One of the secrets of writing is that you can create a compelling argument for almost anything. Regardless of its logic, truth, or fact, almost anything can be created as verification to justify a point of view or manipulation of reality.
Clearly this has relevance to just about every topic under the sun. But nowhere is it more prevalent and proliferating than in the areas of spirituality and consciousness. Long the province of charlatans, mystics, scientists, and religious fanatics alike, the field of spiritual awareness is peppered with half-truths and unproven beliefs. Partly out of necessity, because the traffic of meaning between the spiritual and material realms is unreliable at best. But partly also because people like the truth to agree with them, to support them in their own interest and they like to talk about what interests them most: themselves.
The truth, however, is less partisan or preferential. It is strictly speaking, at least spiritually, impersonal. Let’s take some popular but nonetheless erroneous beliefs from the Mind-Body-Spirit field (also known as New Age) and look critically at what they are actually saying:
1. Only consciousness creates the world.
Everything is consciousness. Do not believe anything, it is already all that it is, or it is not. Both pre-manifestation and post-manifestation, emptiness and all possible potential. So consciousness does not create the world, it is self-sufficient, it is the real world!
2. There is a new spiritual teaching that allows people to rescue themselves and humanity.
People don’t need to be rescued, neither does humanity. You both need to see yourself for who and what you really are, so no rescuing is needed or appropriate. The idea of a new spirituality that saves or rescues is an excellent example of taking a relative topic like heroism and drama and turning it into spiritual terms, even if it doesn’t work, because it’s not relevant.
3. Our belief in the fallacy of the existence of objective physical reality that does not depend on consciousness is limiting.
The belief in existing objects is only limiting when we do not see the world as it really is, a reflection of the absolute and all objects that arise only in consciousness. This gibberish is popular, perhaps stemming from the popular idea that Maya same illusion or that samsara it’s not Nirvana or whatever. Read deeper into your own religion: Maya it is a relative reflection of the divine in the world of time and space.
4. Only the consciousness of a human being contains all the elements of existence. The consciousness of a human being is the same undifferentiated consciousness that exists within, through and without, and pervades all existence and all existing objects of this and any other time. The great sages are levellers, they insult our arrogance and complacency. This consciousness that I arise within as an individualized form is exactly the same, exactly the same, as the consciousness of a dog or a stone, why? Because there is only one consciousness.
5. Alter human consciousness because it includes all other elements; if a person were to use the knowledge, the world around us would change in crucial ways.
The consciousness of a human being or anything else includes all the elements. This is already crucially influencing the world; there’s no need to instruct people on how to do this, just help them see what they’re already creating!
6. Knowing how to achieve harmonious development together with the universe allows us to have a healthier physical body and a happy life, and the world will develop accordingly.
When a human being is too preoccupied with health, happiness, and harmony, he inevitably misses the most important point, which is that the world, like human beings and everything else, arises and disappears in consciousness. Since all this, from the point of view of reality, that is, where we really are, is happening simultaneously, spiritual evolution and harmonic development are strictly relative terms with no real relevance to the spiritual, transcendent, and divine. Playing with the incidence of synchronicity and convergence for the sake of self-interest carries its own consequences and dangers. But most importantly, when you get involved in it, you miss the whole point of the psychological and spiritual endeavor, which is the search for truth that is substantially more expansive than these material and quasi-spiritual concerns.
Finally…
7. Everything around us – the earth, the sun, space, nature, people and objects – is based on the structure of our consciousness, which includes the consciousness of the Creator. When we discover what spirit and consciousness are, we can manage our state of being, we can build the world and control all creative action and manifest results.
But this is what we are doing now! Also, does the earth, the sun, etc. really exist around us? Are they not more truly in us (from the point of view of individual psychology)? Or from a deeper truth these manifestations and us are not really the same thing, that is, consciousness? Does consciousness have a structure? How can the All truly have a structure? If the world were not rational and reasonable and made sense? Instead of being uncertain, irrational, arbitrary, and random? Do we really want to control (what? We are all consciousness!) and manifest results when we are already doing just that, without being aware of how and what and why and when we are manifesting anything? In any case, what do we understand by results? This world, the truth, is a manifestation of all possible worlds at all times waiting for us to witness and become one with it.