The RED Pill and the path called Knowing Thyself

The 3 Mega Illusions of Life Blocking your Progress — Part III of III

The BLUE Pill, Or the RED Pill.

The BLUE Pill — it’s Sweet — and you can go back to the comfort of your own world and do the stuff you always had been doing. Nothing needs to change.

The RED Pill — it’s Bitter — and the world will never be the same again for you. Everything changes.

In the movie Matrix, Morpheus started revealing it. But Morpheus let you on softly, for the truth is even weirder.

You are a Battery. A mere source of Energy.

To suck your Energy there is no need for you to be plugged in.

The energy which you generate every day gets sucked wirelessly.

How is this energy sucked from you?

Through your desires and fears which are used to hook you and make a puppet out of you, forming in you Habits difficult to change. Can you escape the allure of Food, Money, Power, Love, Drugs and the feeling of belonging?

And through your Coaching, Training and Domestication which is used to shape your Beliefs and Worldview. Remember the lessons given to you day after day, year after year till you were trained for the world?

And finally, through these very Habits, Beliefs and Worldview you pass life as an Automaton surrendering your Energy every day. Always fighting and defending your Beliefs. Striking a cigarette when feeling anxious. Going on a shopping spree when feeling desolate. Binging on Movies. Snacking. Domesticating your children to make them more like yourself. Preaching to whoever will listen to you.

At this time, you must be wondering — What is this? And Where is this Going?

Have patience, the Red Pill takes some time.

In my earlier two posts of this series, I showed how the World creates Illusions to change our Habits and control us. In this post, I want to show How we allow ourselves to be controlled.

For this, do just one thing.

Stand in front of a mirror.

And take a hard, deep look into the face staring back at you.

And ask this question — Do you know yourself?

Why do you have two eyes?

To see?

Why not one eye or why not three eyes? Like the iPhone Camera?

You want to lose weight? It should be easy. Just wake at 5 am, run and poof — weight is gone.

But Two billion people on this world are wondering why they are not able to do it.

Come 5 am. The alarm rang. But where did that energy go?

Was that NetFlix with its Watch Next Button? Or was it Whatsapp, Twitter, Insta or Facebook with their constant Notifications on who is responding to your post?

10 pm turned to Mid-Night and Mid-Night turned to 2 am.

Two billion people! From any direction that is not a small number.

Look at the number of self-help books and gurus, it’s definitely not for the lack of advice.

And it’s probably also not because of lack of trying.

Ask that 300-pound man undergoing stent insertion in a hospital, after being diagnosed with Cardiac Ischemia. Would he voluntarily want to do that to himself?

Is that his natural state — to be a 300-pound person on a hospital bed?

Hasn’t he tried numerous times to reduce his weight and the couple of times he managed to reduce it, the weight came back with even more ferocity.

Why is he fighting such a losing battle?

Is it him?

Is it all of us — who are fighting this losing battle? Every day being shamed at not meeting our own expectation of being a healthy and happy adult with abundant energy.

Do you know to whom you have given that Energy?

Why is a happy and satisfying relationship so hard to get? Why so many people in Love keep on fighting with each other? Why so many children are being raised in Broken Families?

Finally lets ask — What has Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett or Kim Kardashian got that you haven’t?

Aren’t they also having Two eyes, One Nose, Two Ears and a bunch of hair?

Simple questions — but do you know the answers?

“Know Thyself”, this is not a new advice.

Someone knew this well over two thousand years ago and for posterity’s benefit inscribed it on the Temple of Apollo.

Somehow in the cacophony of life, “Knowing Thyself” is the most unnatural although unique thing to do.

Does the tree blowing in the wind know itself? Does the ant collecting its provisions know itself? Does the monkey jumping on the tree know itself? Does the Tiger seeking its prey know itself? Does the three-hundred-pound man lying on the hospital bed know himself? Does the drunkard beating his wife and children know himself? Does the person putting money in the stock market know himself? Does the woman shopping on credit cards know herself? Do I know myself? Do you know yourself?”

The Red Pill.

Its bitterness is now in our mouths.

A bitter reminder that we fail in life because we never ever spent any time in knowing ourselves. The world shapes us, and we get shaped. The world plays us, and we get played.

The living pass their lives as Zombies. Not knowing that their so-called Truths are mere beliefs, put in place by someone else, for someone else’s benefit. Not knowing that their habits are a collection of small actions done over a lifetime, un-wounding which, shall take another lifetime, only if their beliefs permit them to. Only if some of their surrendered Energy is left over.

This brings us to the Third Illusion of Life stopping our progress. The Illusion which prevents us from seeing the world as it is. The Illusion which makes us see our Beliefs as Truths and other beliefs as Lies. The Illusion for which people suffer throughout their miserable life never knowing that there was a better option.

I label this internal Illusion as Inherent Mayatic Pollution.

This Inherent Mayatic Pollution is an extremely pernicious Illusion which prevents us from lifting the veil covering our own understanding. It’s perniciousness stems from its impact. With it we become an active agent in stopping our own progress. Moreover, Inherent Mayatic pollution causes us to become an agent in stopping the progress of humanity by propagation of false ideals and beliefs which we are not able to disbelief.

And it all starts with the lack of knowing oneself.

