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Cultural structure of the mind


(Page currently in renovation and text correction)



11 / 18 / 2011


Please, think about


"Culture is not your friend" Terence McKenna


Let's be direct and very clear


_ What are you doing in life ?

_ And you, how much do you make per month ?


Civility badly rendered


_ Hi..., how are you ?

_ Goodbye.


Average mindset


My friend Gerard who lives in the Himalaya where many other westerners also live told me once :

"Here, there is no disciple, but only gurus."

And of course, they were all enlightened and broke. No disciple, no business!


11 / 25 / 2011

Is human nature good?

Of course, it's good!

See by yourself.

They hate you,

but they don't kill you.

They only think about.

11 / 27 / 2011

"God judges the intention"

Good news!

I can do everything I want

I can lie as much as I want.

As long as I have a good pretext to justify myself,

I can think to be a good person.

"Before I speak,

I have something important to say."

Groucho Marx

11 / 28 / 2011

Better to say

"Please",

and never

"If it pleases you",

if you don't want to wait a very very long time.

The cultural structure of the language is sometimes more subtle than the mental structure of the one who uses it.

On western barbarity

"Who loves well chastise well."

"For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.”

"Hell for eternity."

And it's with this kind of despicable thoughts that we believe to more animals.

11 / 30 / 2011

_ How to be simple?

_ Never ask the question otherwise you are going to complicate everything.

12 / 3 / 2011

Being and 'I'.

To drink a glass of water or water in a glass?

Nobody drinks a glass of water.

Only the ego is capable of such a feat in its mind.

"More and more" versus "less and less" is the mind and culture.

12 / 5 / 2011

Everything happening in the world today, and before, is obviously part of the divine plan and the Karma of humanity.

But is there any divine plan and Karma somewhere else than in the mind?

Individual mind, cosmic mind, spirit of nature...

We are getting old because we have nothing better to do.

We don't stop to search because we are tired, but only because we don't believe in it anymore.

Everybody wants to be rich and somehow a superstar.

But nobody can forget that 2/3 of humanity is dying of starvation.

It's not easy to feel good in this world without ignorance and selfishness.

Bliss is certainly something else.

Why, in ancient Egypt, is there so much glorification of the death of kings and queens, so much insistence on their passage to the other world, and none of the priests who were very powerful too and had the knowledge to perform these rituals?

Or they knew it was a joke, or they had another gateway.

I smell a rat... in the pyramid!

Modern culture and wisdom

When someone insults you with words or deeds because he thinks you are an idiot, he's showing you that he is vulgar, that is to say, not interesting and without education. In other words, when someone insults you, he tries to make you understanding that you don't need to communicate with him because he is worthless, which he probably doesn't know. So what to do with such a person ? Smiling like an idiot to please him and not telling him what he just explained you about himself could be a wise solution.

Or you can try to explain him for the fun knowing that it's absolutely useless..., if he's not bigger than you.

12 / 6 / 2011

Logic and so obvious

_ You are a nihilist and you will never go to the paradise.

_ Because I don't believe in it, I'm already in the paradise.

If God Himself with all his love, compassion and knowledge comes from the sky in our western world to instruct us and tell us the truth, I wouldn't give Him more than 24 hours before to be killed.

Thank you Jesus. The message is still very clear.

Thank you science and materialism, we have never been more Judeo-Christian than today.

12 / 7 / 2011

The arrogant humility of those who doesn't know, but believe to know

Many philosophers or other thinkers know without any doubt that "The Truth", the absolute truth, the ultimate truth, the divine truth, the final truth and so on, doesn't exist. It's for them just a concept, an idea, a word, a figment of imagination, a stupid thought.

They think that because they obviously didn't find it.

The most erudite persons are sometimes the most ignorant.

And their arrogance cannot be questioned.

12 / 8 / 2011

We evaluate the quality of our life with money.

Does life have a price?

Quality is what you have made of it.

Nothing to do with money,

only with decency and intelligence.

12 / 17 / 2011

Get a life..., a new life.

Some people love to hurt the others.

It's their right and pleasure, their little weakness.

Wait to be reincarnated,

then truly enjoy the consequences of your pleasure.

"We reap what we saw"

here and now

or somewhere else and later.

It's only a question of time.

Time, this dimension which doesn't exist,

but won't prevent us to reap what we saw.

1 / 12 / 2012

In the end, why do we want to know if God exists?

Is there anything to blame ourselves for?

Same same, but different.

In the end, why do we want to believe in God?

In the end, why don’t we want to believe in God?

What is the difference between the Sanatana Dharma (the eternal and natural order) and the Tao?

A very intellectual civilization and another very poetic and far from stupid.

1 / 28 / 2012

Once I was speaking with a Swami about the dating of some sacred books. And he told me : "We, Hindus, don't have the concept of time."

