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Russian Foundation of Transpersonal Psychology |
International Noosphere Institute |
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Moscow
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Chapter 7 DANGERS OF SUBTLE REALITY. MAGIC TRADITION AND RELIGION
Good and evil, spiritual growth and many temptations, false paths are old problems as eternal as the world itself. We all face them and the matter gets especially touchy as soon as we become interested in esoteric, mysticism, magic. Not occasionally many religions associate this sphere with evil and Satanism. Yet, if we try to ignore the problem and pretend magic levels of reality do not exist we will not make the world any better, evil and Satanism will still penetrate it but even in the worse masked way. Let us think of fires and tortures of inquisition, religious wars that were conducted in the name of divine love, immortality of soul and God. There are also atheistic forms of Satanism which were fully manifested during French revolution and in our resent past. That is why imaginations of good and evil, their nature and manifestation in our life are the basis necessary for any spiritual growth and any real self-development, awakening of deep resources of our psyche. Naturally, any deep religious tradition offers a way of spiritual development, ways to chose between good and evil. Certainly, one chapter is not enough even to enumerate all these attitudes. We will concentrate only on those ones which are oriented towards psychological aspects of the spiritual growth and are strictly connected with mystic and magic practice.
7.1. The nature of good and evil in ancient religious traditions The idea of some other forces standing behind visible history development is very old. Myths of practically all people speak of fights and battles in the worlds of gods and other beings that lead to historic cataclysms on Earth (59). In our century original and very detailed picture of such interaction between visible and invisible worlds was presented by Daniil Andreev in his book The Rose of the World (46). He has also created a very significant term 'metahistory' that we will use later. The aspect common for all pictures of meta-historical process is the struggle between fair and dark elements, good and evil. It lays at the basis of all sudden historic changes; mass migrations, wars, catastrophes, bloom and collapse of civilizations. However, two absolutely different approaches towards the nature of forces of good and evil are present here. One of them claims that both fair and dark elements are equally necessary in the world being the source of its development and evil is a side-effect of breaking the balance between these basic cosmic powers (Shiva-Shakti in India, Yin-Yang in China) (39, 50, 52). The second approach proves evil to be the global cosmic principle nearly as strong as the fair Divine element. Dark female element and evil are not differentiated here and the main goal is the final victory over evil and its complete destruction. That is a source of the very popular myth of the final battle between the cosmic forces and the end of the world. This concept is, probably, presented in the fullest way in Zoroastrism where the fair element is incarnated in the creator of the Universe, god Ahura-Mazda or Ormusd. Its opposite is the spirit of destruction — Ahriman who tries to ruin the Universe and has created many demons in order to do so. At first Ahura-Mazda wished to live in peace with the Spirit of destruction. When this proposition was rejected they decided to conclude a truce for ten thousand years. And the nearer the end of this term is, the stronger the hidden struggle between the forces of good and evil is. At the end the final battle will take place it will develop at all levels of Universe from galaxies to elementary corpuscles, atomic and molecular world. After all the Spirit of destruction will lose all its power (59). In this world the Creator and the Spirit of destruction are seen as almost equally strong elements. In Christian tradition the Creator and the Spirit of darkness also fight irreconcilably, although they are primarily unequal. The Spirit of darkness and its servants are treated as fallen angels who once used to be loyal and close to God but then rebelled and betrayed Him. Nevertheless, especially in late Christianity, Devil and armies of his servants present a dangerous and powerful force manifesting at all levels of the world. Similar images of dark and fair elements exist in Islam. The first point of view, stating that the dark element and evil are not the same and that nature of evil is secondary and is a side-effect, is developed in majority of religions of India, China and Tibet. The images of demons (rakshasa, lha, dre, 'foxes' etc.) and demonic elements of universe (maras) are also present there. Still, as it has already been mentioned, they are believed to be side-effects of disharmony and lack of balance between male and female energies in the process of the evolution of universe. Nevertheless, they present a serious danger at the level of human existence. Yet, the main aspect of the fight with evil is not its destruction but personal improvement that makes individuals inaccessible for evil. In these respect demons of India, China and Tibet may be compared to wild animals, animals of prey that are not absolute cosmic evil or its servants. It is just their nature that makes them dangerous for human. It is clear that such 'evil' can be subordinated without destruction and may be even tamed as human has tamed and made friends with a dog. So for example, Tibetan religion Bon, Tibetan Buddhism at first treated many angry gods and guardians as sinister spirits, dangerous for human. Then the spiritual strength of Great teachers allowed them to 'tame' and transform them, including into egregors of great religions (1). However, all traditions stress that such 'taming' is available only for teachers who have achieved the highest stages of enlightenment. For a usual human friendship with sinister or too earthy (moved by mercenary aims) spirits carries the risk of getting under their influence or to become 'obsessed' by them. In fact now we can observe it in many cases of 'contacting'. The interesting thing is that such attitude to spirits is also typical for many ancient mystic and shamanic traditions of Europe, Siberia and America. Fragments of Bible devoted to king Solomon one can read of magic taming of sinister spirits (let us remember well-known stories of gins in bottles sealed by Solomon's seal, magic lamps etc.). Christian tradition treats demons and spirits in a different way. They are believed to be servants of evil, absolute enemies deserving destruction. Besides many pagan gods who were earlier believed to be good or neutral were included in this category. So for example horns are a nearly necessary element of any devil. If we turn to more ancient traditions we will see that horns symbolized fertility, male strength (perhaps, as the analogy to deers, elks and other hoofed animals famous for their great sexual activity). Indian Proto-Shiva has branchy horns. The Lord of the lower world in Celtic mythology used to have similar horns. Furious gods — guardians of the Tibetan pantheon also have horns. At the same time Indian Tibetan and Chinese demons are presented with the horns too. In other words, horns appear everywhere whenever the masculinity and strength should be stressed. One can find many such analogies and connections. All this proves the existence of the common source of the most different religions and mystic teachings, the existence of some deep, universal and eternal knowledge whose echo is present at all times in variable cultures and civilizations. So in spite of the different attitude towards the nature of evil and some other details (see Table 5) practically all great religions agree that the main essence and impulse of the historic process is the struggle between the forces of good and evil. Evil is connected with low, dark and bestial element of human nature and when one fight with evil the greatest attention should be paid to oneself. Table 5. Differences and common features of two archetypal concepts of fair and dark elements and their role in meta-historic process.
