Psychological Rebellion
"It would be absurd, obviously, to look for our own Being outside of ourselves. Therefore, it is not irrelevant to establish the following as a corollary: titles, ranks, promotions, etc. in the external physical world cannot in any way originate authentic exaltation, re-evaluation of the Being, or a move to a higher rung in the Levels of Being.” —Samael Aun Weor, Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology
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History is filled with oppression, violence, and
revolutions. More so, humanity is obsessed with the ideologies that
perpetuate conflict, dissonance, and political enmity. It is enough to
raise a flag in the name of freedom to incite the blood of millions of
individuals to march to war.
People have many justifications for
rebellion: the government is negligent, the taxes too high, the laws too
strict, the politicians too incompetent. Sadly, our humanity is
exclusively concerned with external changes, with rebellion against
ideas, culture, politics, religion, or the state. However, people ignore
the internal, psychological causes of affliction and social conflict,
and therefore do not know how to rebel against themselves.
Our society celebrates rebels, because they set
trends and go against the flow, risking their lives often without
seeking popularity. Their strong will and rugged individualism set them
apart from the rabble. While such qualities are not condemnatory, the
masses tend to admire such persons for the wrong reasons. People like
Che Guevara, James Dean, rebels without a cause, William Wallace in the
film Braveheart, musicians, and poets—individuals who incite violence
and political rebellion—they capture the imagination of the populace due
to their strong conviction and beliefs in freedom. While humanity
admires the good intentions of these philosophers, warriors, and
thinkers, the results of their ideologies have produced all the
sufferings and bloodshed of the great wars, which have plunged this
planet into complete ignorance and darkness.
Ideology, whether
from east or west, propounds freedom. People sing it in the churches, on
the tops of minarets, before the altar of the synagogues, and in the
meeting halls of Congress and the Senate. Yet it is this very concept of
freedom that religion and governments have used to provoke all the wars
of history, to defend their missions, agendas, and conquests. The
concept of freedom fascinates, captivates, and hypnotizes. It obstructs
the discernment of the consciousness and its ability to act for the
benefit of all people, regardless of race, culture, religion, sex, or
tradition.
People want freedom. Many are even willing to kill
or be killed for it. But rather than take such ideals at face value,
we, in these studies, like to question things profoundly, to understand
the significance of such terms at their roots. Therefore, we sincerely
ask: what is freedom?
In North America and in many countries,
people have the freedom to chose what to eat, where to travel, where to
work, what to believe, and whom to marry. And yet everybody continues to
suffer. We work at jobs we hate, fearing our boss, envying our
co-workers, being constantly consumed by feelings of dissatisfaction,
criticism, backbiting, emptiness, and despair.
Yet despite all our tragedies, people like to
externalize. They want to blame the exterior world for all their
problems. We want to change everything outside of us to conform with our
habits, dispositions, and prejudices. While people constantly fight to
better their external situations, we prefer, in these psychological
studies, to analyze the source of our discontents, desires, and
sufferings, which is within ourselves, within the mind.
Humanity
always wants to defend its desires, even at the expense of other
people’s lives. But what if we were to do something that has not been
done before, at least by most? What if, rather than go against the
government, political establishment, or popular culture, we were to
question our own wants, desires, and cravings? What if we were to rebel
against ourselves and our own psychological conditions that we have put
in the way of our own personal and spiritual development?
Bloodshed and violence will always recur so long
as people do not look within themselves to comprehend the psychological
impetus, the impulse, the will, that pushes them to act in mistaken
ways. Therefore, rather than rebel against the external world, we ask:
“What if we were to rebel against our own desires?”
This
question, of course, dissatisfies the majority, because humanity is
fascinated and enslaved to desire, yet for the few who want to
comprehend and develop their full conscious potential, such an inquiry
becomes the foundation and focal point of initiation into a higher state
of consciousness, a superior Level of Being.
Radical Change Goes Against Time
People believe that with time, situations will improve. Yet no great luminary, prophet, buddha, angel, etc., ever taught that things improve with time. What the great messengers of humanity emphasized is that true psychological and spiritual development is the outcome of tremendous internal revolutions.
