Why most people want (and need) to read spiritual nonsense
by Vic Shayne
author
The Self is a Belief: the idea that causes suffering
Beginning with the conclusion
This article’s point in a nutshell: The egoic mind is a belief that you are a person with a body, relationships, attachments, and possessions. This egoic mind is afraid to lose what it believes it has. Most writers appeal to this egoic self, fooling themselves and their readers.
And now the details…
The number of books and articles that arise like well-watered weeds touting wisdom on spiritual growth and understanding is mind-blowing. The world is filled with writers and experts whose expositions garner big followings and claps of approval and thumbs up all over social media. I read so many of these articles and wonder why they are so well-received despite that the writer actually has no idea about what he or she is saying, and the ideas that have been forwarded are rehashed and re-served secondhand statements that have seeped into the collective unconscious.
What do these writers really know?
When I was 21 years old, fresh out of college with a degree in Journalism and living in Miami, I read an article one morning in the Miami Herald about the newest Pulitzer Prize recipient, Isaac Bashevis Singer. Being a hopeful young writer, I called Mr. Singer on the phone and told him that I would really like to meet with him about writing advice. His wife answered the phone, put the receiver down for a moment, and then got back on with me. She told me that Mr. Singer would meet with me the next day. And so I drove up to Miami Beach and met with him for a short while. Looking back, this was pretty crazy, because here was a world-renowned novelist at the top of his field meeting with a clueless kid. But I left with a word of advice that annoyed me at first due to my own lack of life experience, but it has stuck with me all my life. And here I am, more than 40 years later, repeating Isaac Bashevis Singer’s sage words: “Just write what you know about.”
I suppose that, because these words are always at the forefront of my mind, I may be more sensitive to them than other writers, especially nowadays when anyone can start a blog and call him or herself a writer and an expert in the unchecked and unregulated field of spirituality where apparently anything goes.
Write what you know about.
Thousands of people write about spirituality, the soul, the meaning of life, enlightenment, self-realization, bliss, and other such topics without knowing what they’re talking about. Not that they care or are looking for such a thing, but those who have true insight don’t get the clicks, thumbs up, and the claps. In fact, most of them are not writers at all. It’s curious, to say the least.
It took me many years of life, meditation, and introspection to find something that few people, apparently, have realized, and yet thousands are weighing in on what this “something” is like. It’s analogous to thousands of writers writing about what it’s like to walk in space, when it is obvious to any astronaut who has done so that they are just repeating someone else’s experiences and ideas as if they know them to be true.
What do you actually know that is firsthand?
Perhaps to you it sounds like hubris for me to be writing about this at all. But to me it is of no consequence what others may say. I have no monopoly on the truth or special powers. I do not have a following and do not want one. These are the days when everyone is a critic, so I am putting myself out there only so that the one in a million person can contemplate on what I am writing. My intention for writing this article is not for self-aggrandizement in the least.
People are not willing to do what it takes
People are wont to say one thing but mean another. Introspection — self-enquiry — into the true nature of the self, is painful for most people, and therefore they want to be a member of the spiritual club despite not having gone through the process of self-discovery. They say they want to know the ultimate truth about who they are at the core, yet they are not willing to do what it takes to find out. This process is no simple exercise that is performed with the mind, as most seem to believe. In fact, most don’t know the difference, including the writers whom they embrace, between the egoic self and consciousness.
True realization only comes as a result of leaving the egoic sense of self behind. The ensuing full realization is that the egoic sense of self it is no more than a belief.
What do readers want?
What do people want out of spirituality? They obviously, in any great number, do not want anything beyond salve for the sore egoic mind. They want to preserve the egoic mind and make it feel better. They do not want to give it up or even face its reality. Being happier and more content has nothing at all to do with realization, enlightenment, or spiritual insigh, yet this is what is most writers are writing about — chicken soup for the soul, an absurd idea that will get the most devoted and earnest seeker nowhere beyond her own egoic mind.
No malintent, just ignorance
I’m not suggesting that writers who pontificate on spiritual issues are purposefully misleading others. Of course there are a few who are, because they want to form a following, or to retain one, but this is the minority of self-proclaimed spiritual experts. What I am saying is that people write about spiritual matters without any realization of the Self as that which experiences itself in all that is perceived. You really have to have had this realization to know what this means and how it feels — not intellectually, but as actually in the same way that you know what a tree is because have seen one, touched one, and stood beneath its shade. Writing that we are all connected, or that we are all sparks of God, or souls, is not “it,” for such is the stuff of fluff — meaningless and rehashed ideas that make readers feel good about themselves and their reason for existence. If you only want to be less stressed, have a social group of like-minded people, believe there is a purpose to life, and feel better about yourself, then these articles are apt to soothe your mind. But they are nonetheless devoid of the ultimate wisdom that has nothing to do with the sense of self.