Ancient Maniheism — the religion that appeared in the III century in Middle Asia — seems to strictly connect two seemingly contradictory points of view at the nature of evil. According to the Maniheistic theology the present state of the human is a sad consequence of the mixture of the two polar elements: Mind and Matter or Good and Evil, Light and Darkness. This happened in the following way. Primarily there were two kingdoms that presented the complete and balanced system. The kingdom of Light ruled by the Father of Majesty and the kingdom Of Darkness ruled by the Earl of Darkness. The balance was broken when the Earl of Darkness attracted by the radiance of the kingdom of Light decided to attack it. The Father of Majesty, wishing to prevent this aggression, created the army of the forces of good, consisting of emanations of light. However, it has lost and dissolved, mixed with darkness. The world of matter was created as a result of this mixture. The final goal is seen as the liberation of corpuscles of light from the entrapment of the matter (59). The idea of metahistory has found its reflection in numeral legends of Shambhala — the city or the country of the higher beings ruling the history of our planet. The legend appeared in Tibet and then went West and became extremely popular. It is enough to say that it was one of the foundation stones of the nazis mythology, being, certainly, unrecognizably deformed (57, 58). Nazi claimed that after the global Gobi catastrophe the highest teachers of humanity hid in the secret caves in Himalai. They divided in two directions. The representatives of the forces of good have established the Agarthy center and have left the world, devoting themselves to contemplation. The representatives of the other one — Shambhala, the center of the powerful violence, rule our planet and its peoples due to magic forces. Nazi made huge efforts to establish contacts with them. Tibetan Buddhist tradition treats Shambhala as the center of good forces, the place where the spiritual teachers of human kind dwell. Yet, it is believed to be situated not in the underground caves but in the subtle levels of reality (1). Naturally, it is useless to look for its entrance somewhere in Himalai mountains. The entrance opens only for those who have achieved deep spiritual enlightenment. Although some places — 'transparency zones' that make such entrance much easier — seem to really exist. The capital of Shambhala is placed in the city of Kalava. According to the legend the system of Kalachakra was given by Buddha Shakyamuni in Shambhala, and then in 927 it got to India through the Buddhist yogi ant later reached Tibet. The myth says that the final so called Shambalian war between Shambhala and the Country of matter is still to happen. Then materially oriented ones will use the latest achievements of the military technique and the ones of Shambhala, sidhis, will use paranormal forces. The victory of Shambhala in this war will symbolize the passage of humanity to the new higher stage of development. The Sacral Wisdom Happiness and suffer, the sense of life and fate — all this is interconnected so strongly that it is impossible to concentrate at one without touching the others. If we ask ourselves why somebody's destiny looks in this particular way, which forces rule it we will sooner or later come to the question where do we come from to this world, what can be found beyond the edge of life and death. These eternal questions have been interested human kind since the ancient times and the tries to answer them have led to establishment of the whole world outlook, being the basis of religions of the world, old philosophic systems, revelations of the great thinkers and saints. This world outlook is sometimes called the sacral wisdom or eternal philosophy and in the most general features it looks in the following way (59). The universe where we live is multidimensional and together with physical material level contains many other ones where our spirit and over-human beings dwell. Correspondingly the world of matter is the thickest and the most imperfect sphere of the universe. Furthermore, the matter has the strong ability to create illusions, make the spirit getting to this sphere of existence forget its own nature and lose its abilities. A human, who first of all has a nature of the spiritual being, is prisoned in matter and starts to identify himself only with his body, its desires and passions, trying to become happy, chasing pleasures. In fact, from the point of view of the sacral wisdom, the reason of our suffer is in the deformation and narrowness of our mind, limitation of those marvelous abilities that primarily belonged to our spirit. That is why material prosperity and the growing material power of the human kind leave us unsatisfied, obsessed with violence and simply tired of our own existence. How often people who have obtained all possible material goods which they desired find themselves missing something, unsatisfied, suffering and making others suffer. What is the reason of our incarnation in the world of matter? The sacral wisdom most often uses three metaphors: 'banishment', 'dizziness', 'dream'. All of them speak of some primarily fall when the human lost his superhumanity, Divinity and purity. Our stay on Earth in the sphere of matter is treated as an important but very risky mission directed towards enlightenment of the dark, ruled by death physical world, creation of the qualitatively new kind of the flesh shell ruled by spirit — the luminous body. The rule of Divine kingdom on Earth is associated with it (23, 25). Yet, so far we are doomed to be in the shell of flesh that hardly suits our spiritual nature and that rules us up to the great extant. Our body reminds of a car that ignores the wheel and goes wherever it wishes itself. It is also can be compared to a horse trying to get reed of a rider. In any case one of the basic primarily tasks of our stay on earth is overcoming of the oblivion, going up to the Divine source and at the same time 'taming' of our body, subordination of our body passions and desires to the Higher Self. This removes the main source of suffering, allows to obtain unity and strength, to wake our deep resources. It is clear that both these things are extremely difficult tasks, being the basis of the majority of religious and mystic practices and their fulfillment is a complicated and sometimes tiresome process. Its success up to the great extant depends on understanding the nature of multidimensional reality, mechanisms of penetration the matter by spirit and its connections with the fleshy shell.
