of dogmatic ideology that does a lot of harm (especially on younger generations) and is leading us to assumptions that cannot be further from truth. So that’s something we all know of.
 
The other fact is that, throughout history there has always been some smaller groups of people who understood all of this stuff more differently and step in to the realm of what I call “true spirituality”.
 
So that’s what I mean by “spirit”. It’s a deeper subject. It’s actually what separates people like me from the “religious” approach that is so well portrayed in the movie I just shared. And if you ask me the reason, yogis will tell you that Dwapara Yug (the second age of mankind) has just begun one of two centuries ago. The previous age (which lasted some 2400 years) is a spiritual dark age. Dark age people do not understand some energy-based realities. All they know is firm dogmatic beliefs, robotic / automated religious rituals and fear based thoughts that are supposed to keep them in line.
 
   The new approach that actually started at some level in the middle ages in Islam and in the renaissance era in Christianity is actually a new paradigm. We don’t need to fear God for instance. We believe in greater autonomy and in making the better choices all by ourselves (this and many other things).

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   So this “Old approach” is rightfully hated by atheists and other anti-theist simply because it doesn’t really have a place in our time. The newer approach is simply an interpretation of the same teaching in a more rational and more self-respecting way.
 
   And although it hasn’t yet happened in many places, I think we will all get there at some point.

[The Grand Nudger]

There is no such thing and has never been any such thing as the original teaching of all religions. This is pure revisionism and a particularly ridiculous example of cultural appropriation. Likewise, you do not have better stuff, you have the new stuff, which trades on the supposed credibility of the old stuff. Try a little thought experiment for me, a meditation..if you will. Imagine a world where your current viewpoint on the content of x is absolutely correct...and not in any way concordant or actually connected with old ideas about x. Would it seem less true to you? Would it be diminished in any way? Can these ideas stand on their own, on their own merits, in your own mind? Does the belief you currently hold require the mountain sized ego and absurd premises necessary to come to the conclusion that everyone, all along, has been trying to say whatever you're saying? Should we take big mo and magic book to be authorities on real islam™...or is that you?

Antitheism and antireligiousity are not synonyms. That's your own god beliefs getting in your way. You don't intuitively register religion absent a theistic god. An antitheist will tell you that religion and ideology isn't the problem. These things are useful and inescapable. Theistic religion isn't dogshit because it's religious or ideological, but because it's theistic. As such, theistic religion could stumble into or cynically employ any insights or truth statements it likes and this will not, and cannot, improve the quality of theistic religion - as the end goal is fundamentally valueless. Those truths or insights are discardable, and will be discarded by theists themselves, existing as mere props for other batshit assertions which form the organizing principle of all theistic belief. There is no rational or self respecting way to get to where you are, and throwing other theists under the bus in the company of atheists while proclaiming ownership of their religious articles is unlikely to get you the outcome you desire.

Let them be wrong, and, bringing it all back together, understand that you're going to have to do the work for your own religion yourself, without their borrowed ladders. I understand that this is a hard habit to break coming from abrahamic theism...but it's not like you think those silly fucks got things right, amiright? Wiccans were in a similar position by the 90's. They had imagined a revisionist history for themselves and couched the neopagan movement as a return to tradition while being in deep disagreement with the historical reality of pagan religions. What contemporary pagans organized around, due to the unsuitability of the belief systems they aped, was exactly what you've decided on today. The contents of the self help and new age aisles. Magical thinking and nonsense about "energy" - but not..you know, energy energy...ghost energy. Neopaganism was the fastest growing religion in the us for a time and ended up having a profound effect on mainstream theistic religion....but you'd be hard pressed to find them today...because once they'd removed disingenuos appeals to ancient wisdom and the market pressure of deepak chopraisms there wasn't much to it beyond humanism and environmentalism. No gods or ghosts required. Nothing to organize around that didn't have better purchase in society and less baggage as it's own cause. In the real world, this is probably best exemplified by witchvox shuttering and no replacement or attempts at a replacement ever popping up. Don't get me wrong, there are still pagans. Deeply committed pagans who do want to use their beliefs as a way to pierce the veil on truths of the type I assume you also want to comment on. Then there are people who "used to be into crystals and healing energy and stuff". Which path do you think you're on? Which path do you want to be on?