“…the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force. —Matthew 11:12
Wars will continue to exist on our planet because
people expect external circumstances must change, not their interior
life. Rioting, violence, despair, and destruction will perpetuate and
condemn humanity to a vicious circle so long as people have delusions
about “tomorrow,” that eventually, if we wait long enough, “things will
get better.”
This is why Samael Aun Weor, the founder of the modern Gnostic tradition, stated in his book Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology:
“The mechanical hope of people serves no
purpose. They think that with time things will get better. Our
grandfather and great grandfathers thought that way; however, facts have
arrived to precisely demonstrate the opposite of this.” —Samael Aun Weor, Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology
Waiting
around does not produce changes. People always look for political
revolutions to transform the state of suffering they are in, ignoring
that through regime change or usurpations, one oppressive form of
government is replaced by another.
It would be better to rebel against our own states
of mind than the external world. Such a spiritual revolution occurs
when we go against our own habits, wants, desires, conditions. As we are
now, we tend to be slaves of circumstances.
How is this the
case? When we are insulted by an aggressor, we return with insults. We
are betrayed, then we want to get revenge. When we are patted on the
back, we smile.
People have the power to influence us as they
wish, and in fact it takes very little effort to make us follow along
with someone else’s program. Therefore, the question is: “Are we truly
free?” And if not, “How do we become free?”
Examine your daily life. Do people influence you?
Are you free from the desire for retaliation? When someone treats you
with disrespect, are you able to respond with genuine kindness and
concern, with selflessness, compassion? Do you act of your own volition,
free of the prejudices, hatreds, and negativity of others? Or are you
impelled by your own states of suffering: anger, resentment, anguish,
fear, and pride, whenever someone rubs you the wrong way?
Our
psychological states repeat in relation to the circumstances that
provoke them. Trying to manipulate external circumstances will not
produce radical change so long as our mind is egotistical, filled with
conditions and suffering. If we truly want the external world to change,
we must enact a transformation in our own psyche. Life will continue to
roll on beyond our control if we do not know how to consciously manage
our own psychological states, replacing the afflictions of mind and
heart with the virtues of the soul.
Be sincere. Analyze the facts of your life. People
who wait for change never experience it, because the world will
continue as it is so long as we do not contribute to it in meaningful
and conscious ways.
Spiritual and Psychological Revolutions
To be clear, when we use the term psychology, we do not refer to recent studies of the intellect, the brain, and its nervous systems. Instead, our studies focus on psyche, the soul, the consciousness, and its relationship to logos, the divine; psyche-logos, psycho-logy.
A true psychologist understands and manifests his
own inner Being, her inner divinity, and because of this, experiences
true freedom, bliss, free of external circumstances, afflictions, or
conditions.
A spiritual rebel is someone like Jesus, Buddha,
Moses, Krishna, Beethoven: individuals who fully manifested their
spirit, true human beings in the most complete sense of the word. These
masters unlocked their creative power and were able to influence
millions, since by awakening the full potential of their consciousness,
they rose to a higher level of Being so as to express that divinity to
humanity.
Another example of such a revolutionary is William
Shakespeare’s Hamlet. His own kingdom goes against him, yet he thinks
for himself, feigning madness in order to gather information about his
enemies. Who are those enemies? His own negativities, defects, desires.
His uncle, mother, and old acquaintances, friends, try to provoke him to
discover the source of his act, yet he always knows how to handle his
foes with intelligence. This is a perfect allegory for how to live in
life: observant, watchful, and wise, never reacting with suffering to
circumstances, but knowing how to respond with equanimity and
understanding.
Hamlet uses the analogy of the individual as a musical instrument, which people can play upon to produce any melody they wish. When people do not train themselves in meditation, they are like a flute that any stranger can manipulate for the desired song, the longed-for effect, the anticipated reaction, frustration, hatred, etc. Yet Hamlet demonstrates, in this remarkable play, how one can rebel against “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” and by “taking arms against a sea of troubles” through meditating on the causes of suffering, can “oppose and end them.” This refers to no longer letting the external world dictate one’s response to life. As Hamlet berates his former friend Guildenstern:
Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you
make of me! You would play upon me. You would seem to know my stops. You
would pluck out the heart of my mystery. You would sound me from my
lowest note to the top of my compass. And there is much music, excellent
voice, in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak? 'Sblood, do
you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what
instrument you will, though you can fret me, yet you cannot play upon
me. —Hamlet, Act III.ii
When we no longer react mechanically
to life, when we chose how to respond with wisdom to difficult
situations, to emotional crises, we can truly rebel against that which
perpetuates affliction, chaos, and sorrow.