After a while, I told him : "Listen, it's time for eating. May I invite you?"

Guess what ? He said "Yes".

2 / 23 / 2012

What the ego calls "love" is an emotion which flatters and excites him or her.

But true love is very different. It's like God, the Self and consciousness.

Every works of art tell us : "It’s now or never."

And we don't listen.

3 / 7 / 2012

And if philosophy, metaphysics and spirituality were nothing more than an ego-trip.

Sincerely speaking, the real question is not to discover that philosophy, metaphysics and spirituality are or are not the expression of egocentricity. Who am I? What is to be a human being? Does God exist? What happens after death? What is good and what is bad? Can we really understand what life is? Is there an absolute truth? Why suffering? Why can’t we just be good and correct? How should we live? Why so much evil? Is there free-will or destiny? Can I free myself from bondage and suffering? Etc., etc., etc... All these questions concern obviously "me, I, myself, my life, my fears, my hope, my, my, my…, me, me, me…, I, I, I…" The mental life of the ego is an ego-trip ; it cannot be anything else. So the real question is : "Can it be a good ego-trip? Some kind of ego-trip which could go beyond the ego itself and not be useless or absurd as ego-trips usually are? Could it be an illusory trip which would finally reveal something true?"

If you go very deep into the philosophical, metaphysical or spiritual questions which concern you personally and really trouble your mind, unanswerable questions of course already asked since the beginning of humanity or almost, you will inevitably arrive at the question "Why am I asking these questions? Who am I to ask such questions and what makes me thinking that I can find an answer?" As a matter of fact, more you sincerely ask to yourself these questions, more you discover your ego-trip and more you understand the real nature of the ego who is asking these questions. And that’s already a very big answer for someone who is sincerely seeking the truth. But the seekers of truth don’t usually reach a level of understanding where they can see that all their mental life turns around a single center which is "I, me and myself" and even less that their mental life is in fact the expression of their egotism, greed and hypocrisy. Why not? Is it so difficult? Why to carry on during all the life with unanswerable questions and never face the fact that they express an ego-trip which leads nowhere? Why so many great thinkers never realize this truth? It’s so simple and obvious! Why? Would it be because it’s too simple and obvious or is it because the ego doesn’t want to face this truth?

Imagine that at the end of their speech or books, the greatest thinkers of the past and present realize that all their works were just an ego-trip, nothing more that the expression of an egotistical, hypocrite and greedy mind which especially wants before anything else to shine above every other minds whereas it was much better and simpler to come back to a traditional teaching which of course is not theirs, and that the judgments and theories they have elaborated are very partial, not to say untrue because they have never been able to face the most important truth which is : "What I am doing, I am not doing it to really help others. I’m doing it for my personal satisfaction." It must be said that the fruit of their work is maybe excellent, but what value has it if the person who are doing this work doesn't know its true purpose or more precisely doesn't want to recognize it? If these thinkers, philosophers or spiritual masters were really honest and sincere, they would stop right away to do what they are doing and would find another job, and that would become a serious problem for those who make a living with this kind of teaching. The fact is that these intellectual people are very smart and they know very well what they are doing and why they are doing it. But they have a very personal point of view on what is honesty and sincerity, and they especially have very good justifications to go on living their ego-trip. "For the ego, a lie is not anymore a lie if he has a good pretext for lying." For this psychological entity which feeds on illusions to survive in its mind, everything is good or bad, what is good can become bad and what is bad can be in fact very good. So what’s the problem? Is there any problem?

Yes, this raises soon or late a serious problem. The culture created by this kind of minds which lead philosophy, spirituality and finally the thoughts and the intelligence of a civilization doesn’t make anybody happy. This kind of culture destroys everything on its way. In a culture which advocates egotism, greed and hypocrisy, there is no value, nothing is worth to be lived, and the truth is a so vague concept that at the end, nothing is true. And finally, there is only insanity left, not the kind of insanity you can find in a lunatic asylum, just the insanity of a civilization without real ethic and purpose, a civilization where everything is fake.

3 / 10 / 2012

In a society where "If it's not expensive, it has no value", are free culture and everything you can get for free less than nothing?

4 / 14 / 2012

Beliefs have consequences or not?

If everything has a meaning and nothing happens by chance, there is no mistake and you must be a very happy person. How can you complain about anything in such context?

Arrogance is obviously the expression of an amazing complex of inferiority becoming a serious complex of superiority and it doesn’t really make sense. Let’s take the innocent remark of a person telling to someone: "You cannot understand" which somehow means "you are so stupid, just forget it". But this pretty insulting statement doesn’t mean "I’m so smart that I know you cannot understand". As a matter of fact, it means that the difference between you and me doesn’t allow me to understand what you understood, which could be true. But if the cultural, intellectual or social difference between us doesn’t allow me to understand what you understood, this difference doesn’t obviously allow you to understand what I am able to understand too. So the one who claims that the other cannot understand doesn’t in fact understand its own statement, and he expects the other to take it for granted.

