Label: the enlightened

Psychospiritual honey trap?

Psychospiritual honey trap?

This post relates to a previous entry, which was, among other things, about a protracted copyright dispute in the circle around the Danish mystic Martinus Thomsen (1895-1981).

Actually, I don't care that much about the fuss over literature. It's sad. But let the dead bury their dead, as he said, the Nazarene. However, the discussion that followed my post helped me get to grips with what is and has been my fundamental problem with all of this.

“Everyone does not understand the Master, they cannot appreciate, they do not need him. This is because they are not mature enough. They have not been through as much suffering as we/me. People are at different stages in their humane, intellectual development. Some are before, some are after. It is as it is. Everything is very good.”

You hear that from time to time. (Guess that in the argument about literature, you can hear it from both sides?) But there is something clever about it. Alluring, but devious. Like a psycho-spiritual "honey trap".

("Honey trap" is a term from the spy world. Someone is seduced by an attractive man/woman and can be picked on secret information and/or put themselves in a blackmail situation. That is, something attracts, tastes sweet, but it fetches a high price.)

But, again, I therefore do not take a position on whether such things as spiritual development exist (as in my made-up quote above). One would perhaps want to dismiss the whole thing because it sounds so elitist, old-fashioned or even colonial? But I actually don't. Satisfying myself with psychology. It comes closest.

Are we equipped to handle and face life with this thinking - regardless of whether it is true or not - or will it do something to one, dull, simplify, betray one's mind? (But the downsides I'm trying to describe don't apply to everyone. Some seem to be able to parry it. Is probably not a matter of will, whether you can handle it or not. It is something else that then acts as an "antidote".)

But one might think it is a strange circumstance that so many other movements arose and individuals came forward who formulated their philosophies in a similar way to Martinus Thomsen, then a hundred years ago?

Then in some camps there were also darker, more active dreams, as in the extension of this "some are ahead, some are behind"... Shouldn't one actively try to get rid of those who slow down, who only cause trouble, etc. Philosopher Jules Evans wrote about the dark history of esoteric neo-spirituality in a long, readable text A couple of years ago.


To wake up

To wake up

Each spiritual tradition seems to have or advocate its own version of that "wake up". Saved or Enlightened. With great similarities, it seems to a layman. A transformative, pervasive experience.

The model I myself am most familiar with is the one presented by and passed on by followers of the Danish mystic Martinus Thomsen. It is a process in several stages, with enlightening experiences of increasing strength. First it comes as "cosmic glimpses", ultimately as a permanent "cosmic consciousness".

True or not, you can read more about that elsewhere. Rather, I am thinking about how skeptical or playful one can be in admitting such experiences when someone testifies about them. Will be a bit of an inquisition over the whole thing.

I don't have too many examples to base my reconnaissance on. But Sture Emby is at least one. This was already in the 50s. Twenty, twenty-five years ago another.

But then a few weeks ago a guy appeared who was open about what he experienced and experienced.

We have had little contact in recent weeks. Not that I intend to vouch for the accuracy of what he claims, or pull any metaphysical gears a la Martinus or some other Enlightenment model on the whole thing. But I think it looks genuine and nice actually. Hard to dismiss.

Here are some clips from other forums, what I thought and thought:

"You can have crazy, rash projects when enthusiasm is high, call it mania, pseudo-mania, or something else. One thing I've come to understand is that this kind of breakthrough experience—whatever it is, metaphysics or just a radical restructuring of the psyche? – is not always a smooth ride.”

“As I said, I do not mix possible metaphysical aspects, steps towards emotional and cognitive perfection, etc., into this. It might be needed, to judge correctly, what do I know. But anyhow. I am well familiar with Martinus Thomsen's 'stepwise' model. At the same time, there are testimonies from everywhere about strong mental experiences that for the individual feel like 'waking up'. So one can experience it in a more pure mania or psychosis, too. But then there are those who believe that it is possible to differentiate in this, as a scale. That some are closer to the psychiatric end, others on the other edge, may appear similar but have a different course, a different prognosis.

The Martinus model seems a bit simplistic, puritanical, I think. Because the originator saw it that way, or because that is how the model has been traded or solidified? You need to be humble in the face of things like this, I think. Everything like that is stirred up, releasing energy, emotions and thoughts, then you get to see where it lands."

"What I wanted to highlight was mostly that the phenomenon of 'awakening' is something that has been researched and thought about even far outside of metaphysical contexts with a clearly established development model. Really new to this, but is there such a thing as Transpersonal psychology? Which, as I have understood it, partly arose because some psychologists and others thought that there seemed to be a difference between 'psychosis' and 'psychosis'.

I think that fundamentally it is a radical internal restructuring. That it is mainly this. How to feel about yourself and the world and yourself in the world.

I keep it open that, for example, drugs can in some cases have the same function as a powerful catalyst for such a 'restructuring'. Sometimes in combination with psychotherapy. Was reminded of that when watching this documentary and trailer.

Maybe it does not fit well both in the usual psychiatric system and in the Martinus doctrine as it is sold?”

Authority complex

Authority complex

Being skeptical about vaccines, environmental threats, etc. Wise, able to think for yourself, stand free. Or is it some kind of authority complex?

My experience with the new spirituality is that there is a charged relationship with things like ordinary natural science (both climate, vaccines, for example), academic research, the Church and the priests, ordinary psychiatry, etc. The establishment. A kind of attempt at dethronement.