The Marvelous Ladder
When we comprehend our own states of being, our own ways of thinking, feeling, and acting, and when we no longer go along with whatever negative response emerges within our interior, we are in truth enacting psychological rebellion.
The liberated consciousness knows how to respond
to any situation with equanimity, serenity, and insight. When we act
upon our genuine spiritual nature, and no longer follow the
imperfections of our own character, we are in truth waging a spiritual
war, here and now.
This is the war of the spirit against internal
afflictions, against conditions of mind. This type of war has nothing
to do with the fanaticism of certain religions or cultures that think
that by forcing people to believe in a specific tradition, that one is
performing good works, that one is a martyr, an apostle.
This spiritual war is type of conscious work
enacted for the redemption of the soul, for its liberation and
unification with divinity. Psychological rebellion exists when we rise
towards a superior level of being.
Remember that we stated how
consciousness can expand to infinite degrees. Divinity, the innermost
Being, resides within the most profound regions of our own
consciousness. We can learn to experience the Being and rise to higher
levels of consciousness when we rebel against our own conditioned selves
in this present moment.
…it is not irrelevant if we imagine the numerous rungs of a ladder which extends itself upwards, vertically.
Unquestionably,
we find ourselves on any one of these rungs. On the lower rungs will be
people worse than us, and on the higher rungs persons better than us
will be found.
On this extraordinary Vertical, on this “Marvelous Ladder,” it is clear that we can find all the Levels of Being.
Each person is different; this is something that no one can dispute.
Undoubtedly, we are not talking about pretty
or ugly faces, nor is it a question of age. There are young and old
people, old persons about to die as well as newborns.
The
subject matter of time and of years, that matter of being born, of
maturing, developing, marrying, reproducing and aging is exclusively of
the Horizontal.
On the “Marvelous Ladder,” on the
Vertical, the concept of time does not fit in. On the rungs of such a
scale we can only find Levels of Being. —Samael Aun Weor, Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology
The horizontal path relates to time and everything
related to the world, with temporality, personality, birth, life, and
death. On the horizontal line of life, we are born to this world, grow
up, mature, become old, and pass out of physical existence.
It is
easy to see that this horizontal path is traveled by everyone. People
who live and never question their existence, who suffer all the outrages
of life without ever really knowing why, adhere to the horizontal path
of life in the most unconscious and severe manner. These people, the
public, the masses, simply go with the flow of existence without looking
into their own minds to discover the secret causes of affliction.
But what about the vertical path?
The vertical path relates to how one reacts or
responds to life based on one’s quality of mind. The horizontal path
will always exist, since it refers to the progression of events and
experiences along the trajectory of physical life that emerge and repeat
mechanically. Yet the vertical path has to do with whether we, as a
consciousness, will learn to respond to life with rectitude and love, or
react with animosity against the “slings and arrows of outrageous
fortune.”
To live in the Being, to remember the presence of
divinity in oneself, to be psychologically alert, is to be aware only of
the present moment in which we are. The vertical path is constituted by
levels of being, ascending towards superior states or descend towards
inferior states, based on how we use our consciousness here and now.
What we are psychologically determines how we will respond to the horizontal line, to the facts of life.
When
a person simply reacts to external circumstances with anger,
frustration, negativity, suffering, and affliction, it is a sure
indication that one is attached to the horizontal path. Yet by
responding to situations with wisdom, understanding, and conscious love,
we are in truth going against the flow of our own habits, dispositions,
and desires, indicating that we are ascending to higher levels of
being.
The Bible allegorizes the vertical path through Jacob’s ladder:
"And [Jacob] dreamed, and behold a ladder [of
the Vertical Path] set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to
heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it." —Genesis 28:12
Heavenly
states of being exist in the superior part of the vertical path.