7.2. Teachers of humanity, metahistory Our personal spiritual evolution, understanding of problems of good and evil are strictly connected with the matter of creation and evolution of the human kind, sense of its existence, metahistory. It is impossible not to concentrate at the problem of contact between humans and their civilization and higher levels of reality, Divine (cosmic) teachers of humanity. As we have already mentioned, the incarnation of spirit in the material shell, body is connected with oblivion of its own nature, loss of knowledge of other, higher levels of reality. That is why escaping bestial state of existence, the entrapment of natural selection, endless fight for survival is hardly possible without their help. In fact one of the most common myths of Earth is the history of Divine (cosmic) teachers of humanity. Legends say they had come to Earth and had given our ancestors basic trades, foundation of magic and religious practice. Their arrival is the turning point, crossing from bestial to human condition. At one time the hypothesis of teachers coming from the space by space-ships and being representatives of beyond-earth civilization was very popular. Ancient megalithic constructions (Stonehendge, drawings in Nasca desert, pyramids and others) were believed to be the traces of their stay. Nevertheless, this theory does not sustain any serious critics. For the first, all megalithic constructions bear the marks of the most primitive technologies — it is difficult to imagine that the newcomers from the space would use stone axes, wooden sticks and so on. For the second, different peoples date this contact with the teachers with different moments — newcomers from the space would hardly come especially for Chinese, especially for ancient Scandinavians, especially for North-American Indians of Africans. At the same time the fact of such contact itself is difficult to deny, such a popular myth would hardly appear out of nothing. Also the creation and use of the megalithic constructions is connected with the teachers of humanity. On the other hand, nowadays many people speak of their contact with cosmic teachers, transmits messages and warnings obtained from them. This contact normally takes place in the altered state of consciousness (ASC). Naturally the vast majority of such 'contact' information is surprisingly boring and monotonous and rather reminds of the papers' contents. Still, the very small part impresses by its unusual and new character and the mentioned here The Rose of the World is an example of this kind of knowledge. All this allows treating legends of teachers of humanity, newcomers from the space as echoes of such forms of contact with the higher levels of reality. In other words, ASC became a catalyst which allowed to human to cross the edge separating him from animals. Perhaps, hallucinogenic plants, occasionally eaten by our ancestors, who provoked the first experiences of the altered state travels, were the first impulse (36). In this their usefulness seems to be not greater than at our times. That means that significant part of contacts was with parasitizing demonic dwellers of the subtle world and ended with something that is now called obsession and then by physical death. Yet, a small number of people contacted real teachers and the first knowledge given by them was about making and maintaining such contact. In fact, according to measures of subtle reality, higher levels and teachers are far away, their signal is weak. However, parasitizing spirits nourishing with human energy, are always near and ready for the contact, definitely using it for their own purposes. That is why the use of the hallucinatory substances or another wrong way of entering ASC would rather lead to such destructive contacts. By the way it is supported by the modern history of the use of hallucinatory substances and drugs. As a rule the result is the destruction of psychics or other forms of obsession. That is why the strict direction and selectiveness of the contact in ASC is the most significant condition. This somehow remind of the invention of the radio. The first receivers mainly transmitted discharges of thunder and other interferences, suppressing the needed signal. And only invention of the oscillatory circuit that allows tuning at the chosen signal and removing energetically stronger interferences enabled radio and television. The similar 'oscillatory circuit' is necessary for the effective work in ASC. Our research on ancient megalithic constructions has proved that they seem to be such 'oscillatory circuit', one of the first receiving mechanisms; allowing establishing selective contacts with subtle reality (see Appendix 2). This way the main aspects of the hypothesis can be formulated in the following way: 1. There are spiritual and matter universes, contact between them is difficult; it is easier to establish in certain places of Earth, at certain moments of time, during certain positions of Earth to other planets and stars. 2. The contact between the soul and its shell of flesh ('environmental suit', 'biorobot') is primarily difficult, very unstable and fragmentary. Perhaps, one of the main goals of the biologic evolution on Earth is to make this contact deeper and stronger (to improve the subordination of the 'environmental suit'). This goes in three main directions:
3. Primarily the manifestation of the spiritual level in the animal world is minimal. Behavior is practically always defined by the aims of survival of an individual and its kind. Probably, the spiritual level rather manifests in noosphere and biosphere, pushing the evolution towards greater complexity of behavioral mechanisms and structures of the subtle body (survival due to brains and intuition and not muscles). Possibly, the death of dinosaurs was one of the examples of such correction (removement of prevailing dumb, armored monsters). 4. Appearance of human gave an opportunity for deeper and more stable contact with the spiritual sphere. However, the knowledge, enabling to control the bestial element, ensuring stable contact with the soul, elaborate the structures of the subtle body, should be transmitted first. This, in its turn, was possible only if the contact was stable enough. 5. This aim seemed to be achieved due to megalithic constructions which worked as a door to subtle levels of reality. At first they were, probably, built for purely utilitarian tasks as places of cremation, cooking or rest. Yet, through the mechanism of the synchronic influence resonating structures have appeared there (the right number of stones, their orientation etc.). This, in its turn, strengthened the effect of the influence of the stone circle, when the human was there the new ideas of adaptation, hunting ways were coming to him, his intuition grew stronger, and he could foresee the future and his psychic energy became more active. All this used to strengthen and make deeper the contact with the circles. The obtained knowledge allowed improving their construction. At the earlier stages the definitive role was, perhaps, played by hallucinogenic substances. 