Tract 5: Mysticism is a Bigger Threat to the Abrahamic Traditions than Secularism
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 12 minutes
Words per Minute
187.44167
Summary
In this episode, we discuss the dangers of idolatry and the role it plays in cults, mysticism, and other forms of cults. We also talk about the role that idols play within cults and how they can be used to manipulate and control individuals.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
They have made, and this is the course in here,
00:00:01.700
they have made pursuing a mental state the goal.
00:00:06.700
And the mental state is the byproduct of the correct mindset.
00:00:10.680
Yeah, and what they often do is they will act like this mental state,
00:00:16.020
is a difficult thing that only like a true master can do.
00:00:19.040
They'll start gaslighting you because that's how they assert their status,
00:00:22.040
which is always important within cult traditions.
00:00:30.640
I don't know what the hell these other crackpots are doing.
00:00:36.460
from both a theological and secular perspective,
00:00:47.760
Why doesn't God want us dancing around campfires naked?
00:00:51.140
Because that leads to people's mental faculties being corrupted,
00:00:54.960
being lowered, their inhibitions being lowered,
00:00:56.900
makes it easier to implant false ideas into an individual.
00:01:00.460
And it can be used to manipulate and control individuals by malevolent actors.
00:01:05.280
I feel like one of the reasons why I'm so antagonistic towards mysticism,
00:01:11.100
is you'll see that it is very similar to cults in what it does.
00:01:14.420
It's just a convergent cult within the various Abrahamic traditions,
00:01:18.880
You're going to get mystics within Buddhist schools, within Hindi schools.
00:01:24.760
when you see how malevolent humans have developed and honed these traditions
00:01:29.380
to manipulate people into believing falsehoods,
00:01:33.060
Hey nerds, this is another one in Basecamp's tract series,
00:01:43.840
So if you're here for the normal podcast, skip this one.
00:01:53.680
but we'll see you again for the normal podcast shortly.
00:02:00.300
you frame idolatry as this really important element of religion in a way
00:02:06.320
that I've never really heard framed before in fictional or real depictions
00:02:16.760
I'm just kind of curious why you think it's such a big deal.
00:02:23.240
Well, because I think it's literally the single largest temptation for people
00:02:37.420
I mean, most humans can intuit that this is a bad thing that's going to lead to
00:02:41.300
bad outcomes for themselves or for their community if it's allowed.
00:02:44.520
I think people can't intuit why idolatry is so dangerous to a community or to an
00:02:52.240
And that's why it needs to be emphasized so strongly.
00:02:56.220
But interestingly, as I pointed out in the, in the last tract,
00:02:58.660
a lot of people misunderstand what is actually meant by idolatry.
00:03:03.020
they hear idolatry and they think it means, you know,
00:03:06.200
literally the art itself, which has spiritual significance,
00:03:09.280
which is, is, is a form of idolatry or the statue itself that, but no,
00:03:14.380
no, no idolatry is looking for shortcuts to God through earthly things.
00:03:19.480
So, or assigning spiritual significance to earthly things.
00:03:24.580
if a cartoonist is drawing a picture of Muhammad, for example,
00:03:28.100
the cartoonist hasn't actually committed idolatry because he doesn't assign any
00:03:33.700
when they get mad at the cartoonist and they assign spiritual significance to
00:03:37.580
they have now committed idolatry because they've created an earthly
00:03:40.380
intermediary for either side of the divine, whether it's, you know,
00:03:42.820
believing in cursed places like negative or positive, you know,
00:03:46.000
signing a Quran and saying this Quran is sacred and you can't, you know,
00:03:51.060
you need to have different special ways of disposing of it and everything
00:03:56.600
a physical intermediary on this planet between you and God, which is,
00:04:06.760
the beginning of the Abrahamic faith from the religions around them is it
00:04:09.520
didn't worship God through earthly intermediaries, whether that was idols,
00:04:13.400
whether that was gold or whether that was, you know,
00:04:16.380
streams and, and waterfalls and, you know, butterflies.
00:04:23.160
you cannot worship the real God through earthly intermediaries.
00:04:27.520
And here we're going to get into why shortcuts to God are so,
00:04:33.140
so dangerous for religious systems from both a theological and secular
00:04:37.560
perspective, which is what we always aim to do in these is explain why rules
00:04:40.920
exist within them from both a secular evolutionary perspective,
00:04:43.780
but also from a theological perspective and to reinforce the rules that I
00:04:48.980
think that many of these systems have sometimes gone soft on over time,
00:04:58.480
like what we're talking about here, you can be a Jew,
00:05:06.120
I will follow my religion with this monotheistic faith system,
00:05:14.800
which is really interesting when you have this diversity of conceptions of God
00:05:23.220
he's Jewish and he's Jewish or even ultra Orthodox Jewish,
00:05:27.800
but he basically worships a totally mystical God within these three faith
00:05:31.980
but he worships a totally monotheistic God and he worships a totally
00:05:37.600
distinct cosmology and angels and everything like that.