Sometimes perhaps on good grounds, to be a little skeptical, waiting. But that it can seem so predictable, that if you are skeptical of one thing, you are often skeptical of other similar things as well?

That the establishment belongs to the old paradigm, they do the best they can, possibly in good faith, if they are not corrupt... ("lizards"). While the neo-spiritual philosophy represents a new, "complete" paradigm, which is superior... "Lightworkers", etc.

(Then you can take this even further... to the view of parents, what you inherit or possibly stand in a kind of debt of gratitude because of?, previous generations, but where the neo-spiritual philosophy teaches that you yourself have everything with you when you are born, the family is only a kind of planting vessel, the parents just fellow travelers... This means that this "establishment" is also questioned, or dethroned.)

If you are a climate skeptic, it seems that you are also often a vaccine skeptic... to a greater degree than would be "statistically" justified, if you say, because the areas have nothing more in common than that they are big, complex issues, which experts, educated people are involved in in and needed to... And my impression is that precisely this kind of contempt for the establishment? is especially common in alternative spiritual circles. […]

It's not just the neo-spirituality of course, there are many other signs like that, the rebellious, even if the neo-spiritual philosophy has the extra, alluring, "having given birth to oneself" (without either parents or ancestors, hardly a god which deserves a grateful thought)... Now I'm just spinning, but for me these are central, important things. […] And, as I said, it's rather hierarchy that I think is the thing that is repelling, what is repelled, not group.

"Hierarchy" with only ONE single exception, practically (and I have drilled well into the phenomenon, I think!), it is "The Enlightened Ones", the individual or individuals who are believed to have perfected the spiritual evolution, the creme de la creme...

The enlightened ones put themselves in some all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving category, which is beyond everything... But one day you will have to become like them, you are like in the overtaking lane, pulling past, the brilliant goal makes everything else appear "hierarchical" as unimportant, wasted or illusory.

Spiritual narcissism

Spiritual narcissism

"One of the things I'm wrestling with at the moment is hierarchy in spirituality, and the idea of ​​'higher' and 'lower'."

This is how the philosopher Jules Evans begins a long text from this day... He writes about the idea of ​​development in general, and within new spirituality & new age in particular. Most of all, it's about Ken Wilber. A nuanced review of this giant.

https://julesevans.medium.com/ken-wilber-and-spiritual-hierarchy-5e163226d270

My retention of the text is above all two things. Partly because I now feel more respect for Wilber. He has nevertheless done a horse job in developing his model, with a large portion of psychology.

Partly, I am reminded of how ignorant I am of the very concept of spiritual evolution. That the human mind is probably not equipped to keep up with such models. Whether they are correct or not.

Against this, one might want to argue that even if people are on different levels, are differently developed spiritually (via reincarnation, etc.), there need not be anything idealizing/derogatory about it. No, in the best of worlds it wouldn't have to be that way. That it would, for example, feed one's own narcissism, as Evans talks about. (Or even a feeling of inferiority. But this is probably more rare in that case)

Theoretically, they could be separate things. But in practice? This is not a matter of will, I think. That's why I write "armed"', i.e. that it has to do with one's own constitution. Analogous to not having the conditions to lift a stone weighing 1 ton, or resist strong radioactive radiation, e.g. Even if you wished you could, or think you should be able to. Or at worst imagines that you can. If you can't do it now.

Martinus Thomsen and his movement

Martinus Thomsen and his movement

It has probably loomed up here and there that I became interested in the Danish mystic Martinus Thomsen (d. 1981) and his visions. Here is a post I posted elsewhere this spring for the centenary of what he himself said was the starting point for his work. What makes me think of him right now? Yes, this week a verdict was reached in a protracted dispute over copyright that had been going on for ten years and which had split and divided the Martinus movement. Isn't that strange in and of itself, that kind of thing happens in most spiritual contexts.

This is not a debate post. No recruitment attempt either. A bit of new-spirited monitoring of the world and a VDN marking of me, you can probably see it as. And my opinion of right and wrong in the dispute does not belong here. Let the dead bury their dead, I'm just saying. Life goes on.
- - -

Behind this window, in the days a hundred years ago, something strange happened. The young dairyman Martinus Thomsen came home one evening, sat down in his wicker chair and immediately had some kind of prophetic experience that sent him in an unexpected direction for the rest of his life.

Well, it's actually remarkable no matter how you look at it. Philosophical of life, because of what he later shared, if you are inclined in that direction. Religious studies. A mystic in our local area with a large production of texts, lectures and "symbolic images" over half a century which - until now - hardly received any attention at all from the academic world.

Or psychologically. I never met him myself. I became familiar with Martinus Thomsen and his dizzying "cosmology" only the year after he died. But I have met many who knew him. And he seems to have behaved himself, no strangeness, no major scandals or extravagances. The picture you get is of a simple, friendly and fun-loving man. Indeed, over time he became a kind of cult leader, with a few thousand faithful followers. But there was never very much money involved, no missionary work, there was absolutely nothing you could become a member of.

So psychologically, he is not easy to understand, or explain away, either. That is, to bring the person together with the work. A psychotic, or at least disturbed, someone driven by a desire to impress and gain power over others, etc. He actually seems to have been a rather different neo-spiritual foreground figure. I often say that this movement is like my spiritual home. Nowadays hardly more than this. But I always think of Martinus Thomsen (1890-1981) with warmth.

(The chair is preserved at the Martinus Institute in Copenhagen. The house at Jagtvej 52 still stands and looks much like it did then. He himself rests in a small mausoleum in Frederiksberg's old cemetery.)