[Leonardo17]

There is no such thing and has never been any such thing as the original teaching of all religions.  This is pure revisionism and a particularly ridiculous example of cultural appropriation.   Likewise, you do not have better stuff, you have the new stuff, which trades on the supposed credibility of the old stuff.  Try a little thought experiment for me, a meditation..if you will.  Imagine a world where your current viewpoint on the content of x is absolutely correct...and not in any way concordant or actually connected with old ideas about x.  Would it seem less true to you?  Would it be diminished in any way?   Can these ideas stand on their own, on their own merits, in your own mind?  Does the belief you currently hold require the mountain sized ego and absurd premises necessary to come to the conclusion that everyone, all along, has been trying to say whatever you're saying?  Should we take big mo and magic book to be authorities on real islam™...or is that you?

Antitheism and antireligiousity are not synonyms.  That's your own god beliefs getting in your way.  You don't intuitively register religion absent a theistic god.  An antitheist will tell you that religion and ideology isn't the problem.  These things are useful and inescapable.  Theistic religion isn't dogshit because it's religious or ideological, but because it's theistic.  As such, theistic religion could stumble into or cynically employ any insights or truth statements it likes and this will not, and cannot, improve the quality of theistic religion - as the end goal is fundamentally valueless.  Those truths or insights are discardable, and will be discarded by theists themselves, existing as mere props for other batshit assertions which form the organizing principle of all theistic belief.  There is no rational or self respecting way to get to where you are, and throwing other theists under the bus in the company of atheists while proclaiming ownership of their religious articles is unlikely to get you the outcome you desire.

Let them be wrong, and, bringing it all back together, understand that you're going to have to do the work for your own religion yourself, without their borrowed ladders.  I understand that this is a hard habit to break coming from abrahamic theism...but it's not like you think those silly fucks got things right, amiright?  Wiccans were in a similar position by the 90's.  They had imagined a revisionist history for themselves and couched the neopagan movement as a return to tradition while being in deep disagreement with the historical reality of pagan religions.  What contemporary pagans organized around, due to the unsuitability of the belief systems they aped, was exactly what you've decided on today.  The contents of the self help and new age aisles.  Magical thinking and nonsense about "energy" - but not..you know, energy energy...ghost energy.  Neopaganism was the fastest growing religion in the us for a time and ended up having a profound effect on mainstream theistic religion....but you'd be hard pressed to find them today...because once they'd removed disingenuos appeals to ancient wisdom and the market pressure of deepak chopraisms there wasn't much to it beyond humanism and environmentalism.  No gods or ghosts required.  Nothing to organize around that didn't have better purchase in society and less baggage as it's own cause.  In the real world, this is probably best exemplified by witchvox shuttering and no replacement or attempts at a replacement ever popping up.  Don't get me wrong, there are still pagans.  Deeply committed pagans who do want to use their beliefs as a way to pierce the veil on truths of the type I assume you also want to comment on.  Then there are people who "used to be into crystals and healing energy and stuff".  Which path do you think you're on?  Which path do you want to be on?

1) I’ve just had that very same discussion with Aldous Huexley. The book is called “The Devils of Loudin”. In the first 3 chapters of his book he is doing all that discussions about Middle Ages Christian religious doctrines, the similarities with other religions like Hinduism, the true nature of God, the true nature of the human soul, the methods to follow to reach Higher realities. And all of this is simply boring. I don’t like theology. I like modern and practical guidelines to explore inner realities. The only reason why I believe in “Original messages” is that I am observing parallel thoughts in seemingly different spiritual doctrines and that these “original approaches” usually work when you are able to understand and use them correctly.
 
2) We have been debating this since ages now. I will give you an example from my own life. When I was a kid there was this book called “Le Bled”. It was a tick white grammar and orthography book that was the main primary education material in the 1970’s. In my time it was used as a book of torture, to punish lazy primary students. The book had no picture in it and was written in small characters.
 
I on the other had had booklets called “Passeport” in the holydays. It was a revision book that included easy and fun mathematics and grammar and even history exercises that was so fun that I rejoiced when I was offered one of them by an adult. Also in my later years as a high school student etc. all studying materials had beautiful pictures in it, were written in short and easy to understand language. The general education spirit was one of friendship, debate and learning with joy kind of experience.
 
That’s very different from what people had in the 1950’s or still have for instance in the Turkish education system. The old view states that young people are to learn things through fear of punishment and sometimes even corporal punishment. That’s how the “Jesuite” schools in Europe still operate. The kids are still living in military discipline and they cannot fail. If they fail at something, they are beaten.
 