Morality blues :

Explain what you think and don’t think that you are better or worse than the other. And which ego can sincerely think : "This doesn't concern me ?"

"We are living in a very interesting time."

You just have to be on the right side to think that. View from the other side, it’s pretty much a living hell.

To hate the one who doesn’t hate you, what a strange way of living!

How to call this sickness?

5 / 10 / 2012

It seems logical that if the Divine exists, whatever the idea we have about it, its presence must be everywhere all the time and absolutely obvious for everybody even if we are not able to perceive it, otherwise it doesn’t exist. What could be more present at anytime and obvious than the fact to be conscious, consciousness itself? For thousand years, Hindus explain that the Divine and consciousness are one and the same. But consciousness having no form, the Divine couldn’t create man in his own image. Anyhow, it’s rather unlikely that God could have an image which means to look like something and in this case, to look like a man who himself looks like a monkey.

Culture teaches us what should be normal.

Reality as it is shows us what is natural.

Only the ego differentiates normal from natural because reality scares him or her.

6 / 22 / 2012

Is it reality as it is, madness or necessity, truth or lies?

We all choose our thoughts; that’s our freedom,

A freedom which can very quickly become a serious problem.

"I have participated in two wars and know that war ends when it has rolled through cities and villages, everywhere sowing death and destruction. For such is the logic of war. If people do not display wisdom, they will clash like blind moles and then mutual annihilation will commence."

"Rationality will not save us."

"I think the human race needs to think more about killing and about conflict."

"There is something beyond one’s self."

"_ In that single night, we burnt to death 100 000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo, men, women and children.

_ Were you aware this was going to happen?

_ Well, I was part of a mechanism that, in a sense, recommended it. I analyzed bombing operations and how to make them more efficient, i.e. not more efficient in the sense of killing more, but more efficient in weakening the adversary."

"Proportionality should be a guideline line in war. Killing 50 to 90 percent of the people in 67 Japanese cities and then bombing them with two nuclear bombs is not proportional in the minds of some people to the objectives we were trying to achieve. I don’t fault Truman for dropping the nuclear bomb. The U.S. Japanese War was one of the most brutal wars in all of human history. Kamikaze pilots, suicides… Unbelievable. What one can criticize is that the human race prior to that time and today has not really grappled with what are, I’ll call it "the rules of war". Was there a rule that said you shouldn’t bomb, shouldn’t kill, shouldn’t burn to death 100 000 civilians in a night? Lemay said: "If we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals." And I think he’s right. He, and I’d say I were behaving as war criminals. Lemay recognizes that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side has lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?"

"We often see what we want to believe."

"Be prepared to reexamine your reasoning."

"Human beings must stop killing other human beings."

"In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil. How much evil must we do in order to do good?"

"He was trying to save the country. He was trying to save our nation. And in the process, he was prepared to do whatever killing was necessary. It’s a very, very difficult position for sensitive human beings to be in."

"You can’t change human nature."

"We all make mistakes. We know we make mistakes."

"I’m not so naive or simplistic to believe we can eliminate war. We’re not going to change human nature any time soon. It isn’t that we aren’t rational. We are rational. But reason has limits."

These quotations comes from an amazing documentary about the life and times of former U.S. Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara, "The Fog Of War", directed by Errol Morris in 2003. This film is available for free on Internet.

6 / 30 / 2012

"Culture is not your friend." Terence McKenna

But for some reason, we don't differentiate culture and art.

7 / 11 / 2012

Two very cultural structures of the mind

It’s gorgeous because it’s new.

But Picabia would have answered : "In order to love something you have to have seen it and heard it for a long time, you bunch of idiots !"

Both are true and separated of each other, they are false. Finally, what is true if everything is false?

No no no! The mind is not a nightmare.

7 / 22 / 2012

Is it a joke?

The seven capital sins, also called deadly sins to make them more terrifying, are:

- Greed

- Wrath

- Envy

- Gluttony

- Lust

- Pride

- Sloth

And nothing about selfishness and hypocrisy?

Everything is fine in the west!

About death in the movie "Hereafter" of Clint Eastwood.

"_ Don’t you think there may be something ..., an afterlife?

_ No, I don’t think so. Anyway, if there were something, don’t you think that someone would have already found it. There would be proof of it. No? "

Does this remark express the materialistic and western structure of the mind in all its splendor, blindness, arrogance, ignorance and stupidity? If there was something after death, everyone would know it and of course, there would be proof of it. Proof for the living of what is afterlife, isn't it strange?