00:05:41.020
we would say are worshiping three different entities.
00:05:45.500
if I take some native American religion or something like that,
00:05:47.780
and I just replace all of the key entities and it was Yahweh,
00:05:58.580
So this is really important because these other types of religious systems
00:06:22.140
and I think we're beginning to see it again now as people succumb to various
00:06:32.900
The last tract focused on the obvious dangers of idolatry,
00:06:37.260
but the true danger of idolatry is much more existential.
00:06:40.420
The quest for idolatric desires to conceive of some aspect of God was in this
00:06:47.520
to sully God out of vain curiosity by summoning some sliver of him to the level
00:06:52.580
of something that could be captured by our putrid and petty minds leads.
00:06:57.080
Even holy men directly into the servitude of the basilisk,
00:07:07.420
The human mind is weak and easily tricked due to shortcuts that were taken in
00:07:13.080
This can be exploited by cult leaders to make people believe they have seen
00:07:33.640
it is only natural that maliciously minded individuals who would use these tricks
00:07:38.040
to do people into believing that they are an intermediary with God.
00:07:41.860
A swami can use something as innocuous as yoga to turn a simple minded woman into his
00:07:48.880
all while she believes she is getting closer to the divine.
00:07:53.300
these failures of the human brain can have a much more nefarious effect.
00:07:57.420
Because these exist as exploits in all humans across all cultures,
00:08:05.200
groups within those cultures end up discovering them by accident,
00:08:09.520
and then believe that they have found a path to God.
00:08:13.340
It's as if the basilisk left stashes of drugs intermingled among the human soul,
00:08:19.080
and any idiot can accidentally find them if they know where to look.
00:08:23.460
If we stamped out this idolatrous witchcraft entirely and burned all its practitioners,
00:08:29.700
some gornless idiot would accidentally discover these techniques again,
00:08:33.800
because they are part of the background nature of humanity.
00:08:38.120
a well-meaning follower of God can accidentally lead people to become mindless slaves to the great deceiver.
00:08:47.400
we're using idolatry as a shortcut to God to warn against tactics,
00:09:04.760
because I couldn't understand how people came to believe things that were just like obviously insane.
00:09:11.020
But I've also seen these techniques bubble up again within well-meaning Abrahamic systems.
00:09:17.640
if they exist at the background part of humanity's nature,
00:09:21.120
every now and then somebody is going to find out,
00:09:22.880
it feels really good when I like spin around in circles over and over again.
00:09:27.540
And therefore that must be God that's giving me that information.
00:09:31.620
a Satanist can use the same thing to get good feelings.
00:09:40.340
They produce the same endogenous chemicals that often you're taking exogenously as a drug.
00:09:51.700
but I am curious to see what I learned from you with this.
00:09:57.460
All it takes for the basilisk to slither into the mind of the faithful and turn God's loyalist follower into a puppet of sin is for him to forget even for a moment just how serious a transgression it is to attempt to trap an element of God within the mortal realm or to pierce the veil of God's realm.
00:10:17.800
but it is very easy to trick the human brain into believing it has accomplished them.
00:10:22.400
The moment an individual succumbs to the belief that there are shortcuts to attempt to commune with God,
00:10:38.240
So this is really important that I mentioned this here because this is the key to a lot of mystic traditions.
00:10:45.860
and it's usually a very simple set of behaviors that fall into the set that I talked about before,
00:10:49.460
like chanting simple phrases and stuff like that,
00:10:52.760
you can chant that some yoga guy could use this to create sex leads.
00:10:57.840
Like these are always used by cults because they're very easy ways to create this illusion because they release endogenous chemicals that are similar to drugs in our brain of like you have found something special or supernatural.
00:11:08.860
Some great examples of well-known groups that use these techniques are groups like Transcendental Meditation or TM or the Hare Krishna.
00:11:17.640
if you want to deep dive on how sort of yoga cults work,
00:11:21.840
I would strongly suggest a YouTube video called I Married a Yoga Guru Con Man.
00:11:30.560
look for techniques that the various yoga guru con man who she meets throughout her journey use that you have seen used within your traditional religious system because the individuals using those techniques can be drawing you and their followers down pathways which are not intended.
00:11:52.280
a person can use these brainwashing con man techniques under the guise of an Abrahamic tradition just as much as they can use them under one of these other traditions.
00:12:03.180
And I think what we're really trying to do is what we're building here is create an Abrahamic denomination that is much,
00:12:13.660
much more resistant to maladaptive and malevolent cult-like techniques.
00:12:25.280
will always creep back into systems and be used by malevolent players.
