A letter criticizing Maharishi Mehesh Yogi and his "Transcendental Meditation" might as well be addressed to the entire Woo Age movement: its errors
are patently obvious. In reality, the goal of meditation is not to have access to "limitless energy, heightened efficiency of thought and action, and release from tensions and anxiety, peace of mind and happiness." All such advantages have no spiritual value, because it is not happiness that matters, it is the motive of happiness and the nature of happiness...
Truth does not matter to [the Maharishi], nor tradition. He does not seek to save men, he seeks to soften their path to hell, just as psychoanalysis does (Schuon).
Not only will such divine snake oil salesmen always be with us, nowadays the product boasts of a larger sales force than ever, only it pretends the oil is purely secular. But anyone who is even minimally skeptical is aware that the oil of wokeness is just a repackaged version of the same dubious product offered way back in Genesis 3.
What is snake oil, anyway, I mean the literal stuff? According to Prof. Wiki,
It has been suggested that the use of snake oil in the United States may have originated with Chinese railway laborers in the mid-19th century, who worked long days of physical toil. Oil from Chinese water snakes has for centuries been used in Chinese traditional medicine to treat joint pain such as arthritis and bursitis.
It may even "have had real benefits due to its high concentration of the omega-3 fatty acids" although "the rattlesnake oil later sold by charlatans did not contain a significant amount of omega-3."
As always, a counterfeit is dependent on the existence of the real thing. Same with spiritual frauds: as in the collectibles business, anything that has value can and will be faked.
Schuon's passing comment about psychoanalysis hits close to home, since that was the theoretical focus of my training in grad school. I would have continued to pursue post-graduate training to become a certified psychoanalyst, but in the mid-nineties decided instead to pursue this.
Thanks to the internet I've been blogging about this since 2005, even though I'm still not sure what this is. All I know is that I'm not qualified to sell it, which is why the service is free.
Changing gears -- downshifting, I suppose -- I recently read a book on the nature of diabolic warfare, called Dominion, by Fr. Chad Rippinger. It is a rather sprawling treatise, with way more information than one could ever assimilate.
More generally, life and history are so complex, it seems impossible to know where and when diabolical influence -- supposing it exists -- begins and ends.
In a footnote, there is reference to the possibility of possession of a nation, "in which the demons have gained so much ascendancy in the control of the government structures and the mindset of the people that the demons are in practical control of the nation."
Is this where we are? Or is there a purely natural explanation for the darkness, hysteria, perversion, and general flight from reality of the left? "Exorcists have noted on occasion that there are specific qualities or characteristics of the deviation of the people." Like what?
Like Libs of Tik Tok, I suppose. Obviously, I have a lot of experience with mental illness, and these people seem more than mentally ill.
But interestingly, supposing demons exist, they are members of the same hierarchy that applies to angels. Which is why demons higher up the chain of command want to censor Libs of Tik Tok, because the latter are giving the game away. The higher ups naturally want the darkness to remain in the dark, and they want normal people to be in the dark about their darkness.
In this regard, it is important to note that while demons may cooperate with one another, they actually hate each other as much as Kamala despises Brandon, as they are beings of pure malice:
Harmony among the demons, by which some are obedient to others, is not from friendship which they have among themselves; but from a common iniquity, by which they hate man and fight against the justice of God.
Ripperger adds that "one demon obeys another because of the fact that they have a common goal, which is to bring men down and fight against God." They may work together toward an extrinsic goal, but as in hell, "it is not so much a community as a horde of the damned."
Thus, their coordination is far from perfect. Analogously, think of the ultimate low-trust society, say, the old Soviet Union, which redounded to extreme atomization and paranoia, even between parents and children. Thus,
Even the lower demons will keep information from those who are above them in order to have some semblance of control in a situation: one of the diabolic principles is "knowledge is power."
Nor, properly speaking, do demons "illuminate" one another, since illumination "is to manifest the truth." While they have knowledge on their own plane of operation, they particularly "suffer darkness of the intellect in relationship to that which exceeds nature."
Here again, the analogy would be to someone -- say, a materialist -- who understands nothing that surpasses science, resulting in monumental error on the philosophical, metaphysical, and theological planes.
Thus, demons are are at once more intelligent than humans, but also more ignorant, as they will have false opinions about things that surpass their nature. It very much reminds me of Democrats, who habitually project diabolical motives into us, as can be seen from their reaction to the SCOTUS leak -- as if we really want to re-segregate the country, kill homosexuals, and enact the Handmaid's Tale.
Perhaps such people exist, but I've never met one. Is there a conservatives of Tik Tok?
It seems that demons are easily triggered: they "are extraordinarily self-absorbed and take everything personally in their interactions with others." Sounds familiar.
They are also ceaselessly frustrated, as it is impossible for them to be happy, or "to achieve the thing to which they are inclined."
It reminds me of how the left, immediately after the triumph of redefining marriage, turned to the fantasy of "trans rights" and all the rest. Getting what they want only makes them more miserable -- which is indeed like trans people themselves. No one doubts that they are unhappy, but the notion that mutilating their body and pretending to be the other sex will lead to happiness is empirically false.
I think this must also go to why it is so important to them that everyone buy into their delusions, as a way of assuaging their own conflict. In fact, demons themselves "have a deep self-hatred and self-loathing," and when they "act upon human beings, they will often make people feel their self-loathing, self-hatred, etc." Human progressives deny their self-loathing and project it into us.
"Demons are like children probing and testing the limits of what they can get away with." They are also activists, in the sense that focusing on something outside themselves temporarily relieves their pain:
Demons get a certain relief by possessing or being involved in things in this world.... it is for this reason, as well, that demons will very often spend a lot of energy trying to hold onto any influence they have in this world.
And of course they lie. It's what they do: "demons lie constantly," as "their will is fixed on the false." They are even bad liars, which these days is pretty easy to see. Indeed, they are ridiculous liars, which is surely one of the reasons they want to ban ridicule, e.g., the Babylon Bee.
To be continued. I should say that I still haven't decided the extent to which I take any of this literally, or merely as a symbolic way to talk about a reality we just don't understand. In other words, the effects are absolutely and undeniably real, but the cause is obscure. But speaking as a psychologist, it seems to me that these things cannot be reduced to what can be explained by mere psychology, so what's the explanation?