As far as we can go in the past, it seems that all people have always believed in the afterlife. There are sacred books on this subject in every spirituality, every religion and every traditional culture of the world. There are countless testimonies, stories and experiences about it. But there is no proof. What could be a proof? What could convince this person who in the movie incarnates very well, for some good reason or by chance, selfishness, hypocrisy and greed, but who is politically correct, not to say perfect? One might even wonder why this man prefers to believe without any proof that there is nothing after death instead of believing in the afterlife.

9 / 27 / 2012

Interesting concept about death

"The most beautiful tribute one can pay to life itself, it’s to know how to leave it when it’s the right time." In the movie of Laurent Bouhnik "24 heures dans la vie d'une femme".

"No man ever steps in the same river twice" Heraclitus

Everything is a process in perpetual transformation.

So there is no true reality.

There is nothing true

except the consciousness which is watching the flow of the river.

10 / 8 / 2012

Mind structure at the very least post-avant-gardiste

I don’t find the music of today very interesting.

I prefer the one we will listen in the future, in 50 or 100 years,

ambient music for instance.

11 / 2 / 2012

As it is

Death is never a problem because it’s instantaneous.

Reality as such is never a problem because we cannot escape from it.

Truth is never a problem because it cannot be otherwise.

Private

Too many laws and not enough ethics.

Choose

We cannot forget what we did. And if we try, it becomes an obsession.

The "I" has to take its responsibility.

The art of living

Do what you want,

but do it well

at least for yourself.

1 / 29 / 2013

Very logical (about TV among other things)

People love what they despise and hate.

In the world of today, everything is in such a way that we don't understand anything anymore.

May peace, love and truth prevail on earth,

even if the present culture would rather make us believe that this terms are incompatibles.

3 / 21 / 2013

Cultural structure of the mind in space and time

_ In order to become a genius, is it enough to be at the right place at the right time?

_ And to become a complete idiot, what do you think it's necessary to be?

Science is great

The Big Bang theory is a very interesting theory beside the fact that it doesn’t explain anything about the Big Bang itself, what bangs, where it bangs and why it bangs.

Why not also to speak about art without mentioning anything about art? It could be a very interesting talk for a cocktail party.

6 / 4 / 2013

You are not the impression you have of yourself.

Music soothes the soul.

And techno makes me as sweet as sandpaper.

The art of not being what we are that we enjoy so much

"How to be successful in our life" means very clearly that we are not successful, but real losers,

and the more we look for to be successful, the less we will be.

This kind of literature should only concern psychoanalysis and be forbidden to general public.

And please, notice that I didn’t say psychoanalysts.

6 / 16 / 2013

What a wonderful world!

Dr. Fletcher: "You're a rational person. You're a trained psychiatrist. You know the difference between what's real and what's not."

Kathryn: "And what we say is the truth is what everybody accepts. Right? Psychiatry... it's the latest religion. We decide what's right and wrong. We decide who’s crazy or not."

In the movie "12 Monkeys" of Terry Gilliam

7 / 11 / 2013

Ego-trip, ego-game

The new game in town is to introduce yourself as someone above everybody with a lot of humility, but without laughing.

And of course, it’s not a game for everybody.

PhD, engineering and other diplomas are welcome.

And never forget the stock of name cards.

8 / 7 / 2013

The "Dark Age" doesn’t force us to be dark

William Hundert:

"Do you mean to go out there to expose you as a liar and a cheat? No, I’m a teacher Sedgewick, I failed you… as a teacher.

But I’ll give you one last lecture, if I may.

All of us, at some point, are forced to look ourselves in the mirror and see who we really are. When that day comes for you Sedgewick, you’d be confronted by a life lived without virtue, without principle. And for that I pity you. End of lesson."

Sedgewick Bell:

"What can I say Mr. Hundert. Who gives the shit? Honestly, who out there gives the shit… of your principles, of your virtue? Look at you. What do you have to show for yourself? I live in a real world where people do what they need to do to get what they want. If it is lying, if it is cheating, then so be it."

Quotes from the movie "The Emperor's Club" of Michael Hoffman

Security

The search for security is a complete and total hell because security itself doesn’t exist anywhere and at any time. True security will never exist for the simple reason that we all are mortal. Being safe actually would mean to become immortal, that is to say inhuman, in a static world where nothing would happen and consequently so boring that we would only wish to die. It is absurd because we know very well that everything is short-lived. So security itself is a concept which doesn’t really have a meaning. But to realize it is to be liberated from a useless search and to feel at ease or in other words so confident that we could say reassured. Finally complete insecurity can only express a feeling of absolute tranquility and a state of perfect invulnerability. Nothing bad can happen because we already know the end of the story, of all the possible and conceivable stories. What’s left is life and reality as it is, that is to say blissful.