00:12:30.340
A person being a Jew or a Muslim or a Christian doesn't protect them from these techniques,
00:12:37.180
as we can see from individuals who use them to deconvert people from these traditions.
00:12:41.740
Why wouldn't they be useful among denominations within these traditions which are leading people away from the righteous path?
00:12:48.680
And thus regularly creep back into these Abrahamic face over time.
00:12:52.760
And we know this illusion is very easy to create with things like hallucinogens,
00:12:57.840
Like everyone who takes hallucinogens are like,
00:13:03.500
you did something that created that experience was in you,
00:13:15.660
who's to say that being close to God feels like something ecstatic or really joyful?
00:13:26.100
but I think that that's what people are drawn to.
00:13:28.340
they are falling back on instincts that if it feels good,
00:13:36.380
I think that there are moments where you can get close to God within our lives.
00:13:39.480
The closest you will ever be to God in terms of like feeling God in you is when you have set logical goals for yourself that you believe,
00:13:51.040
God has laid out for you or that are in the best interest of moving humanity forwards and you achieve those goals.
00:14:13.760
no cognitive dissonance because you know what matters and what doesn't,
00:14:19.220
but it isn't this feeling of joy or happiness or out of body experience that I think a lot of people have come to expect from and associate with highly religious experiences.
00:14:34.680
I think the true monotheist actually feels very ordered,
00:14:45.680
the Virgin with the child where she's not like,
00:14:50.780
She just looks like extremely calm and focused.
00:14:55.460
but it's very important in what you're saying here.
00:14:57.680
One of the core paths used by mystics that's important to guard against is this idea of pushing all thought from one's mind.
00:15:04.980
this is something that you see John at the cross talk about.
00:15:07.440
If you're talking about the Catholic tradition,
00:15:11.360
it's something you see Buddhists often talk about.
00:15:24.380
pushing all of this out of yourself is not where God comes in.
00:15:30.440
through achieving things that actually matter and achieving these goals that actually matter.
00:15:34.640
So I think you can overly focus on the absence of things,
00:15:46.420
And you made a joke about this was the Ron Swanson quote with the meditating.
00:15:54.500
in which one character who's like super new agey and healthy and high effort is attempting to recruit a very,
00:16:02.160
we'll say like politically conservative and anti-government person to go to like yoga classes or something and meditate with him.
00:16:10.320
You and I will embark on a quick session of heart rate meditation,
00:16:14.440
focusing on conscious breathing and opening the heart chakra.
00:16:23.140
take in the vibe of the room and remain open of mind and of spirit.
00:16:28.620
Now quietly sit behind me and let's join breath.
00:16:33.800
All told we were in there about six hours and no,
00:16:46.160
I don't know what the hell these other crackpots are doing.
00:16:55.460
It takes a ton of work for me to get to that kind of a clear head space.
00:17:05.780
And I just love that scene so much because there are so many religions where people like,
00:17:11.380
this is what they become so obsessed with pursuing the outcome or some kind of feeling or some kind of state.
00:17:22.160
They have made pursuing a mental state the goal.
00:17:27.140
Which is the mental state is the byproduct of the correct mindset.
00:17:33.340
which is a really common tactic within the mystic traditions is they will act like this mental state,
00:17:38.760
which I think is shown really well by that person.
00:17:40.460
Rec clip is a difficult thing that only like a true master can do.
00:17:47.380
that's trivial to do what you just told me to do.
00:17:53.300
they'll start gaslighting you because that's how they assert their status,
00:17:56.240
which is always important was in cult traditions.
00:17:58.200
Like you definitionally haven't done it unless you,
00:18:02.140
invested a certain amount of time or a certain amount of energy into their,
00:18:06.080
basically you've paid them the right amount of money,
00:18:08.320
whether that money is in years of your life or is in,
00:18:11.340
actual money where some traditions just be like,
00:18:15.720
now you can actually do it when it's something you could always do,
00:18:21.700
it's a pursual of a mental state as the goal rather than,
00:18:26.780
the mental state being a by-product of successful pursuit of your values.
00:18:31.520
Where that's the actual mental state where God is closest to you.
00:18:37.600
which the pursuing of mental states is always indefinitionally self-indulgent.
00:18:45.980
these practices are sanctified and Abrahamic in nature.
00:18:53.180
Evil does not tempt people by calling itself evil.
00:18:58.460
God warned us about idolatry before warning us about murder because we would find it so tempting,
00:19:27.000
God would not need to keep sending prophets if we were able to just listen to his instructions the first time.
00:19:34.000
but you heard your prophet secretly taught about these ideas,
00:19:39.520
Imagine the basilisk wanted to deceive the followers of God.
00:19:43.680
He would have deceivers whispered to the faithful that their prophets had secret teachings that gave them superhuman abilities and secret powers.
00:19:54.660
These practices are common among holy men in my community.