Diabolic states of consciousness exist in the inferior part of the
vertical path, beneath the horizontal.
Heaven and hell are places
in the multidimensionality of nature, yet more importantly refer to
states of consciousness, as we explained in the previous lecture on “The
Level of Being.”
Our level of being is
determined by how we use our consciousness in the present moment,
whether for good or for ill. We either ascend upon the vertical path
based on spiritual works or descend through identifying with all the
sorrows of life.
The Present Moment
Since we have energy, some level of awareness that
we are in our physical body, we tend to believe that we are awake. The
reality, however, is different.
Humanity believes that dreams
only relate to the sleep of the physical body. Yet people ignore that
their consciousness is asleep even while the physical body is active.
People who are unconscious in the dream state are also unconscious in
their physical bodies. People whose consciousness is trained and awake
through meditation in the physical body are also awake as a
consciousness during the normal hours of physical sleep. They experience
what are known as heavens in religion, different dimensions related to
the Tree of Life that we spoke about previously. They leave behind the
body and enter the dream world with full consciousness; they are no
longer dreaming. They experience the realities of those internal worlds
beyond the physical body with full awareness through what are known as
out of body experiences and astral projections.
So besides this, how do we truly know humanity is not conscious?
People
tend to live their entire lives in complete distraction. By this I do
not just mean watching television or reality shows, by using Facebook or
the iPhone, by going to Six Flags: Great America and roller coasters,
by not being responsible members of society. While these are obvious
examples of distraction, there exists a deeper application to this
principle.
Why do people get into car accidents? Why do accidents happen? It’s because people are not paying attention. They are dreaming.
If it’s true that people get killed in accidents
because they don’t pay attention, the same principle applies to
spiritual life. Our spirituality is dead if our mind is constantly
wandering with thoughts and anxieties, if we are always distracted in
life and never paying attention to where we are at or where we are
going.
You cannot experience divinity if you are thinking of your
friends when washing the dishes, or when driving your car remembering
your fiancée. You cannot know the Being if you are constantly distracted
by memories, daydreams, preoccupations, and fantasies, instead of being
attentive with whatever task engages you in the present moment.
To access higher states of consciousness, we must
be present. We must be alert and vigilant as a consciousness. All
religions and mystical traditions, in their original forms, taught that
watchfulness of the present moment is the beginning of union with
divinity. This means that if we are doing something, we don’t think or
worry about other things, but only engage our attention and
concentration to the task at hand.
While listening to this
lecture, how often have you become distracted and lost the thread of my
meaning? You might have been listening, but started thinking about other
things, until your minds have wandered off completely. Suddenly, you
remember, “I’m supposed to be listening!” This type of distracted
thinking needs to be controlled by the consciousness. We must always
learn to be watchful in all events and situations.
Experience of the truth occurs here and now,
within our own perception, when a profound state of attention and
remembrance has been established within our interior through conscious
works. Yet this can only occur when we no longer allow ourselves to be
distracted.
This is why certain traditions practiced vigils,
whereby the practitioners would perform rituals without physically going
to sleep. The essential meaning is that we, as a consciousness, must
never lose our guard, must never cease paying attention to what is going
on around and within us in this instant.
It is alert vigilance, watchfulness, that opens
the doorway to seeing and understanding why we suffer. When you perceive
in yourself your own negative psychological states and no longer invest
them with your conscious energy, it is a sure indication that you are
ascending to higher levels of being. This is the vertical path that
leads towards different experiences of divinity, in gradual steps.
Our level of being, therefore, can only change when we are aware of this moment.
"It is not irrelevant to remind our readers
that a mathematical point exists within us. Unquestionably, such a point
is never found either in the past or in the future. Whosoever wants to
discover that mysterious point must look for it here and now within
oneself at this exact moment, not a second earlier, not a second later.