The instinct for self-preservation is natural; fear and anxiety are already much less. The search for security as a mental structure is purely cultural and foolish because it’s not necessary to be very smart to know that the sense of security can only exist in the imagination and for a very limited time.

8 / 8 / 2013

Politically correct in a very correct society

The worst of every flaw is of course to have no flaw.

So let’s be without shame really selfish, greedy and hypocrite.

10 / 3 / 2013

In the movie "INSTINCT" of Jon Turteltaub written by Gerald Di Pego with Anthony Hopkins and Cuba Gooding, Jr.

Dr. Ethan Powell:

"Last try. Get it right.

What have you lost?

What did I take from you?

Write it.

(Theo is crying. He writes 'my illusions.')

Yeah. Congratulations.

You're a student, after all.

And you've lost nothing but your illusions..."

……………………………………..

"- What ?

- We have only one thing to give up: our dominiun.

We don't own the world.

We're not kings here, not gods.

Can we give that up?

Too precious, all that control?

Too tempting, being a god?"

12 / 8 / 2013

At the opposite of wisdom

If I don’t do it now, someone else anyway will do it.

But those who think like that never do the cleaning.

You choose what you like or what you have learned

"There is nothing more satisfactory than the complete flop of a running elephant shot in the brain." W.D.M. Bell, an African big-game hunter of the early 1900s (African Safari, P. Jay Fetner, 1987, p.113 of 678).

"Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier." Mother Teresa

12 / 19 / 2013

Would you like to go back in Stone Age?

If space and time is only one entity as science seems to prove it, there is no reason to only reincarnate in the future and not in the past because at the moment of death, we obviously leave the world we live in with its spatial dimension and so its temporal dimension too. So what could prevent us to come back in any period of time because anyway, we can reincarnate anywhere and maybe even in other worlds which belongs to this universe or another? Who knows?

If we take the concept of parallel universe, multiverse, holographic universe, virtual reality and the eventual possibility to travel in time, serious hypothesis introduced today by quantum physics, everything is possible. The imagination is the only limit.

But the true question is still the same: "What are we?", "How do we know that we exist here and now, and it doesn’t really matter where and when?"

Space/time: physical reality and/or metaphysical concept.

First thing first

How to appreciate the positive aspect of reality if we are not able to look at reality as it is?

To be positive doesn’t mean to be blind,

but to have a larger point of view,

a mind open to other possibilities.

12 / 23 / 2013

The consequences of free will

With free will come responsibilities and consequences.

So sometimes it could be more convenient to believe in destiny.

But whatever your beliefs are, they won’t allow you to escape difficulties.

Suffering is an ordinary fact of life.

What did you truly expect?

A new dream?

1 / 5 / 2014

William S. Burroughs:

"It's all ruins.

Or it all will be, given enough time."

Quote from the movie "Beat" of Gary Walkow (a very interesting filmmaker, photographer and writer. Explore his website: garywalkow.com)

OK

This world is really okay.

Anyhow, there is no other as far as we know.

"Fate is the excuse of the souls without willpower."

Romain Rolland.

Absolute Absurdity

If time and space are 2 different entities,

does it mean that one can exist without the other?

There is a serious problem with the theory of the Big Bang

and especially with what is supposed to precede.

If scientists pretend that universe appeared nowhere and from nothing,

and that it never started in fact at any moment,

they maybe should become poets.

The intelligence of the body

Who is acting? You or the person you are?

It’s not the life you have which makes you unhappy.

It’s what you think about.

Stop thinking about and just live it.

If something has to be done,

anyhow, you will do it without even thinking about it.

You don’t have the choice.

And quite often, it’ better like that.

1 / 9 / 2014

Cultural values

Our cultural structure of the mind or belief system determines what we think and how we behave. So if we don’t believe that spirituality can help us, we will probably never try to be good, but only successful.

3 / 18 / 2014

"What do you do with your life?"

"Me! I’m rich."

"It’s a very beautiful job."

In the movie "La Grande Bellezza" of Paolo Sorrentino

4 / 20 / 2014

Please, let’s be serious.

It’s not because I don’t take myself seriously that I cannot be serious.

Asking impossible questions is to be serious and yet.

On YouTube

"Psycho is the new sexy :>"

"Please feel free to piss in the garden"

"This self-obsession, it's a waste of living. It could be spent on surviving things, appreciating nature, nurturing kindness and friendship. And dancing."

In the movie “Only Lovers Left Alive” of Jim Jarmusch

6 / 23 / 2014

Problem about logic or hypocrisy

Is it a paradox or truly a contradiction to make millions from speech and writings about goodness, generosity and renouncement?

Very well known

Once you did it, if you do it again,

it would be repetitiveness

and sooner or later very boring,

whatever it is, even the best.

No hope until the end of life,

unless we understand something else.

But what?