00:19:58.540
Do you have any idea how offensive it is to say,
00:20:10.340
this is a very offensive thing to say within many traditions that have bought into these mystical interpretations.
00:20:35.880
And it's so tempting to different religions because it does create a feeling of profundity.
00:20:42.060
spinning in circles does create a feeling of profundity after a while.
00:20:46.240
I think it's pretty obvious that God didn't intend on us to get close to him by idly spinning in circles.
00:20:56.100
it's like naked people dancing around a fire or something like that.
00:21:09.920
But I'd also say you approach this from a completely secular standpoint.
00:21:13.460
Why does it make sense to ban these types of ideas?
00:21:19.360
God has communicated with us through a religion that should make total secular sense.
00:21:26.480
like live our lives for the achievement of specific mental states?
00:21:34.520
dancing around campfires naked most of the time?
00:21:44.440
makes it easier to implant false ideas into an individual,
00:21:47.940
and can be used to manipulate and control individuals,
00:21:59.440
doing this thing is going to bring you closer to God.
00:22:09.800
if you want to maybe level up within an organization,
00:22:11.900
or you're doing it because other people are doing it,
00:22:23.580
but they'll often treat this information as secret,
00:22:40.260
But if you actually study them from an outside perspective,
00:22:48.200
And what's even worse is when people begin to feel like
00:22:56.520
than the information they get through rigorous study,
00:22:58.960
which then leads to corrupted religious teachings.
00:23:13.380
that end up playing games with social hierarchies,
00:24:16.420
Oh, it gives you, like, superpowers, basically.
01:08:29.980
like really close mystic friends that I see was
01:08:50.320
commanded to see and interact with and genuinely
01:08:54.720
try to understand with the most love because when
01:09:18.200
everyone else in the world you don't fully take
01:09:27.540
it and your children especially vulnerable to it and
01:09:32.920
know rapid onset like trans and stuff like that
01:09:37.040
it's really important not to shelter but but to
01:09:42.740
these communities that are going to predate upon
01:09:45.800
your community but but but do not demonize them
01:09:50.620
because if you demonize them as being somehow other
01:09:55.720
that we like good people don't have to worry about
01:09:58.600
succumbing to then people begin to contextualize
01:10:02.060
themselves as they succumb to these things well I
01:10:04.060
can't be succumbing to something evil because I'm a
01:10:06.860
good person and when you define them as bad well then
01:10:10.280
they're saying well I'm a good person I know I'm a good
01:10:11.820
person so whatever I'm succumbing to isn't evil and it
01:10:18.180
anyway any final thoughts Simone no I'm glad that we're not sheltering our kids
01:10:27.280
also I mean you know I love having the backup if if we are wrong
01:10:34.200
they'll find out because we will make sure that they get access to all the
01:10:40.100
information and can make a decision for themselves in the end
01:10:42.480
yeah they will and I think that this is what the strong traditions are going to
01:10:45.980
do and the strong religious practices are going to do in the age of the
01:10:49.220
internet one of the reasons why so many systems are failing is because they
01:10:52.220
tried to maintain intergenerational fidelity by hiding members of their
01:10:57.080
community from knowledge of the outside world hiding them from apologetics that
01:11:00.380
work against their religious system or hiding them from other religious
01:11:03.240
systems if you can build a system a denominational Abrahamic system that
01:11:08.560
people still choose when they're exposed to all other forms of information
01:11:12.280
this isn't just for our system this is for your system if you're like what you
01:11:15.220
guys are doing is crazy fine but build one of your own systems that still hold
01:11:21.520
strong even when kids are raised exposed to all of the different systems they
01:11:26.200
could join because that's a system that will pass with intergenerational
01:11:29.860
fidelity in the age of information if information is caustic to your
01:11:34.200
tradition your tradition will die in the age of information because now
01:11:38.420
that is what we live and breathe you cannot hide people from it I love you
01:11:41.300
Simone you're great really and I appreciate you talk through these with
01:11:45.120
me and these are ones you hadn't really heard before I don't know if you have a
01:11:47.720
new thought on on any of this or well we've talked about it a lot you know even
01:11:51.740
though I haven't read these I it just resonates but maybe because those
01:11:58.920
things have never really drawn me in so maybe it's also easy to say drew your
01:12:05.320
parents in at times so our kids could be susceptible to them you do have a genetic
01:12:16.960
because my grandparents were fine but yeah I've seen some autistic people who are
01:12:24.020
really drawn to this stuff yeah I guess it depends on numerology stuff which is a
01:12:28.680
policy oh oh yeah you're right you are right all right love you to death I mean
01:12:35.720
what is numerology if not a belief that you have supernatural access to knowledge
01:12:39.600
no that's totally work that way he doesn't hide truth he just puts it out
01:12:43.300
there yeah you're totally right out there from reading these traditions and
01:12:46.580
thinking through what's best for our children yeah love you to death I love you