Global Theosophy |
Global Theosophy *******
En sand esoterisk stjerneport og stargate.
En indgangsport til andre verdener af energi, visdom og medfølelse
(Theos-L Forum - det ældste teosofiske forum på Internettet.) |
|||||||||
En privat hjemmeside om
|
Conditioning and other artificial arts
(published Aug. 15th 2003 by Morten Nymann)
All systems, cults, metaphysical groups and almost all human
conditions, practise conditioning. That is to say, they instil
into people a limited range of beliefs and require certain automatic practises. Unknowingly, the people concerned (which
can include the instillers) become 'servants' of the system.
Some systems are what we can call non-comprehensive. These would include those which do not have a world-view, and which function effectively enough within wellunderstood and accepted limits. A group of people associated together for the purpose of playing a game, carrying out a business or pursuing a limited objective could be called non-comprehensive. 'Comprehensive' systems are those with world-view, or with an outlook which causes their members to act as if they had a world-view. Such systems are those which require (deliberately or in practise) their members to act with regard to a comprehensive set of beliefs which will cover all, or most, eventualities. It will be noted that the 'Comprehensive' type system seems to include virtually all major religious systems. This is not, however, to say that the original form or understanding of the system was comprehensive in the sense of being regarded as immutable. Certain principles may have been held to be unchangeable: but others, some of them fundamental, can be seen as having been absorbed, over the years and centuries, into the kind of strait-jacket thinking which is a commen feature of systems of belief. Understanding is replaced by dogma. The origin of the dogma, and the stage at which it became crystallised, are easily forgotten. The importance of understanding this phenomenon, the dogmatisation of the flexible, is great. Because so many beliefs and pratices are taken for granted as central or essential to a whole belief-system, people in general (in any culture) tend to think in strait-jacket terms about a wide range of things. Consequently, they find it hard or impossible to absorb new - or unfamiliar - knowledge. - A further complication is that most extant human systems are currently projected by people who fail to make any distinction between spiritual feelings and socio-psychological ones; or between emotion or spirituality. Until comparatively recently this was not a problem for such people. Most peoples lived in mutually exclusive communities, isolated from one another. Social science and psychology were in their infancy or excluded, and in general, multicultural communities had little access to single-culture ones, which latter effectively dominated the world. But a new institution, unprecedented in its spread and urgency, arose when the discovery and wide publication of the phenomena of conditioning and indoctrination. When confronted with this knowledge, few extant cultures could explain why conditioning was necessary, or why so many well-established belief-systems were indistinguishable from 'brainwashing' ones. Looking at the history and development of belief-systems, it is not hard to perceive that they always deteriorate in their flexibility and capacity to understand. They also, and as a consequence, tend to rely more and more upon authoríty and over-simplification. None can be said to have guarded effectively against conditioning. The true Theosophists, as the published record over centuries shows, have worked against the mechanicality of conditioning, but have until recently lacked appropriate conditions under which to insist that this factor be taken into consideration. The true Theosophists contention is that, traditionally, there was a clear-cut method, widely if not universally applied by 'those who know'. This involved (1) indoctrination of the people (or some of them) to remove superseded ideas which had begun to operate as blinkers; (2) removal of the indoctrination to restore flexibility of viewpoint and consequent enlightenment; and then (3) application of stimuli to help make this enlightenment effective in the ordinary world. There are fairly close parallels in the mundane educational process. if, for example, everyone believed firmly in alchemy. The fixation on the alchemical goal would have to be weakened in certain people before they could profit from chemistry. This perception of conditioning end flexibility, can be used to examine virtually every human system of thought or action in the spiritual field. indeed, until it can be applied by someone it is not possible to hold a meaningful discussion with him or her. Nowadays, few people contest the importace of knowing about conditioning in order to examine belief-systems. Why, therefore, is it so difficult to communicate with so many people along these lines? The answer is very simple. We are at a stage in understanding human behavior analogous to that which obtained when people began to try to talk of chemistry to those who were fixated upon the hope of untold wealth (or, sometimes, spiritual enlightenment) through alchemy. Like the alchemist or those or those who want easy riches, people want dramatic inputs (emotional stimuli, excitement, reassurance, authority- figures and the rest) rather than knowledge. It is only when the desire for knowledge and understanding becomes as effective as the craving for emotional stimulus that the individual becomes accessible to change, to knowledge, to more than a very little understanding. So learning must be preceded by the capacity to learn. THAT, in turn, comes about at least in part by right attitude. And THAT, again, is where the would-be learner has to exercise effort. by a friend
|
Copyright © 2001 | M. Nymann - wisdomtheosophy@outlook.dk
|