Human beings who act like machines

Western tradition mistakenly assumes that the greatest evil of mankind arise from selfishness. In our century evil has proven to be more radical, than was previously thought. We now know that the truest evil has nothing to do with selfishness, or any such undrestandable, sinful motives. Instead, it is based on the following phenomenon: MAKING HUMAN BEINGS SUPERFLUOUS as human beings. 

The entire concentration camp system (world war II) was designed to convince the prisoners THEY WERE UNNECCESARY, before they were murdered. In the concentration camps men were taught that punishment was not connected to a crime, that work produced no results. The camp is a place where every activity and human impulse is senseless. Where in other words, senselessness is daily produced anew. To summarize: if it is true that in the final stage of totalitarianism an absolute evil emerges, absolute as it no longer relates to human motives. 

THE GRATEST EVIL IN THE WORLD ARE THE ACTIONS COMMITED by "nobody´s", commited by men without motives, without convictions, BY HUMAN BEINGS, WHO REFUSE TO BE PERSONS. It is a phenomenon that Hannah Arendt calles the banality of evil. She wrote a paper:  Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963), she coined the phrase "the banality of evil" to describe Eichmann. She raised the question of whether evil is radical or simply a function of THOUGHTLESSNESS, A TENDENCY OF ORDINARY PEOPLE TO OBEY ORDERS AND CONFORM TO MASS OPINION, without a critical evaluation of the consequences of their actions and inaction.

Since Socrates and Plato thinking is thought to be engaged in the silend dialog between "me and myself". In refusing to be a person one utterly surenders a single most defining human quality, that of being able to think for one´s self, to feel his conscience, consisiquently means that one is NO LONGER CAPABLE OF MAKING MORAL JUDGEMENTS. This inability creates the possibility for ordinary men and women to commit evil deeds in a gigantic scale: to participate in the decay of our civilization, poverty, destruction of the enviroment... the like of which one has never seen before.

The manifestation of wind of thought is not knowledge, but the ability to tell right from wrong and considering our world society as a whole (including all the living beings and the enviroment) and beeing aware that by doing nothing, one is also partcipating and responsible.

The trick is to make one fell seperated from others...

Martin Niemoeller: 

"First they came for the Communists but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists but I was not one of them, so I did not speak out. 

Then they came for the Jews but I was not Jewish so I did not speak out.

 And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me."

Even if one seperates others from family, friends from acquaintances, a nation from other nations, a particulal religion, from other religions, one is participating in the root cause of human suffering today!

Arendt's essay, "On Violence", distinguishes between violence and power. She maintains that, although theorists of both the Left and Right regard violence as an extreme manifestation of power, the two concepts are, in fact, antithetical. Power comes from the collective will and does not need violence to achieve any of its goals, since voluntary compliance takes its place. As governments start losing their legitimacy, violence becomes an artificial means toward the same end and is therefore, found only in the absence of power. Bureaucracies then become the ideal birthplaces of violence since they are defined as the "rule by no one" against whom to argue and therefore, recreate the missing links with the people they rule over.

Every time one says, "Ah, I do not want problems, I prefer peace quiet, that`s why I go along. It is how it is, I can not change it."  Every time we are the ones who enable everything that is happening in the human society, peace by peace, little by little. Of course it is necessary to choose how to act wisely, a way to be constructive and not destructive, but to do nothing is to be the responsible and guilty one, with a mask. If one feels as an individual, that he/she is unimportant that, not worthy, that one can not do anything, that one is only following orders and rules... every such individual de-humanizes ones self and strips himself of the essence of being a human being! But not of the responsibility! Even when one distinguishes between private and public spheres, between the family and the "rest of the world", between my friends and others (that is the point where "others" automaticly somenthing less, a lesser being)... exactly that is where ones borders humanity lay, and where one ceases to be a human and becomes nothing more than a machine.

Vision quest II

A vision quest is a rite of passage in some Native American cultures. The vision quest may be said to make the initiated establish contact with a spirit or force. The vision quest is the learning and initiation process of the apprentice under the guidance of elders.

In many Native American groups, the vision quest is a turning point in life taken before maturing to find oneself and the intended spiritual and life direction. Personally, I take it every few years, just to connect with the life force and the natures flow in a strong concentrated way and I found that it can be taken in a solitude or in a group that has an inner connection that is based on the equilibrium and balance.

When one  is ready, he or she will go on a personal, spiritual quest, often in conjunction with a period of fasting. This usually lasts for a number of days while the one is attuned to the spirit world. Usually, a guardian animal will come in a vision or dream, or it will present one self during the quest in an obvious way. One's life direction will appear at some point aswell. Returning to the tribe, one than pursues that direction in life which the vision quest revealed .

Here are some photographs of the locations that we have visited on this years vision quest:

Guardian animal as an ancient belief - Seagull:

Subtle lessons in behavior and communication, teaches to read people more effectively. Seagulls are spiritual messengers that demonstrate that a higher communication with guides is taking place. He shows how to see above situations with a higher clarity and teaches that there are many perspectives to consider. Seagull shows a sense friendship and community and the cooperation that is needed for the whole to operate successfully. He teaches how to ride the currents of the mental, emotional and physical worlds. Seagull can teach many lessons of looking, living and being. He teaches about the time to listen and watch for the nuances and timing of action.

The new Science

We are made of Energy, not Matter 

(http://www.lifetrainings.com/We-are-made-of-Energy-not-Matter.html)

The new science also accepts that the universe, including us, is made up of energy, not matter. This is not actually new – it was posited by Socrates in Europe way back when, and by the ancient rishis in India thousands of years before that.

Socrates said that energy, or soul, is separate from matter, and that the universe is made of energy – pure energy which was there before man and other material things like the earth came along.