Believing is not knowing
Most everything that is written about spirituality is based upon belief. And belief is not knowing, whether you’re an atheist who believes there is no God, or whether you are a devote religious devotee who believes that there is a God. Believing is not necessarily bad, unless your beliefs motivate you to harm other people and cause suffering. Holding onto beliefs is what allows people to face the morning, search for solutions, and commit acts of goodness. If a writer believes certain things about what reality is and then his readers feel good about themselves as a result of reading the writer’s article, then there is nothing wrong with this. However, this does not make the writer any more correct than if he just guessed or repeated something he heard from an Eckhardt Tolle talk or a Joe Dispenza conference. There is belief, and there is a realization, and the two are mutually exclusive. If a writer makes you feel good, less afraid of life, and more hopeful about the future, then that’s just dandy, but it has nothing to do with the ultimate truth.
You may ask how you can tell whether what you are reading is just someone’s belief or secondhand knowledge, or whether the writer writes from a realization. The answer is that you cannot know unless you have had the realization that has transcended the egoic mind. HOWEVER, ultimately, the writer, just like a guru, is not really doing anything for you unless he or she is guiding you to enquire into your true nature. All else is word soup — unless word soup is what you are really hungry for.
Regurgitation is not wisdom
Anyone can research a little bit about Rumi or Nisargadatta and regurgitate their teachings. But without having a full realization themselves, all they are doing is pushing around information and misinterpretations. Realization has NOTHING to do with information. Information is of the mind, and the silent stillness of pre-existence — the stateless state —is not of the mind. Still, readers soak up spiritual writing, because both the writer and the reader are in collusion as they seek to feel good and extinguish the fire of life that burns out of their control.
Reading nonsense feels good
People seem to want to hear nonsense. To be fair, they don’t know it is nonsense, and it sounds right, because everyone’s been repeating the same ideas about love, being connected, becoming aware, meditating, living with compassion, self-discovery through yoga or kundalini, chanting mantras, reaching higher levels of consciousness, expanding their consciousness, and on and on.
Wisdom is borne of a realization that so very few have had, and yet so many people are writing as if they have had such a realization. Readers are not benefitting from these writers’ realizations, but instead they are recognizing familiar rhetoric that they believe is true. They are reading things they want to believe. So they applaud and share articles that tell them they are protected by God and invisible angels, they have an important lesson to learn in this lifetime, their suffering is from karma that they need to burn off, and that everything has a purpose — so don’t worry your little head about it.
Writing what makes people feel better, devoid of the truth
Readers are applauding what they want so desperately to be told. Why? Because this is the ultimate salve for the suffering of the egoic self. The very nature of the egoic self is, by way of psychological conditioning, to latch onto ideas to which they are attracted. Fearful people hold onto ideas that make them less fearful, but the fear and the one who fears are the same thing, just as the problem and the solution are entwined.
The road to salvation is as narrow as a razor’s edge — this is a teaching in the Upanishads. This narrow road is for the very few who are willing to bare the egoic self and shine so much light upon it that this mirage dissipates along with all of your dreams, hopes, ideas, relationships, body, mind, attachments, money, possessions, experiences, loved ones, memories, and thoughts. All of these must be surrendered before the ultimate realization becomes clear. But how many are willing to let go of everything? It frightens most people beyond description to do such a thing, yet the writers keep writing, despite never having gone through the process, and the readers keep on reading because the words give the egoic self a little more food to keep it alive and dwelling in the ultimate illusion.
When the egoic self is pleased, it is a temporary state, yet this state is embraced as the means a reprieve from the usual suffering and pain of life. The bliss that is beyond all suffering is not to be gleaned by reading New Age and repackaged Eastern ideas by writers who are unaware of the difference between the egoic self and the Self of consciousness — not intellectually, but actually.
Ramana Maharshi said that “bliss comes only from inside ourselves and that it is most intense when we are free from thoughts and perceptions, which create the world and the body, that is, when we are in our pure being, which is Brahman, the Self. In other words, the being alone is bliss and the mental superimpositions are ignorance and, therefore, the cause of misery.”
What conclusion may be drawn?
The egoic self is a ball of fear predicated on a belief that it is separate from the totality of consciousness. This is the apex of ignorance, as has been taught through the ages by sages in the East. Ignorance. An appeal to this ignorance by way of ignorant writers may be what most people want to hear.