6. As a result the mechanisms and methods of the contact with teachers of humanity who gave primary knowledge (tools of trade and hunt, fire, taming animals, agriculture), seeds of religion, magic, science and art. Naturally this process was lasting for thousands years, the first megalithic constructions had given a very unstable contact, people lacked knowledge on their proper building and the structures of their subtle bodies were very far from perfection. At the later stages of civilization stone circles were replaced by more perfect cult constructions, temples the contact itself became a privilege of the narrow group of priests. Later as social institutes of religion grew more and more complicated, ancient civilizations died the tradition of the contact was lost. Nowadays it takes place spontaneously in the case of unprepared people and, unfortunately, not with the teachers but with parasitizing beings pretending to be teachers. This way, according to our hypothesis, teachers of humanity are not newcomers from the space but beings of subtle reality, megalithic constructions are mechanisms for the contact with the subtle world which were made not by astronauts but by people following the information obtained in ASC. From this point of view the restoration of the ancient tradition of the contact with teachers of humanity, improvement of ancient mechanisms and creation of the new ones on the basis of the modern technologies is our important task.
7.3. The crisis of the modern civilization and activation of the destructive forces Many signs prove that at the present moment our world is at the edge of the birth of a new civilization. These are more and more visible tendencies of Western and Eastern cultures getting closer and vanishing distance between paradigms of natural sciences and mysticism and magic. That is also supported by literally explosive unveiling of the secret esoteric knowledge which earlier has been available only to a narrow circle of the initiated ones. Many ancient prophecies, speaking of the end of the world and beginning of the new cycle of development of humanity, point to our times. Naturally main features of the new coming civilization can be only guessed but we can fantasize a bit on how the humanity of the future will be. Furthermore, our present position, how we should help the birth of the future civilization, prevent destructive chaotic tendencies that always grow stronger in such crisis moments, strongly depends on this forecast. The first thing that is already nearly obvious is greater movement towards informational technologies. This leads to establishment of a 'softer' civilization oriented towards symbiosis with the environment, studying mechanisms of self-regulation of biosphere, interaction with them. The paradigm of the human-conqueror of nature, extensive growth, creation of megalopolises, huge factories and complete remaking of the environment become past. Such informational civilization would be, probably, characterized by the growing interest in inner world of a human, his potential abilities and their development. That is the reason of the synthesis of the ruling paradigm with ancient mystic and magic traditions. At the same time the appearance of qualitatively new ways of interaction between people and informational levels of reality. This takes place due to both: development of computer technologies (virtual reality etc.) and opening of the new physical informational channels. Even now at the modern primary stage of the development of virtual reality technologies its strict connection with the visioners' and psychedelic experience known since the very ancient time can be noticed. The establishment of the artificial forms of sensible life (virtual mind) is also possible when the qualitative change in the development of computer technics takes place. This will bring new problems and new opportunities for the symbiosis between virtual mind and human kind and quicker evolution of human organism and psychics. One can certainly speak of possible tendencies of development of humanity for a long time but all this can become true only after successful overcoming of the present crisis and we will concentrate on this now. One of the characteristic features of the crisis situations is the sudden sharpening of the struggle between polar elements. On the one hand, there is light, spiritual and creative element; on the other hand, there is dark, destructive and bestial one. The future of the human kind depends on who wins this fight. It takes place at all levels of our reality from planetary biosphere — noosphere to the individual soul. The sharpening of this fight and sudden activation of destructive forces can be now observed in all spheres of our life. These are senseless sadistic murders, drug addiction, Satanist sects, totalitarism, fascist movements. It was so in all turning point of the human history. The beginning of the epoch of Christianity was marked by barbarian raids and caesors-tyrans. The epoch of Renaissance is famous for its terrifying epidemics, Inquisition and Satanism. The polar destructive element has always used the principle of substitution as the most effective way of fight with the new civilization. It is well known that direct fight or confrontation often leads to the opposite result — the strengthening of the enemy who gets the aura of a victim. The principle of substitution is much more effective. In other words, externally similar or very much alike teaching is created yet it is more attractive due to the skillful advertising and generously given promises of an easy and quick success and significant financial incomes. As a result, the majority of potential dissidents are entrapped in that false tradition and the real one is weakened. Naturally such false tradition plays a role of a special enticement does not have deeper aims and orientation points of the real one and is certainly unable to make any of its promises true. Those ones who were enticed become totally disappointed cynical people unable to do anything real. They can also work as obeying forces of the destructive political or pseudo-religious system. There is no need to say that destructive forces obtain power and dominate in all spheres of social and cultural life at the turning historical points. Such strategy of substitution reminds of one of the methods of elimination of agricultural harmful insects when the strong population of males is artificially grown, then sterilized with radiation and let go free. Females