07 Jun 2015
We are all sharing in some level of delusion or other. The question is whether the delusion is beneficial or malicious, whether the deluded person is hurting themselves or others, helping themselves or others, or neither.
Most things are rarely ”either/or" . It may be there is both benefit and harm. Most importantly we should ask, is our current delusion-to-reality ratio greater or lesser than what it was in the past? Which do I aspire to grasp and which to let go?
Even the BKs have had to regularly adjust their delusions as undeniable realities knock them for six. As they adjust, collectively they face a more acute crisis of identity, struggling to differentiate themselves from other groups and paths and what face to present to the world. Individually, BKs struggle to rationalise which other of their past beliefs will be challenged next by new realities, how to convince themselves they are indeed different to every other deluded fool who believed truth was exclusively theirs and its the ”others” who are deluded. They'll cling harder to the differentiating markers, they'll selectively pick from the world around them whatever bolsters their delusions. These are the pivotal delusions that need examining to truly ‘liberate' themselves. It is not just BKs. It is the dynamic of ego and super-ego* and these need to be examined constantly.
Deluded academic philosophers used to tell their students to ask the question ”Is it better to be a discontented Socrates or a contented pig?” (i.e. is it better to become wise if it leads to discontentment because you now see through delusions or to stay in the ”animal-bliss" of ignorance). They are making the basic error of confusing their metrics. The question of course has to be ”Is it better to be a discontented Socrates or a contented Socrates” . It may be that the way one moves from contented pig to contented Socrates is by passing through the stages of discontented pig and discontented Socrates to achieve both wisdom and contentment?!
When CG Jung was examining medieval alchemy as a cultural expression, he saw it as a metaphor of the innate human aspiration to higher consciousness, as well as symbolic of the dynamic path taken in therapy. He drew a diagram that shows how the base state (ignorance) transforms by ”purification” ( ”pyrric" - i.e. fire, applying the blowtorch of analysis and therapy) which takes one initially through the negrido (the blackening. burnt, even lower, dark, depressed confused state ) which, if the process continues, then becomes the ”albido” or whitening, entering a high, an ecstatic, idealised transcendental state after ”insights” and realisations and thinking one has somehow uniquely worked it all out - but unfortunately this state is ”in the clouds” , still incomplete. The Eagle has not yet landed.
The process is only complete when one reaches a ”rubido” or red state, i.e. come back to earth, enlivened and living more fully in the real world, ”on the level”, equanimity.
This process of healing parallels the path of the Hero’s Journey as outlined by Joseph Campbell, where the ”innocent/ignorant" leaves the known, ordinary state, enters dark realms (inner or outer), faces the various crises and is transformed by them, finding inner resources and becoming heroic, a ”higher being’ who then returns to live an ordinary life more contentedly and whole, often not recognised as anything different in his homeland.
There is no contentment for a conflicted unfulfilled ignorant youth, an unexercised, unresolved potential hero or the impractical, unrealistic idealist perpetual warrior who can’t see when victory is won and creates more battles.
The BKs want to keep their people in a state of perpetual battle with themselves and the world, they feed off the dynamic of the ups and downs their beliefs create, a perpetual cycle of small and big victories & defeats in a war that won’t end whilst one is alive. ironically, despite the jargon, one never "goes home" as long as one is a BK.
The resources to win are not to be found within oneself but are, according to BK doctrine, supplied from outside, from identifying them with the BK god and the BK collective. i.e. the person is neutered and made dependent.
The BKWSU, like the academics of real universities, present clever sounding abstract choices which are actually false dichotomies. It serves them. They'll present the BK ”student” with a world view that is a false dichotomy, one is either an ignorant b.c. Shudra or an elevated Gyani Brahmin, which requires a lifetime of ”effort” i.e always discontented and distasteful of what is because it is ”b.c." and ”Iron Aged".
A number of ex-BKs have agreed that in BK life you create bonds & friendships like soldiers do with those whom they fought alongside ”in the trenches”. They’ve shared intense experiences. You could say BKs are cannon fodder for the military-industrial complex of religion, which makes huge profits by creating enemies and perpetuating discontent. Peace, contentment, family, love between people, a fullfilled life can only be had ”in the next life”, that what is 'here and now' is dirty and impure, that your very skin and skeleton is the enemy. That’s no message to instil in the mentally ill.
Southwark mental health news has done its readership and their circle a huge service.
* Super-Ego is the Freudian term for what beyond oneself one identifies as - social group, clan, family, nation, football team, religion - and which of these is integral in a good or bad way for the person.