Misunderstood Esoteric

Opinion

Eso-Bullshit

Many New Age ideas and many other written spiritual realisations are entirely justified, some of them are completely misunderstood and others are in fact dangerous nonsense. The refusal of the scientific community to separate the wheat from the chaff and to put an end to this nonsense and, on the other hand, to consider its own position speaks volumes about the split and mutual ostracism of the two world views.

Only a few recognise the overlaps: the majority of people drift – much to the detriment of us all – steadfastly to the one or other direction and refuse to ever listen to the other side again.

Both sides see a simplified world in which important and relevant elements of the other respective perspective are excluded and both – in their complacency – produce fanaticism and violent blind spots on the spiritual maps of their supporters. Today, let’s take a look at the really harmful aspects of the New Age teachings:

I myself create my reality

If you think this view to its final conclusion, it is soon revealed as one of the most terrible falsehoods imaginable (with a grain of truth as only fitting for effective half-truths).

The true core

Of course it is true that our brain is designed to recognise patterns and constantly seeks confirmation of the known. It is also correct that our state of consciousness has an influence on our environment, regardless of whether one wishes to explain this by radiance and impact on others, by quantum effects or synchronicity.

If a person ONLY sees the negative, not only that which is subjectively experienced turns darker but certainly also the objective reality. For one’s own mental stability, it is, therefore, in any case better to particularly stress the beautiful, good and reassuring things, to experience as many of these as possible and to always be conscious of them.

A pinch of bullshit

However, to conclude from this that external problems in fact become less real, pressing and important only because we afford them less space in our thoughts is a massive misconception. Studies clearly show that depressed people assess their situation more realistically than optimists. As such, it is rather a question of the degree of supression how sunny and unthreatening one can consider the world situation – not the other way round, a morbid obssession with negativity when one does not manage this.

It occurs to nobody that the helplessness of the realistic, faced with the recognised situation and the frustration about the omnipresent unctuous advice not to feel responsible or affected for things which one cannot (supposedly) change can often be the very trigger for the depression.

Bullshit for advanced

But the reproach goes even further: whoever calls an evil by name (= thinks negatively) attracts it and gives it energy. Therefore, do not try to point out wrongs as you only summon more. What a perfect twist that wants to turn the fire brigade into the arsonist.

And if it is true?

The famous reality tunnel, which creates a world from expectations, is only partially acceptable as a model because, according to this postulate, each and every one of us has in fact to be in a separate reality bubble and, through ignorance, we can prevent events from affecting us.

The more relevant question is: what are the consequences when it is not correct?

Of course, from a philosophical perspective, it cannot be excluded that every person is in his/her own personal, small matrix and that the extinction of species, climate change, refugee flows and hunger do not in fact exist in the bubbles of other people.

Perhaps everyone is a separate universe on a journey through possibility space and can choose whether they are heading to a flowering meadow or a thorn bush. In this sense, it is certainly of interest and sensible to work on one’s own mental discipline and to observe what a difference that makes – but to act outwardly on the basis of this assumption (or rather to refrain from acting) as if it were a well-established fact is completely absurd and irresponsible.

Immobilised

Two problems emerge from this: one being that, in the pool of those lofty dreamers, there are many well-intentioned and lovely people (an influence desperately lacking in the real world just now), caught up in collective blindness and, therefore, not participating in the world defining processes and decisions which determine our path at breakneck speed. They just leave the field to the materialists unopposedly, at most occasionally sending positive energy through incense and candles.

Believing that spiritual action will effect change without a counterpart in the material world is, however, the greatest and most perfidious load of rubbish that people have ever been willing to believe. Anyone who teaches such nonsense is damning everyone who believes it to inactivity and ineffectiveness.

Reproachful

On the other hand, the esoteric scene thereby strikes in the same notch as psychology which, although partially doing good work, also consolidates problems and is involved in the exclusion of different ways of thinking.

Anyone who, facing growing injustice, poverty, violence, environmental pollution, surveillance, radicalisation, corruption, etc., cries out and tries to get others to (peacefully!) resist will be considered by the mainstream to be a radical weirdo, by the esoteric scene to be a person who spreads negative energy and, therefore, someone to be avoided, and from psychology to be an emotionally disturbed individual in need of treatment.

None of the three camps sees a reason to re-think this attitude as they are each confirmed by two other schools of thought. The collective supression is perpetuated and protected – and most fervently by precisely those who, in many respects, hold the key to change in their hands.