impregnated by them naturally do not give any off-springs so in few generations the number of those harmful insects is close to zero. A wonderful example of such historical substitution is a hippie movement and their slow turn into yuppie. When we speak of destructive forces, evil, bestial element we do not necessarily have to imagine a kind of demonic center. All this can work according to self-organization principle when the structure of the social-economical system itself automatically gives a birth and multiplies false copies of the original spiritual teachings, masterpieces of art and science. It is enough to remember that Hollywood often makes Americanized versions of good European films but they are already drained from their spiritual passionate element. Good Hollywood films, in their turn, are often remade in a pornographic way and are even awarded with their own porno-Oscars. Many such examples can be found in all spheres of culture and art. In other words the structure of the consuming society and mass culture itself are organized in the way oriented towards maximal incomes and starts to multiply substitutes, making false and fully deforming the sense of the origins. However, when the new spiritual opposition is especially strong and dangerous its destruction may be helped by the corresponding social institutions (inquisition and secret police in the Middle centuries and special agencies at the present time). Let us think of the already mentioned hippie movement and tests of the new drugs and hallucinatory substances conducted by American special agencies in religious sects. The majority of the great religious traditions also speak of the danger of such falsification and substitution at the turning historical moments. These are ancient Egyptian prophecies, the image of anti-Christ and many others. This danger is definitely particularly significant in spiritual spheres connected with forming and development of the spirit, sense and goals of the new civilization. The history of the XX-th century is literally full of examples of such substitutions in the field of both — political and spiritually-esoteric, mystic opposition. In the political field these are the most horrible tyrannies of the XX-th century, fascism and communism, violating the greatest lack of freedom in the name of freedom. Yet, the mass consuming society, which substitutes freedom with the sophisticated manipulation of human mind, uses bestial instincts, hiding selfishness and chasing money behind conversations of humanism, democracy and fraternity, is penetrated with dual morality. If totalitarian regimes get reed of their opponents by murdering and isolating them in prisons the mass society acts in a more sophisticated way. Here the principle of substitution, the principle of anti-Christ reaches its top.
7.4. Modern psycho-manipulative technologies One of the paradoxes of modern civilization is, on the one hand, the growing development of democratic traditions and institutions and, on the other hand, constantly increasing number of manipulative techniques influencing human mind and of variable technologies of such manipulation. These are obtrusive advertisement and sophisticated forms of struggle for the voices of the electors, creating of political image and hard forms of suppression of individuality in pseudo-religious sects, secret societies and extremist political groups. The most surprising thing is that democratic societies managed to reach such level of manipulation on human mind of which totalitarian regimes could not even dream about (60). If totalitarian regimes mainly stressed repression and supergrassing modern 'democratic' states generously compensate external freedoms with the most sophisticated manipulative technologies. Where is the reason of this, why do ideals of democracy and liberal society remain only ideals and unrealized dreams? How to keep the internal freedom, protect oneself, elaborate immunity against manipulative influences penetrating practically all spheres of our life? Certainly, the problem of the hidden violence in the modern society is very complicated but a few reasons, laying at the very surface, can be defined. The first one is connected with the drastic weakening of moral taboos in the modern society. The general crisis of the value system and religion, activation of the bestial element, moral orientation points of the consuming society enabled and even made ethical the full control and manipulation on the mind of the human-consumer. The second reason is in significant increase of the arsenal of means and methods of manipulation and the easier access to it. This is the consequence of modern scientific and technical achievements and wide publication of previously secret esoteric texts. One can distinguish the following directions of development of the new means of manipulation:
The present work does not concentrate on the physical mechanisms of such influences. However, it should be mentioned that special gadgets, generating radiance and influencing human psychics have been known since the very ancient times. In our days the whole range of new mechanisms of this kind appears they are known as 'psychotronic generators' (61, 62). And finally there are some influences that use the combination of several mentioned above factors. Methods joining modern technical achievements and ancient esoteric technologies deserve special attention. The analysis of variable psycho-manipulative influences proves that they are practically always oriented towards establishment of the stable psycho-emotional code in the psychics of a person being an object of this influence. Furthermore the main destructive consequences of psycho-manipulation are particularly connected with the stability of such psycho-emotional state. In the case of advertising this can be the obtrusive, contradictory with logic desire to buy certain products, value papers etc. In the case of the pseudo-religious sect that is blind and total obey to the 'teacher'. This way both, prevention of psycho-manipulative influences and destruction or transformation of its consequences, needs understanding of mechanisms, ensuring stability of those psycho-emotional states and to elaborate effective means of protection at this basis. The studying of such structures proves that they up to the great extant remind of the results of the psycho-traumatic influences, displaced into subconsciousness ('complex' in the terms of psychoanalysis or S.Grof's SCE). In both cases practically autonomous behavioral patterns are formed they are uncontrollable by conscious behavioral mechanisms of the human. Their influence as a rule also manifests unconsciously: the strong desire suddenly appears; the person forgets seemingly obvious things and makes serious unexpected mistakes. As a result the real behavior