Now, naturally the question arises how does this lack of knowing oneself arise and what to do about it. This is a complex problem because here the observer is trying to observe himself/herself.

And this observation also brings us to the solution of this problem — development of extreme self-awareness. Extreme self-awareness is only possible if it sits very deeply in your psyche.

Merely knowing about self-awareness is superficial knowing and part of the problem. Practising and experiencing this deep self-awareness till it takes root in your psyche is the only solution.

The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali, the founder of the Indian Yoga System targets development of this extreme self-awareness through Abhyasa (Practise). In the second line of Yoga Sutra, Patanajali defines the goal of Yoga as “Yogash Chitta Vritti Nirodhah”, i.e. Yoga is (Yogash) the stilling/cessation (Nirodha) of the mind-stuff/mind-tribulations (Chitta Vritti).

That is the essence of Meditation whereby you empower the extreme self-awareness so that it is able to pierce the veil of Inherent Mayatic Pollution. Whereby the Observer while observing themselves makes the correct deduction and not a fallacious deduction, even going to the extreme of David Hume’s Empiricism in the realisation that every deduction is possibly a deduction of habit and not of knowledge, i.e. what holds today may not hold tomorrow. Or going through the understanding of psychology and behavioural economics in the realisation that the mind uses biases and heuristics for decision making but these very biases such as Authority Bias/Halo Effect/Priming/Peer Effect etc might lead the individual to make wrong decisions like putting the smoking habit due to peer pressure or being unable to eliminate sugar from diet to reduce weight.

When you master this extreme self-awareness, a magical change will happen and you will stop surrendering your energy to the world without your explicit consent and knowledge. Then only your destiny will be truly your own to shape and the true fruit of freedom will bring joy to your entire being.

Hence, now through these three part series, I have described to you the concept of Ancient Hindu Philosophy of Maya which holds that the world presents itself to us as an Illusion.

All the agents of the world are involved in generation of this Maya through the process of formation of Mayatic Pollution which is the haze like veil hiding the real world from our understanding.

The propagation of Maya can be understood through the different types of Mayatic Pollution being created at all times:

1. First is the Explicit Mayatic Pollution where active agents deliberately create pretensions of Custom, Credibility and Authority to put new Mass Habits. We saw how the Brushing habit, the habit of exchanging Diamond rings on weddings and the habit of smoking were created by the Advertising and Marketing industry for the benefit of the few.
2. Second is the Systematic Mayatic Pollution whereby the dominant habit and belief system gets the backing of existing authorities and this dogmatic combination of entrenched interests stops the progress of humanity for decades and centuries. We had seen how Galileo was penalized for challenging the Earth Centric theory of Universe. We had seen how Dr Barry Marshall had to drink a broth of bacteria to prove to the Medical world that Stomach Ulcers could be cured with anti-biotics.
3. Finally, there is the Inherent Mayatic Pollution whereby your own lack of self-awareness causes you to treat your conditioned beliefs and habits as Truths. Your lack of self-awareness of your desires and fears allow you to become ready bait for Explicit and Systematic Mayatic Pollutions. You are unable to stop clicking on phone notifications, you are unable to kick your snacking habits. And finally, you are unable to change yourself for better even while knowing how you can become better.

While you have very little control over Explicit and Systematic Mayatic Pollution, the Inherent Mayatic Pollution is the only place where your Journey can start.

Knowing yourself is a deep spiritual process but people start it only when they face problems. After all, when the machine is working fine, who looks through the manual. Unfortunately, when this machine, our mind and body does not work, we find out too late that the manual itself is missing.

Know yourself before it becomes too late.

OK Morpheus? The Bitter Pill is through. Now What?

The path of Extreme Self-Awareness is nothing but a path of getting thousands of Insights.

We are lucky that thousands of Wise people have already laid down these Insights.

We just need to uncover the veil of Mayatic Pollution covering our understanding to get the best benefit out of these Insights.

On this path we will:

1. Uncover the structure of our mind — The science of personality, psychology, behavioural economics and human biases will assist us in this.
2. Uncover the nature of our health and body — The science of nutrition, body structures and mental health is only now coming out of infancy. There is currently an Obesity epidemic coupled with Mental health epidemic raging in the world. Our endeavour here will be to learn how our Energy gets generated and how we can conserve it and use for the best possible physical and mental health. I have already written on the correct method of doing Meditation and the surprising manner in which all diets have the same mechanism.
3. Uncover the nature of Human Relations — Ultimately its our human relations which gives us the most joy. A lot of time we are just suffering because of the veil of Mayatic Pollution covering our understanding. Whether it is the solution to the low confidence in us to attract a partner or the method to have difficult conversations with ourselves and our partners, the Insights are many. Coupled with knowledge from Personality Science, we will build the new insights so that we can derive the best out of relations
4. Uncover the nature of Human Mega Systems — Whether it is economic meltdowns or poisonous air pollution or the power to bring about change in our locality, Human Mega Systems need to be mastered so that our collective selves can build the better future for tomorrow. Hence, we need to learn how these mega systems work and how we can ensure that the damage from Explicit and Systematic Mayatic pollution is minimised.

I will be publishing soon on the above topics.

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Originally published at https://kindlethemaster.com on April 9, 2020.