The two horizontal and vertical lines of the Holy Cross intersect at
this point. Thus, we find ourselves from moment to moment before two
paths: the Horizontal and the Vertical. —Samael Aun Weor, Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology
To
be is different from existing mechanically in life. As Hamlet stated,
“To be or not to be, that is the question.” To remember the presence of
the Being by ascending the vertical path, or to be unconscious of the
truth by following the horizontal line of life: that is the essential
question of Shakespeare’s play. To live mechanically is to live
identified with personality, materialism, mechanical thoughts, desires,
habits, addictions, preoccupations, anxieties, monetary needs, work
problems, struggles in relationships. To think that one is thinking, to
be lost in the mind and its conditions, is to be asleep, dreaming.
As
we mentioned, when people do no pay attention on the road, they end up
crashing their car and killing themselves and others. This is a very
common occurrence.
When we allow ourselves to be distracted by
our own mind and the difficulties of life, we are traveling the
horizontal path. But when we consciously rebel against negative
qualities of mind through perceiving the present moment in its fullness,
we are in truth ascending the vertical path of being.
The Being is Not of Time
Therefore, eternity is the present moment. People
like to think of eternity as some utopia in the clouds, that one will
reach after living a pious life of belief and servility to some
tradition. These types of illusions, however, constitute the mechanical
hopes of people, since beliefs and traditions belong to the horizontal
line of life, to time. Such thoughts, beliefs, religions, and ways of
thinking are born in time and die in time. It is enough to look at the
birth, life, and decay of certain past civilizations to see this dynamic
in action.
The Being, however, is eternal. The consciousness,
with its multiple levels, exists in different rungs, higher and higher,
in the present instance, not in the future, nor the past. Truth is the
unknown, discovered within ourselves from moment to moment. We can
experience the spiritual flavor of the Being and of the psychological
qualities of the consciousness by learning to direct attention and keep
it active in all events of life.
The Being is beyond thought, feeling, and will.
Our consciousness emanated from the Being, and has nothing to do with
thinking, desires, or conditions.
Consciousness is simply the
capacity to perceive without thought, feeling, or impulse. To think that
we are thinking, to feel that we are feeling, to act without internal
self-reflection, indicates that the consciousness is not active, but
identified with thought, feeling, and desire. It is mechanical,
dreaming.
Therefore, how can we experience and unite with the
Being if we are caught up in thinking and reacting to the mechanical
circumstances of life, by not paying attention to what is going on?
Whenever we are caught in thinking or daydreaming
of other things, we become lost in the horizontal line of life, with
temporality, which is a subjective form of experience.
As Samael
Aun Weor indicated, everyone has their own ways of thinking, feeling,
and behaving. Everyone has diverse levels of being, different
dispositions and character. Such dispositions and habits are subjective,
not objective. Our own beliefs, ways of thinking, and behaving are
unique to us. Yet the Being is different, objective, truthful, beyond
the temporal personality.
Most of humanity has no idea what the
Being is, because they do not look within themselves for divinity. To
experience the Being, we must learn to awaken consciousness, since our
soul, our perception, is the only thing that can help us to understand
what the truth is, beyond time, thought, feeling, habit, and desire.
As Einstein wisely postulated, “Time is relative.”
Only the Being is eternal, is never subjected to time, beliefs, dreams,
ideas, or concepts.
People have a lot of theories about God,
religion, science, philosophy. But none of it is grounded in actual
experience. All these theories and beliefs are relative to the minds and
conceptions of people whose consciousness is asleep, is dreaming. All
of this has to do with traditions, which belong to time, the horizontal
line of life.
Someone who awakens consciousness can experience
the Being, the reality. Therefore, such a person possesses true
objective knowledge. Such a person knows the truth because he or she has
ascended to higher levels of Being upon the vertical path.
Only by rebelling against ourselves, here and now,
by fighting against daydreams, fantasies, and wishful thinking, by
learning to pay attention, can we experience the Being within us. This
rebellion is enacted when we work as a consciousness to overcome the
distractions of the mind.
Whenever we are thinking of other
things than what we are doing, we are asleep, dreaming. We dream
whenever we identify with temporal things, whenever we give all our
energy to material existence, to the things that relate to our
personality.
Sadly, most people believe that their name,
language, culture, customs, religion, and beliefs, constitutes their
true nature. These things, however, are born in time and die in time.