is significantly deformed and does not correspond with conscious desires and aims of the given person any longer. Nevertheless, the mechanisms of establishment of psycho-manipulative codes and psycho-traumatic experience vary. The analysis allows distinguishing the following special features of the establishment of psycho-manipulative influence. Normally the psycho-manipulative influence has obvious or hidden rhythm. This may be a constantly repeating 'sticky' melody, verbal intonation etc. (it is enough to think of the music in advertising and video-games). In more complicated cases space-time rhythms including also geometrical ornaments and forms in static and dynamic variants may appear. Such influences are usually more effective. Influences based on the certain scenario forming deeper and more stable emotional connections are even more effective. As a result the transformation of the human psychics takes place being a necessary consequence of going through the raw of intermediate states. And certainly subsensoric and marginal influences, archetypal symbols and scenarios, variable kinds of systems with biological reversal connection (especially during the influence experienced in computer virtual reality) are widely used. Even such short description of the phenomenology of manipulative influences shows the complexity of their informational organization and stability mechanisms conditioned by them. In this research we have used the language of synergetic and mathematical theory of the dynamic chaos. It studies the mechanisms of self-organization in non-equilibrium dynamics to which human and his behavioral mechanisms belong. Among other things the concept of strange attractors appeared to be very effective for studying of stability mechanisms of the consequences of manipulative influences. The results of our research allowed elaborating some recommendations and practical methods oriented towards discovering and protection against manipulative influences coming from individuals and mass media. Yet, we especially strongly stress the prevention of psycho-manipulative influences, i.e. such transformation of the human psychics that significantly lowers its sensitivity to variable methods of manipulation. This task is fulfilled by some methods of elaboration of the displaced psycho-traumatic experience and integration of human psychics in altered states of conscious and computer systems of virtual reality based on the use of the archetypal symbols and patterns they develop conceptual attitudes of C.Yung, F.Mindell, and E.Fromm.
7.5. Prevention of psycho-manipulation. Special features of the behavior of the manipulative leader, criteria of biophilia and necrophilia How can a person, living in the modern society, find his or her way among plenty of religions and sects, schools and traditions, ocean of literature? How to distinguish the real spiritual tradition from the substitutes and falsifications? We believe it is difficult but possible. One of the attitudes is based on the analysis of the real and declared value system and motivations of the leaders of the corresponding tradition. Naturally, at the level of declarations even the most destructive leaders usually say very good things about radiant future, fraternity etc. However, their real behavior proves something totally opposite. Due to the offered system of criteria you will be able to understand rather quickly whom you really deal with and escape the undesirable contact until it is too late. The presented system of criteria is based on the concepts of necrophilia and biophilia invented by Erich Fromm (9, 19, 60). The term 'biophil' defines the light spiritual element and 'necrophil' symbolizes the dark, bestial, destructive one. The essence of biophil is love for life in all its manifestations he prefers dynamics of the vital process to statics and appreciates the variability of forms. He sees wholeness and unity of all natural phenomena and does not treat it as mechanical sum of the separate parts. Necrophilia is literally translated as 'love for death'. Such life orientation is attracted by everything that is dead and mechanical. A necrophil is frightened by something unexpected, unpredictable, variable — everything that can ruin the stiff mechanical picture of the world. That is why he is afraid of life, tries to destroy it and turn people in bio-robots. Correspondingly necrophilia can manifest at the behavioral and bio-energetic level up to the channeling when spiritual aspects of individuality practically lose the control over the body that is in power of the spirit that gets into it. Typical necrophils are such authoritarian leaders as Hitler, Stalin and Polpot. Naturally, biophils and necrophils are hardly ever met in the pure form. Any human has both elements in his or her nature. The type of personality is defined by the prevailing element. From this point of view the main task of the spiritual development is suppression of necrophilia features and activation of biophil element. The understanding of the main psychological mechanisms and motivations ruling human behavior, special features of behavioral manifestations typical for necrophilia and biophilia can be very helpful. This enables self-control and correction of one's own behavior in the direction of smaller destructiveness and awakening spirituality. The main characteristics of the necrophil's and biophil's behavior are presented in the left and right parts of the Table 6 correspondingly. Its upper part shows dominating motivations, defining the type of the personality, as two triangles. In the case of the necrophil these are hunger and fear and strictly connected with them desire of power they form the yin triangle with its top downwards. If biophilia prevails the defining motivation is love for all surrounding us creatures and bestial motivations, fear and hunger play the secondary subordinated role. Here we get the yang triangle whose top is in the upper direction. In the beginning of the table the main behavioral motivations, defining the general direction of the human behavior, his or her relations with others, value system, are presented. This greatly simplified version distinguishes four main motivations, prevailing in the case of the necrophil and defining the bestial level of the human psychics. These motivations are certainly present also in the biophil's psychics but here they are secondary and subordinated which can be seen in the right part of the table. Let us now examine the main manifestations of necrophilia and biophilia in the human behavior (see Table 6). The knowledge of the main qualities of those two aspects of human nature enables both, effective self-control and quick recognition of the necrophilia's features in other people. Table 6. Comparative characteristics of necrophilia and biophilia.
