“If the doors of perception were cleansed everything
would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he
sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.”
- William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
The world is saturated with opinions and demands that we get engaged in
something. Our democratic world insists on our active participation in
everything that is going on. It is far worse than what Noam Chomsky stated,
that today ‘lively debate in a limited spectrum is allowed’, as a means to control
debate, nowadays it is encouraged and demanded as the nature of this limited spectrum
is carefully mediated by bankers, media, politicians and corporations.
We pick up a newspaper as we shudder in disgust, but we read on and get
involved. We get worried and we get ill, we get angry and we get catatonic.
Still we engage it all because expressing opinion is to express democratic
freedom and reflects who we are under the banner of ‘human rights’.
As we engage the world we are confronted with not only opinions, but
judgment and interpretations, sentimentalism expressed as facts and the misery
of failed ambition. Like eels and sharks bumping into walls in our restricted
aquarium of illusory freedom we exercise this freedom as beaten dogs and purposeless
warriors.
In this hopelessness religion and belief is the master key to escape the
feeling of imprisonment, because here we encounter something mysterious, something
outside the social prison and indeed for some, an experience of the infinite,
an experience that breaks down the walls of the aquarium also breaks down the
cave of narrow perception.
Alas, this is not how it is in practice. Rather we see a negative
inversion taking place, where the field of mystery and belief turns into a source
of increase for the strength of opinions and judgments held by people.
One of many idiosyncratic mindboggling phenomena’s are found amongst the
neo Pentecostal movement where the idea of the world being a prison is taken to
such extremes that in many cases they have ceased focus on God and is getting
occupied with Satan and fixate on all things immoral measured against a given interpretation
of a collection of enigmatic gospels. It is like faith substitute for research
and thus instead of substantiate an opinion with logic analysis sentimentalism,
feelings and faith is what informs a given interpretation of something
mysterious which then is imposed on social actors and behaviours.
Opinion leads to judgment, which leads to condemnation in very draconian
ways and instead of opening the doors of perception it is instead solidly
locked down with hatred, arguments gossip and quarrels, until only the keyhole
is left for the hateful voyeur from his place of self-affirmed salvation and
greatness.
But this type of behaviour is not restricted to denominations like this,
we find the extremist everywhere as we find the judgmental one everywhere. The ‘occult’
world is really no better off, because breaking free starts in the realization
of imprisonment and the adoption of new perspectives from this realization.
What we see is instead a lot of misinformed gossip, attempts of nailing one
another and useless agitation taking place, usually with the purpose of
establishing who is right, because when we establish ourselves as a ‘holder of
truth’, we give ourselves automatically the freedom to point fingers, accuse
and judge people, opinions and actions in a simulacrum of the social world we
live in and hence we extend the archontic control of our prison guards into our
personal field of interactions and community and dig the hole burning under our
feet deeper and make our prison smaller.
We would think the ‘occult’ world attracts the best of good people in
the world – but it is not so – rather it is a speculum obscura, a microcosmic reflection
of the world at large where everything, good and bad, tends to become extremely
visible. But of course, the human being have been manipulated into giving
attention to horror, error and the disgust and too often we get blind to all
the beauty that exists outside our self-dug crater of opinionated madness and
judgmental misery.
I believe this is caused by the saturation of opinions in the world,
which in extension gives us the illusion that exercising opinions – in particular
with force – declares us as free men and women. But, unfortunately, in strong
opinions is always found a pointed finger, throbbing with judgment and
accusation, because strong opinions are always resting of weak foundations,
hence every heated argument is born from the need of convincing oneself and not
the opponent.
This seed of discord is also found in the subtle disagreements, say, I believe
past life memories is important while my opponent thinks it is rubbish. Fine,
here we have a disagreement and quite often such disagreements follow with
debasing the orator of the opinion and not the opinion stated. Consequently the
disagreement turns into a stupid quarrel of right and wrong instead of the more
expansive model that opens horizons, where a proposition is met with a question
and inquiry and not a condemnation.
At times the blindness for our imprisoned state is so overpowering that
the disagreement becomes a mission – and indeed nothing is more vile and dangerous
than a man on a mission – no matter right or wrong, substantiated or not, it is
only about the goal, to be right. The Christian mission with its crusades and inquisition
is one reflex, while another rests amongst those who make their mission into
proving others wrong. We can exemplify the latter with the disagreement between
the importance of past lives and its unimportance, because every stupid mission
finds at its core such banalities to be a part of its ugly mosaic. Let’s say,
you are a fervent believer in the importance of past lives and I tell you
bluntly, I think it is bollocks. If my rejection of your premise leads you to
erect temples of belief and monasteries of war to defend your opinion, I would
say, you never gave the matter much thought and became a pure sentimental
reaction to a linguistic provocation. And since expressing opinion, especially if
they are born from belief, is conceived of as a ‘human right’ – the reaction
implies an attack on the human stating the opinion – which only demonstrates how
deep and enclosed your imprisonment is.
I am aware Our common imprisoned state, I do shudder in disgust when I
pick up a newspaper, but I also make deliberate attempts to restrict this
negative influence, because I don’t want the fear and hatred, loathing and
illness to be a part of my life. I seek concord and the good dialogue, the
interested approach in all differences that makes us all community, because for
me at least, I seek the doors of my perception to be as open as possible and I
am not able to do this if I close myself to the experience of others and refuse
to approach myself to me fellow men and women in interest. If we did this with
one another, we would naturally question the walls in our aquarium and as the inquiry
led to renewed insights we would see the walls shatter and the noose getting
looser in an expanse of horizons that would potentially alienate ‘the human
rights’ bestowed upon us by the rulers of this world as a pointed finger turns
into a helping hand.