The Buddha got it right and wrong

Suffering from not suffering,

A disappearing middle class problem.

What’s wrong with being only human?

Chaos is order beyond human understanding.

Is there just one reason in the whole universe that humans should understand everything on every possible topic?

The desire to understand is quite natural.

The arrogance to think that we can know the totality and since the beginning of time is quite another matter.

What kind of joke is that?

Even the Rishis told us that Maya is and will be forever a mystery.

We are ignorant.

That’s why we are looking for spiritual enlightenment, the knowledge of the absolute and not of the creation.

If someone really found every answer about everything in science, who’s this God?

Modern

Our culture today leads to drogue, depression and suicide.

If you disagree, prove it!

7 / 13 / 2014

In response to "Neo Nihilism" and Sam Harris

To abandon the very idea of "free will" is in fact to accept the concept of "luck", "chance" and "predetermination" which are not more scientific than the most ordinary life experience of everybody and of the willpower that everyone can obviously exercise at any moment. The concept of "Karma", action and therefore reaction, or in other words "cause and effect", that Sam Harris knows very well for having thoroughly studied Vedanta and Buddhism and so created a neo philosophy increasingly popular and in perfect agreement with Neo Advaita which advocates irresponsibility and carelessness, as Eckhart Tolle does so well, has no relationship with predeterminism, fate and destiny. Sam is without the slightest doubt a very intelligent person – and also very crafty to get the customers of the others – but his theory simply does not hold water because if "free will" and the power to chose were an illusion, all his writings and lectures would simply have no meaning since they would only concern the program of his own life in which he would have no choice and freedom, not even the one of writing other books and expressing any other ideas. And a program written by whom or what and why? No one would know anyway and the question itself would be irrelevant since the answer or lack of it would also be predetermined. So what is he really looking for by selling a book of 28 pages much more adapted to the new mind structure made in Internet and for business, but very expensive too for what it contains, some scientific findings on brain functioning and a theory which unfortunately has no meaning? I would say that he seeks above all exactly the same as anybody else..., (guess what?), and it does it with a talent and a remarkable intelligence that I would surely not withdraw from him. We can only wish to this brilliant person to come back to a more sensible and intelligent path and to stop losing his way in reasoning which denies its own subtlety.

The big question

" _ So you want to create a god, your own god?"

" _ Isn't that what man has always done? »

In the movie "Transcendence" of Wally Pfister

9 / 6 / 2014

Logic, but not very convincing

Morgan Freeman. "The Buddhists believe you keep coming back. Moving up or down a level, based on how you live your life."

Jack Nicholson. "See, that’s where they lose me. I mean, what a snail have to do to move up in the lineup ? Lay down a perfect trail of slime ?"

In the movie "The Bucket List" of Rob Reiner

The possible and the impossible

Is it really possible to find a right answer to a wrong question ?

That’s the art of mastering a game !

10 / 9 / 2014

"Only the future will tell."

A beautiful and poetic expression !

Time would have its own language and wisdom.

Synchronicity not according Jung

After all, life is maybe nothing else than a stream of coincidences and we only notice the ones which have a meaning although we cannot explain why.

Anyhow, did Jung truly explain anything after discussing so much about synchronicity ?

Very simple but nobody will do it

If you really want to change your life, just wake up every morning at 4 am and go to drink a tea under a tree. Everything else will follow.

And for those who already wake up at 4 am, only change the cup to drink your tea.

That’s it, have a good day !

A very long day, fresh and clean !

12 / 3 / 2014

Question of conscience or consciousness

Conrad Stonebanks : "Sure, you got a conscience that makes you weak. Success, real success, is being willing to do the things that other people are not."

In the movie "The expendables 3" of Patrick Hughes

Dilemma of "power"

"What if I could put him in front of you ?

The man that ruined your life ?

If I could guarantee that you’d get away with it,

Would you kill him ?"

In the movie "Predestination" of Peter & Michael Spierig

12 / 22 / 2014

The end or easy pretext for pure selfishness

"It's the end of the world, man. Do what you want."

In the movie "Order of Chaos" of Vince Vieluf

Of course if you never try

_ I’m just trying to do the right thing.

_ Nobody does the right thing.

In the movie "The Bourne Identity" of Doug Liman

2 / 5 / 2015

Maya ?

"Jacob, the world’s run on tricks.

Everyone plays…

To talent and illusion !"

In the movie "Water for elephant" of Francis Lawrence

5 / 1 / 2015

Logical end of privacy

"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear"

(based on George Orwell's book 1984 and attributed to Joseph Goebbels)

"If you have nothing to hide" can only be a fact if you life becomes an open book to everybody. Should I mention Facebook, the disclosure of your bank account and sexual life, the where about of all your activities and everything you do at home ? And in this case, is there any need of something called home, curtains, walls, etc. ? The end result of this "nothing to hide" is that individuality has no meaning anymore. The individual is nothing more than a wheel in a big machine called society… until the wheel brakes. But a machine profitable for who and what reason ? Not for the wheel itself for sure because as such it has no importance at all – wheels are obviously expandable. So what the real logic of this "If you have nothing to hide" ?