Mythologism One of the main special features of the necrophil is the strongest difference between the declared and the real behavior. At the same time we meet with the most sophisticated demagogy allowing justifying the lowest behavior with high goals and motivations. Such system of myths forms a kind of shell, hiding the real aims of the behavior of the destructive leader from others and often from him. One of the modern Western schools of the energetic healing can be a good example. It has obviously pyramidal structure and makes new comers pay inappropriate sum of money for the 'initiation' (up to 10000 dollars per person!) they claim that money is a form of the sacrifice for the cosmic powers in the name of the good of humanity. The money definitely goes not on the needs of Humanity and Cosmos but into the leaders' pockets. It is worth to mention that Eastern esoteric tradition pays the greatest attention to the destruction of the system of myths (Maya's veil). They deform the perception of reality and make a human become a toy of the blind bestial instincts. Such mythological 'shell' consists of two ingredients: myths that deform the perception of reality and myths which allow interpreting one's own acts in the suitable way (mask). Naturally as soon as you get into the sphere of influence of such manipulative leader he tries to impose this system of myths on you. As a rule that is done in a rather subtle and not obvious way. Table 6 presents both systems of myths. Their common feature is the tendency to the very simplified and extremely schematic vision of reality (black and white picture of the world). Any alternative point of view is unacceptable and the only and 'the most correct' opinion is declared. Such one-dimensional way of thinking leads to the authoritarian personality unable to stand any objections and suppressing any different way of thinking. This can be conducted by the means of direct violence, which is typical for totalitarian regimes and by the means of advertising, penetrating all spheres of life from the very childhood, which is typical for the consuming society. A very important tool of the mythologisation of perceptive mechanisms is their patterning, forming of so-called 'cognitive patterns' (63). The person does not even try to understand the sense of the events but simply puts on it one of the ready-made 'labels'. A member of a manipulative sect sees only one the most proper religion and those who are faithful to it all the rest are devil's servants, agents of special services etc. Naturally the smaller the number of such 'labels' is, the stronger and more stable the patterning is. The choice of patterns itself has been formed since the early childhood and is then maintained by the environment in which a person lives. One of the examples is 'McDonald's culture' (the generation choosing Pepsi) that has been formed by advertising, cartoons since the childhood and later maintained by 'soap-operas', the same advertising, rock groups etc. One more very important special feature of such destructive personality is the desire to look in a certain way in the eyes of others, to look and make impression but not to be. If undesirable information still gets out through mythological filters the special blocking mechanisms are used. These are the narrowing of attention that makes obvious things invisible and deformed perception that gives the opposite sense to absolutely clear situations. This could be also 'forgetting', wrong doings and other manifestations of unconscious, displaced desires described in psychoanalysis (7, 14). All this deforms one's perception so strongly that both, the manipulator and his victim literally become deaf and blind, reminding of a hamessed horse that is able to see only the narrow gap right in front of it. Aims and motivations The branched system of myths hides the real system of aims and motivations of the necrophil's behavior. It as a rule has rather complicated multi-level structure whose roots are in the depths of the unconsciousness and, possibly, in subtle reality and its dwellers (in the case of obsession). However, this value system and motivations is practically always characterized by the domination of the bestial, fleshy element with the very strong materialistic orientation. This can be easily seen in the Table 6. This is the strongest egocentrism, percepting oneself as the center of the world, looking at things only through the prism of one's own desires. These are also variable phobias, fears which are as a rule rooted in unelaborated fear of death, unconscious fright of the after-death world. That is why necrophils try to avoid everything new, unusual and to put the world in the stiff primitive scheme. At the social level these fears manifest in eliminating of potential rivals and surround oneself with ungifted but obeying and dependent people. The demonstrative bravado, unjustified risk, exaggerated cruelty often replaces these deep fears. Vital strength (Prana) The characteristic feature of a necrophil is an inclination for limitless accumulation of vital energy, strength usually obtained in the parasitizing way. From the thermodynamic point of view necrophil and biophil present absolutely different systems. Biophil functions as an open non-equlibrium system, existing in the streams of vital energy and letting them freely go through itself. Necrophil, at the opposite, is oriented towards accumulation of vital energy, storing it for future, i.e. works as a conservative system. In such regime parasitizing on other living beings becomes the main source of energy. Very often the whole 'nourishing chains' are established: the necrophil himself is parasitized by the next one of the higher level etc. up to subtle beings, provoking obsession (spirits). The structure of the necrophil's psycho-energetics creates very good conditions for that. In spite of parasitizing the necrophil is able to pass on his contact with a destructive spirit to other people. In the extreme case the structure of the personality of such necrophil is destroyed and he becomes a biorobot directed by the subtle level and supposed to collect the vital strength. A very important condition of the successful 'sucking out' of the vital strength is the concentration on the image of the parasite. It works as tuning of the radio-receiver at the chosen station, ensuring mutual contact and energetic channel through which the vital strength flows. Such concentration can be achieved by the variable means. For example subtle beings may appear as terrifying monsters in this case the fright ensures the necessary concentration. Sometimes, especially in night dreams, they look as appealing girls or young men. The strong sexual excitement gives the needed result. Another possibility, especially common in our days, is taking the image of the new-comer from the space, UFO-naut, 'gods' messenger' etc. Naturally the pupils of such 'teacher' also become at first necrophils and then biorobots. Very often the manipulator, in order to ensure the durable contact with the victim, establishes attachment, reminding of the narcotic one. The victim gradually dies, losing the vital strength, but experiences temporal rise and euphoria when he or she contacts the leader. If it goes together with the transformation of the victim's psycho-energetic structures he or she gets strongly dependent on the leader. Naturally, biophil also needs vital energy. However, he does not try to store it or take