However at the end of the seventeenth century Newtonian physics became the corner-stone of science, and it was based on the theory that there is only matter and nothing else – the whole universe is a machine, made of matter, and so are we. Medical science is still stuck in the Newtonian concept, even though the rest of science has now moved on to quantum physics.

Quantum physics says that as you go deeper and deeper into the workings of the atom, you see that there is nothing there – just energy waves. It says an atom is actually an invisible force field, a kind of miniature tornado, which emits waves of electrical energy.

Those energy waves can be measured and their effects seen, but they are not a material reality, they have no substance because they are… well, just electricity. So science now embraces the idea that the universe is made of energy.

We are of course made up of atoms. And atoms are continuously giving off, and absorbing, light and energy, all the time. It doesn’t stop even when we sleep. Every cell in the body has its atoms lined up in such a way that it has a negative and a positive voltage, inside and outside. So every cell in our body is a miniature battery. Each cell has 1.4 volts of energy – not much, but when you multiply by the number of cells in your body (50 trillion) you get a total voltage of 700 trillion volts of electricity in your body. Pretty strong stuff! This is what the Chinese call ‘chi’, and is also the energy used in hands on healing. It can even be measured outside the body for a certain radius, depending on the sophistication of the instrument. And guess which has the stronger electro-magnetic energy field – your head or your heart? For the answer, see the end of this article.

Now here is another interesting fact which relates to our lives… Each atom has its own distinct frequency, or vibration. And quantum physicists study the energetic effect when atoms collide, not their ‘matter’. What they see is that when two atomic waves meet, they either meet in synch, creating a constructive or harmonious effect, or they meet out of synch, creating a destructive effect in which they annul each other.

Dr Bruce Lipton, a former professor of medicine at Harvard University and author of the best-selling ‘Your mind is greater than your genes’, explains that if you drop two equal pebbles at exactly the same time into water, from the same height, they will both produce the same wave ripples. Ie, their waves will be in harmony with each other, and when their ripples meet the combined effect will be an amplification of the wavelength – in other words the merged waves become more powerful. But if you drop the pebbles from different heights or a millisecond apart, then when the resultant waves meet they will not be in harmony and will cancel each other out – the waves become weaker. You can try this out for yourself.

Exactly the same thing happens when atomic energy waves meet – they either have a constructive effect (become more powerful) or a destructive effect. Now, we are all created of atomic energy waves, and because it is impossible to separate waves, the new science says what Osho was saying over forty years ago: we are all connected - our waves are always meeting and getting entangled in each other. Dr Lipton says the result of such invisible meetings we call ‘good vibes’ and ‘bad vibes’, depending on whether the other waves we meet are in synch with us or out of synch. No wonder so many people were ‘magnetically attracted’ to Osho and felt peaceful and harmonious in his presence.

This means it is important to be aware of whether you are in an environment where you are getting entangled in destructive energy waves or constructive energy waves. The cells that make up our bodies know instinctively what is nourishing and what is toxic (Lipton demonstrates this with cells in petri dishes which move away from toxic stuff and towards nourishing stuff). And in fact all animals and plants communicate through vibrations, ie by sensing whether the energy is good for them or not. But we have been taught not to listen to our feelings but instead to what people say. So we are not trained to use our ability to sense energy, even though we have it just as all plants and animals have.

Many of the meditations Osho describes in The Book of Secrets work with the senses, and are a great way to get back in touch with your natural instincts so you can have more awareness of when you are in a nourishing or a draining situation.

part of a series of articles on Science and Meditation by Anando published in the italian Osho Times

A related Osho exerpt

The first thing is that in this world, matter and consciousness are not two separate things. What we call matter is consciousness asleep, and what we know as consciousness is matter awakened. In reality matter and consciousness are not different; they are different manifestations of the same thing. Existence is one, and that one is godliness or brahman or whatsoever you want to call it. When that one is asleep it appears as matter, and when awake it is consciousness. So don’t treat matter and consciousness as separate entities; they are only utilitarian terms. They are not really different.

Even science has come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as matter. How amusing it is that fifty years ago Nietzsche declared that God is dead, and fifty years from now science will have to declare that God may or may not be dead but matter is certainly dead. As science goes deeper and deeper into matter it finds that matter is no more and only energy remains, only energy is.

What remains after the explosion or splitting of the atom is only particles of energy. And what we know as electrons, protons and neutrons are particles of electricity. In fact, it is not correct to call them particles, because particles imply matter. The scientists had to find a new word, which is quanta, which has a different connotation altogether. Quanta is both a particle and a wave. It is difficult to comprehend how something could be both a particle and a wave simultaneously, but quanta is both. Sometimes it behaves as a particle – which is matter; and sometimes it behaves as a wave – which is energy. Wave and energy are behaviors of the same quanta.

When science dug deep it found that only energy is, and when spirituality delved deep it found that only spirit or atman or soul is. And soul is energy. The time is just around the corner when a synthesis of science and religion will be achieved, and the distance that separates them will simply disappear. When the gap between matter and truth has proved to be false, the gap between science and religion cannot exist for long. If matter and consciousness are not two, how can religion and science be two? The separation of science and religion was dependent on the separation of matter and consciousness.

To me, only one is; two simply don’t exist. There is no place for duality; so the question of matter and consciousness does not arise. If you like the language of matter, you can say that everything is matter. And if you like the language of consciousness, you can say that everything is consciousness. I for one prefer the language of consciousness. Why do I prefer it? Because, in my view, one should always prefer the language of the higher, which has greater potential; one should not prefer the language of the lower, where potential is less and less.

Consciousness asleep is matter, and consciousness awakened is consciousness. All is consciousness.