Spiritualism: Is the world an illusion?
We see two fundamentally opposed tendencies in people across the world. One is spiritualism and the other is materialism. This week we will discuss spiritualism.
We are all one!
Although we have the chance to examine the subject in much more detail when we look at the classical esoteric literature that has been passed down throughout civilizations about the historical development of humanity, it will be sufficient to take our starting point from the history we all know within the scope of our subject.
In this respect, as we all know, first there was primitive man. Since the ego, or “I” consciousness, was not yet sufficiently developed, primitive man could not distinguish between conscious and unconscious elements; feeling like a part of nature, intertwined with everyone and everything.
With the development of the mind and in parallel consciousness of the “I”, we began to experience ourselves as a separate entity from everyone and everything else. The fact that we were once “one” has begun to fade into the background, and the boundaries that separate us from each other have become just as visible.
Again, with the development of the mind, bad was added to the good and wrong to the right. Nothing was as pure and innocent as it was before the development of mind. And yet, we have been given the task of discerning right and wrong on our own. As a result, we began to face the consequences of our actions and thus became responsible for everything we experienced.
Spiritual bypass
Our world is getting more and more impure, and the more impure we get, the more we suffer. It is as if we have been given a weapon, even though we are only children, and we are being tested to learn how to use it correctly, as we misuse it and spill blood.
In order to save ourselves from any possible harm and suffering, we first tend towards one of two opposing strategies. One of them is the spiritualist tendency: refusing to grow up and wanting to go back to one’s previously happy life. Let me make it clear that I am not criticizing spirituality at all, but its use as an escape strategy.
Those who are spiritually inclined can easily detach themselves from physical boundaries – from their bodies. This ability allows them to get in touch with realities beyond sensory perception, but it also gives them the chance to escape from concrete reality. That’s why many people today take refuge in spirituality without even realizing it, just to escape from feeling their emotional pain. For example, they use meditation to ward off negative thoughts or not to think at all. However, the problem is not negative thoughts, but the fact that we have not yet been liberated from our mental prison.
Avoiding the concrete reality prevents man from seeing the atrocities he has created in the world as part of reality. Treating everything as an illusion saves us from being crushed under the weight of the fact that we are responsible for what we see.
Is the world “a prison planet”?
I am sure you have heard such a sentence, especially from people who work in the spiritual field or have a strong spiritual inclination. These people want to leave this world as quickly as possible and to never come back. They are aware of the spiritual reality beyond the visible world and know that they will return to the womb they long for when they die.
The pain of separation they feel in life is so great that it is much easier for them to go back to where they came from than to try to grow. Yet, our task in the present age is to restore that unity while living in this very world.
Although the impurity in the world started with the development of the mind, the way to get rid of this impurity is not to reject mental development, but to become able to discern right from wrong by questioning through our mental capacity.
Understanding that impurity is inevitable on the path to growth is crucial to truly forgive ourselves and others, and to be free from our deep-seated guilt. True forgiveness is not to approve of mistakes, but to accept the fact that mistakes are inevitable as we do not yet understand.
We should know that life on earth is not a prison where we come to serve our sentence; it is a school. No matter how much we refuse to grow, one way or another, we will learn to use the weapon we have been given correctly. There is no escape from this.