it away from other living beings. The spent vital strength is renewed due to the openness to the world, constant interaction with the environment, being inexhaustible source of this energy. At the same time the openness means giving one's own vital strength to everybody who is in need. If we use a technical analogy we can say that biophil is a transformator of the vital energy. Huge streams of vital energy go through his psycho-energetic centers but he takes only as much as he needs at the moment without storing anything. This way is the basic one for the vast majority of Eastern psycho-energetic techniques. Psycho-energetics of a necrophil is organized differently. It rather reminds of the 'black hole' sucking in everything from the space around it without giving anything to the others. Parasitizing character of such psycho-energetics is destructive not only for the others but also for the necrophil himself, for even from the point of view of physics any closed system is doomed to rapidly growing chaos, degradation and death. Psycho-energetic criteria of recognition of necrophil and biophil, placed in the end of the table, are based on these energetic differences. They allow defining whom you contact according to your own subjective feelings. These criteria, certainly, are not absolutely precise. If a person is ill, weakened you can feel psycho-energetic, reminding of the one of a necrophil. Only the sum of psychological and energetic characteristics may give the correct picture. The desire of power The natural consequence of everything, which was said of a necrophil above, is a great desire of the unlimited power that should be got at any price and never given away. It is not only an independent motivation for him but also a wonderful opportunity to satisfy all other desires, especially hunger, for the power allows controlling the psycho-energetic of the subordinated people. That is why, other than biophil, necrophil treats the power as a goal itself and will never let it go willingly. The power means to him the same as the drug to an addicted person. When necrophil loses his power he feels much worse not only at the physiological but also at the physiological level because the huge source of the vital strength is cut away. Behavioral patterns Certainly all enumerated above motivations are usually carefully masked and get out only in the process of the observation of the real behavior. They manifest especially openly in so called behavioral patterns, i.e. in stereotypic behavioral reactions or ways of interpretation of one's own behavior. Table 6 presents some of these behavioral patterns typical for a necrophil. The significant number of behavioral patterns makes a person become a kind of robot or insect, driven by strict instincts. They all are practically uncontrollable by human mind and turn on automatically whenever the appropriate situation occurs. A wonderful example can be behavioral stereotypes formed under the influence of advertising. Arguments of reason disappear and when the advertised product is seen a strong desire to buy it comes immediately. One of the typical behavioral patterns of a necrophil is a principle of that allows everything, justifying it with higher goals. It was very well described by F. Dostoyevski in his novels. The whole following history of the XX-th century is a wonderful illustration of its practical use by variable totalitarian regimes. Another such behavioral pattern is justification of one's own wrong doings by the statement that somebody would do it and way but in the worse version. For example a person works in repressing organs of the cruel regime and claims that he kills people in the most painless way and somebody else at his place could be a real sadist. Such arguments are often used by variable collaborationists. Nihilistic patterns are also very typical for a necrophil then the destruction and elimination of something 'bad' is particularly stressed and the positive creative aspect is practically absent. We had a chance to face such patterns in Perestroyka period. Obviously, biophil's behavior also contains some stereotypes and patterns but they manifest at the level of instrumental secondary behavioral reactions. Important essential decisions are well thought and realized. As it has already been mentioned, any real person has some features of necrophilia and biophilia. The most important thing is which of them prevails and define the main behavioral features. Correspondingly the awakening of spirituality means activation of biophilia and degradation to the bestial element means necrophilia, they are first of all reflected by behavioral changes. That is why the analysis of one's own behavior is an effective mean of self-control, enabling to notice the first signs of necrophilia and remove it with the help of appropriate meditative and psycho-energetic exercises. The same criteria are very useful during altered state travels. On the one hand, constant self-control allows significantly strengthen one's protection from destructive subtle beings, for they use seeds of necrophilia in our character in order to subordinate our psychics, manipulate our mind. On the other hand, these criteria would help us to understand whom we deal with (especially their version presented in Table 7). Table 7. Main psycho-energetic criteria, defining the ‘black’ teacher.
Due to Table 7 you can evaluate proportions of features of necrophil and biophil in your character and conduct constant self-control. Take the table and think of your day, your acts and analyze, comparing special features of necrophil's and biophil's behavior, whom of them you were closer to. Then try to understand what makes you act as necrophil. Even such simple but regular self-analysis gives good effects. It would be even better if you do it together with meditative exercises and work with integrative techniques in altered states of consciousness. This allows to correct those elements of psychics which cannot be consciously controlled and at the same time block our spiritual development. In our days one can meet many people, pretending to be spiritual teachers, contacting higher astral levels etc. Table 6 helps to understand whom you really deal with. Its modification, presented in Table 7, fulfills this task even better. The table is based on the model of the 'black' teacher as necrophil oriented towards psycho-energetic vampirism and influenced by beings from the subtle level of our reality. The main part of vital strength taken from pupils of patients goes there and only the small part is left to the 'teacher'. This is the reason of the narcotic need of the 'black' teacher in contacts with his pupils without which he feels much worse. The real teacher is morally satisfied by the contacts with his pupils but in this process he spends his own vital energy, gets tired and needs some rest to recover. Table 7 does not contain characteristics of the real teacher, for they practically repeat the features of biophil, presented in Table 6. Naturally both tables do not give absolute criteria of the recognition of necrophilia and biophilia. They should be treated as a helpful tool useful for self-control in the process of our development. The most important thing is orientation towards constant spiritual practice, strengthening the contact with the higher levels of our reality which would help us to find our way.
© Evgueny Faydysh. 1999. |
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