They have nothing to do with the consciousness, the Being, the eternal.
"The personality develops and unfolds on the
Horizontal Line of Life. The personality is born and dies with its
linear time; it is mortal. A “tomorrow” does not exist for the
personality of the dead person. The personality is not the Being.
“The
Levels of Being are not of time. Since the Being himself is not of
time, He has nothing to do with the Horizontal Line. He is found within
our own selves, now, on the Vertical.”
—Samael Aun Weor, Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology
Everyone
loves their heritage, their inheritance, their self-concepts,
personalities, and beliefs. Yet humanity ignores how these types of
materialistic and even so-called “spiritual” things were born in time
and die in time. They have nothing to do with conscious experience or
objective fact.
People dream about who they are; their name,
culture, customs, and education will not continue with them past the
grave. Therefore, “To be or not to be!” That is our dilemma.
Therefore,
psychological rebellion refers to our internal disassociation with the
illusions we carry within ourselves, to experience the true nature of
the Being, which is happiness, peace, divine love, patience, altruism,
and direct knowledge.
Psychological rebellion is about
transforming the mind, to become conscious of that which we typically
ignore. We learn to gather information and data about our genuine
spiritual nature the more we reflect on the present instance in which we
find ourselves.
Internal Revolution and the Vertical Path
“It is apparent that the Horizontal path is too base; it is traveled by my buddy and everybody, by those who are juvenile and those who are senile. It is evident that the Vertical is different; it is the path of intelligent rebels, of revolutionaries.
"When one remembers oneself and works upon oneself, when one does not become identified with all the problems and sorrows of life, it is a fact that one is traveling along the Vertical path." —Samael Aun Weor, Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology
Therefore, spiritual revolutions occur within the soul when it learns to pay attention and constantly maintain mindfulness. By observing ourselves and not assuming we know anything, to simply look at the facts of our existence, we begin to see and live within the consciousness.
To be identified is to invest our energy, our
consciousness, into circumstances, with conditions of mind, with
thoughts, feelings, or impulses.
Non-identification occurs when
we observe the facts of life without becoming worried, depleted. We do
what we need to do with heightened attention and watchfulness, with
compassion and equanimity, so that we do not lose energy in negative
thinking, negative emotions, and negative actions.
Non-identification
and self-reflection is how we can learn to live life with greater
serenity, insight, and compassion, to discover and uproot the
psychological causes of suffering in a permanent manner. We don’t react
mechanically and habitually to external events, but respond with
comprehension, intuition, and pure action, devoid of the need to think.
Traveling the vertical path, therefore, is making conscious choices,
rather than lashing out towards the injustices and circumstances of
life.
Psychological Change and Genuine Freedom
This type of work is profound. It is about taking the path of greatest resistance, the resistance of years of habits and conditions in the mind. However, such a path must be distinguished from superficial changes, like adopting or changing one’s habits in a conventional sense.
Renouncing alcohol or smoking—although
wonderful—is superficial in the larger scale. People tend to give up
habits while engaging in new ones, failing to comprehend and eliminate
the desires or conditions of mind that exist in the subconsciousness of a
person. While it is an achievement for an alcoholic or drug addict to
renounce their destructive habits, the unconscious elements or desires
for alcohol and drugs will continue to exist until the consciousness
learns to eliminate such conditions through the work of the vertical
path.
The more we free ourselves of psychological conditions, the greater our insight into the Being will be.
Discovering the Being has nothing to do with diplomas, with a college education or intellectualism, with becoming a scholar and paragon of knowledge. The exaltation and re-evaluation of the Being occurs within someone who rebels against their own psychological conditions and the sufferings such states produce in the consciousness.
We must learn to ascend the ladder of being towards the light of our true divine nature. The way that a person ascends such a vertical path is through self-reflection, meditation, and humility. Sincerity opens the doorway to real change. When we truly want to cease suffering, we must examine our own selves and not try to run away through vain dreams, speculations, assumptions, and theories. We should ask the question: “What in me provokes all the calamities and afflictions of my existence?” By taking responsibility for our own actions, we in truth can develop our greatest potential, securing our own happiness as well as the happiness of others.
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