We as 21st century people we despise this type of approaches toward young human beings. But that was what is “normal” in the 1950’s or so. 
 
That’s how religion worked as well. I recently had this conversation with someone. That person was telling me that for each prayer (Muslim Prayer) that I missed, God would have me do each and every one of these prayers on fire. And that fire is going to be a fire that’s a million times hotter that ordinary plasma. And that’s how these people operate: It’s all stick and carrot. That’s the nature of all old-school religions. The difference is in form. The main idea is always the same: “Do what you are told or else there will be suffering”.
 
- The only thing I am saying is that this worked in the past and is still working on some people today. You do get them to do their meditations and prayers (even if it’s on a superficial level), they will do their fasting, and they will come to the Church on Sundays (or other days) and they will listen and believe in the %50 nonsense you are telling them.
 
Now for centuries, that’s the only thing we had. And it worked.
 
3) All this Hippy / Neo-Pagan stuff you are talking about has a lot to do with what I am explaining here. In the 1960’s there were people who weren’t satisfied with the Western way of doing things. By this I mean mind-based philosophical and largely Atheistic and materialistic way of looking at the world. I am not saying that it’s not OK to be so, I’m only saying that some people wanted something more. So some of them were attracted to some pseudo religions. Again: There is nothing wrong with that either. Others travelled to places like India, Nepal, Peru, and Afghanistan and had what I would call this “spiritual reconnection”. That’s something that’s unlike typical philosophical / materialistic way of thinking. But it’s also different from the scholastic old-school religious way of thinking.
 
   So on a personal level: I don’t see myself as someone who believes in this mass of irrational thoughts. I think that these are a complete waste of time. But I am lucid enough to see the logic behind it. This is just people, religious leaders who think they have figured things out for themselves, so they want to incites you and me to do the right stuff (coming to church, giving away money for the poor, saying your prayers before going to bed etc.). And this is not something that should cause us to be anti-theist / anti-religious or whatever. It’s just the way organized religion works.  
 
    Still today (see the study workbook analogy) we have things that are “better”. We are not that different from these “old-school” people. But in the Chopra system for instance, we understand the “science” behind the usage of mantras and we use them accordingly. It’s not “Do this many mantra and you shall get to heaven (a place of endless riches and material benefits). It’s more like, “Here is a method to reprogram your mind, unlearn false beliefs that you have learned and learn new stuff that will help you in improving your life (today).”
 
   So I don’t hate the old school entirely. What is happening with them is that they are still doing the right thing but they are not really aware of it (and don’t even need to be aware of it if you ask me). They are sort of / kind of being manipulated into doing the right things.
 
    But for this very reason, we need to put some limits to their ways of doing things. That’s because it can get out of hand and start morphing into fanaticism of self-harming sort of blind dogmatism.
 
    So to sum up: I sort of like the era we are living in. Revisionists of the 60’s did a lot for us. Now we have all this good stuff at our disposal. I see all of this as a part of our evolution as a specie. And that’s the only thing that matters right now. It’s not about getting to heaven or anything like that. It’s more about learning to manage ourselves in this world / today in a way that is self-supporting and that will allow future generations to have it at least as good as we had it
 
(I know the topic is old, But I choose to write this reply here instead of copying Grand Nudger’s message and pasting it to a new thread)

[The Grand Nudger]

You believe in "original messages" because islam. The new age movement is a western movement full of western thoughts designed to satisfy a western aim. Separating suckers from their money. Neo paganism is full of western pagan thought - not alot of african gods in there. American buddhism is microtargeted at americans.

Your idea of traditional beliefs "working" is doing alot of work covering for alot of sins. One wonders, if they "worked"..why you and every other imam or guru or shaman has been continually amending and revising them, continually saying that they're all meaningfully wrong. Mantra science is not a thing. It's the belief in magic words, in cantrips and spells. In wizards, harry. You think we need to put some limits on them and they think we need to put you under the limit bus.

I do, fwiw, agree with you that all this stuff is an attempt to figure out how to live our lives. I just think that superstition and fiction are a poor basis for such practical aims...and dogmatic and fanatical new ageism is just as dogmatic, just as fanatic, and just as superstituous as any other traditional fiction. It's also very...very...western. It's the great satans most american belief set. A mashup of things from everywhere, just like it's people.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

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