"You have nothing to fear" is an even more vicious statement because it seems that the individual can live without fear in a society which suppresses his or her only "raison d’être", individuality itself. And in other words, the only true reason to be yourself is in fact fear itself. And consequently you don’t need to be more than a wheel in a machine that becomes the only true existing entity suppressing your own identity.

But as we know, such society doesn’t happen out of the blue, no machine creates itself for the only purpose of being a machine, and moreover, a machine that uses and destroys living beings with an identity for the only purpose of existing as an entity without any personal purpose. So who or what really profits from this "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" ? In the end, nobody ! Not even those who have created the machine that will always be more powerful than what they have to fear and hide because a machine can be logical and systematic, but "it cannot think".

Logic is indispensable to communicate information and thoughts that seem to make sense. But logic itself has to be logical and make sense otherwise it becomes a sophistic trick to prove anything you want, “truth is lies” or “war is peace” as Orwell said. So at the end of any kind of reasoning, we can only rely on common sense, our faculty to "judge" what is right and wrong. Without any judgment, there simply is no intelligence at all.

Is there any common sense without consciousness and conscience ? That’s another question more interesting than a crazy logic working like machine without any reflection.

Creating story

The mind loves stars.

Since it sees them no more in the sky,

it creates its own in a mental universe.

Who can live without stars and hero,

or just without one's self ?

They are our models, our limits.

Can we live without paradigms and definitions ?

We are even not able to live freely without story.

6 / 2 / 2015

Apes

"You feel bad for, Ava ? Feel bad for yourself, man. One day the AIs are gonna look back on us the same way we look at fossil skeletons in the plains of Africa, an upright ape living in dust with crude language and tools all set for extinction."

In the movie "Ex Machina" from Alex Garland

3 / 6 / 2017

2 significant and very human mind structures

George Mallory is well-known for answering the question "Why did you want to climb Everest ?" with the retort "Because it's there !".

It is indeed a valid and somewhat rational reason for trying to climb the highest mountain in the world because if it were not there, the question would obviously not arise. Let us not forget that George Mallory was English and his attempts at climbing Mt Everest happened in the 1920s, when the conquest, colonization and British Empire were at their apogee.

But his answer becomes much less rational and judicious when one takes into account the fact that the Himalaya were already there for thousands or millions of years, and the indigenous people who also lived already there for generations after generations in the surrounding valleys never had the idea of ​​climbing such a mountain in order to go down immediately afterwards since, as everyone knows, mountain peaks are not places where one can live or just breathe comfortably.

In short, the story of this mountain, which was there, ended badly because George Mallory and his friend disappeared during their third attempt of climbing. They were 245 m from the top the last time they had been seen, and no one knows if they actually reached it before they died. "Must we do certain things just because they are there ?" is a question that one can ask, and it may even be more sensible than doing crazy things in order to finally die.

On the one hand, such a mind structure or thinking pattern seems to be typically modern and Western, and replaced in its cultural, political and even spiritual context, a very competitive and capitalist one, whose wisdom is quite frankly debatable. But on the other hand, if we just look at our life and way of thinking, our ordinary psychology, it might make sense.

On the other side of the barrier, so to say, a few thousand kilometers further and about four centuries earlier during the Ming dynasty, or maybe it was during the Song dynasty between the years 960 and 1279, nobody really knows, we also have another extraordinary story of a different kind, but somewhat lot more funny, or let us say at the very least that it ends a lot better.

A quite exceptional emperor of the Ming or Song dynasty built a huge fleet, not for war but more for kind of touristic purpose, absolutely unimaginable for the Westerners of that time, with some boats known as "Treasure-Ship", under the leadership of the Admiral Zheng He.

The main vessels were about 145 m long and maybe even larger, about 2 or 3 times the size of the largest European ships of the 16th century, such as the famous Santa Maria of Christopher Columbus. They had 9 mats, 4 bridges and could accommodate between 500 and 1,000 people – some historical reports even mention 2,800 people. It goes without saying that Western historians strongly question such technological prowess, but when we see what the Chinese are capable of building nowadays, it seems quite plausible.

And all this gigantic fleet of about 300 ships including 62 "Treasure-Ships" for what ?

It is known that Zheng He would have organized seven expeditions in the Indian Ocean going as far as the African coast to only visit the surroundings and bring back some souvenirs offered by the natives encountered during his amazing trip, such as a giraffe and some folk trinkets. Would he have had the idea of ​​transporting a monstrous army to conquer India and Africa, and why not then all the Mediterranean basin ? Of course not, what for ? We are very well at home when we are not on excursion somewhere at sea or in the mountains, everybody knows that without even thinking what one could do during the vacation.

Unfortunately for this dear Zheng He, when he went back to China, the emperor had changed and he did not appreciate at all this kind of extravagance. So he burned this incredible fleet, which had without any doubt cost a fortune, and Zheng He probably went home to have fun with something else less cumbersome.

I love this story, which is undoubtedly true, but maybe not in all its details, because it goes far beyond anything we could imagine in our time. Who would think for instance of going to the Moon or Mars to just see how it looks like without being at least concerned with the natural resources that one could find there ? Today such a prowess would seem insane or worthy of a rich eccentric in full crisis of megalomania who would have to be immediately put away in order to get at the very least its financial means. But in its political, cultural and spiritual context, which was Buddhist and Taoist as everybody knows, such a mind structure and thinking pattern were seemingly meaningful. Let us say that humans in general like very much to enjoy themselves when they have nothing else more serious to do, and when one is emperor, the entertainments may grow on a vast and incredible scale.

You may be wondering what relationship these 2 stories a little bit wacky can have with spirituality. Unless we are blind or not at all interested in the news, we cannot ignore that we are living at the end of a civilization and the beginning of a very new one never seen before, many mind structures, thinking patterns and all our culture is changing, and spirituality will play without any doubt an increasingly important role in the future for many reasons, including reasons absolutely not spiritual but purely economic, social and psychological.

Unless of being ignorant of our time, this new civilization already built today will obviously not be founded on excessive consumption as it was during the 20th century, but materially very poor, and surely extremely deprived of any external sign of wealth for the vast majority and almost the whole of humanity. Nevertheless human beings with their very different psychology from animals will remain more or less the same, that is to say that they will always need and appreciate some sort of adventure, exploration, discovery, and especially embellishment of their life, not anymore outer but inner life, that is to say some entertainments and pleasure. And spirituality is the ideal way to go on being human without suffering too much, or in other words by continuing to enjoy oneself whenever it’s possible, because spirituality costs nothing or very little, at most a few books, which can be freely available on the Internet, an initiation to a spiritual practice, which requires no equipment, but usually only to sit and close one’s eyes, and can also occur for free on the Internet, an ethics that can be communicated and understood in a few words without diploma from any school and university, and for those who really like and have time to enjoy it, a historical research on our spiritual heritage and cosmogony, which could also be available for free on the Internet, in libraries or at low cost in bookstores if the Internet is not the only source of information all over the world.

And of course, as we now can see it in Neo Advaita and New Age understanding of spirituality, the mystical experience or so-called "spiritual awakening" will have more and more importance because it will be the means if not the only one to distinguish oneself from the others, somewhat to get oneself noticed, and perhaps even to profit financially from it as is already the case today if the public can still afford it, that is to say to shine in one way or another, not anymore with external signs of richness, but only internal ones, which won’t cost a penny, but nevertheless value the life of everybody and gives some hope for a better life, a spiritual and psychological one.

In other words, if humans still have a place in this new civilization unless they have been replaced by a disposable and less costly android race, and they remain what they have always been since at least a few thousand years, what has no reason or real possibility to suddenly change anyway, the myth of the hero is far from over. And it will no longer be expeditions on Mt Everest, the Indian Ocean or other planets, which will distinguish some humans from the others or a big house and superb car that will do it. What will remain then if not spirituality and other cultural activities, which will cost absolutely nothing and above all do not consume any natural resources ?

These 2 stories show the extreme of abundance and frivolity, but we can very easily also discover the same extreme in the absolute sobriety, kind of Spartan or ascetic spiritual life. We already have very well-known examples like Ramana Maharshi and other traditional gurus. I agree that we are still very far from it because the main concern of the current kan ... gurus is now to become rich and famous all over the world. But this could very quickly change, not because of a great revelation, amazing experience or new spiritual awakening more powerful than usual, but simply for economic reasons that it would be foolish to forget even in the context of spirituality.

In short, with a bit of humor and a good deal of positive thinking apparently indispensable now to talk about spiritual matters, I would say that human beings will still have a lot of fun and even the means to take themselves seriously, and even a lot more seriously than in the present-day Satsangs where Neo gurus love to speak of completely futile or totally absurd subjects. Is it one of them ? It is up to you to judge, but do not forget, as it should be, to do it only with a positive thought that will not disturb anybody.

What about wisdom ? That was not the subject of this comment, sorry for the inconvenience it may cause you.

10 / 1 / 2018

Real positive thinking

Ease, security and comfort are the worst threat

that weighs on the future of Western civilization.

Don’t worry, it’s already changing.




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