The Techniques And Practice of Enlightenment

[syncategorematic]

Okay, I need to translate and post this, because I have been guilty of some of those sins, and reminding myself of this article works like reminding myself of how aliens could very easily not be intelligent. The author of both articles is the same, Leonid Kaganov,; this article is taken from this blog entry.

The Techniques and Practice of Enlightenment

I've known people who

1) Were completely cured.
2) Gained harmony in their soul and confidence in tomorrow's day.
3) Changed their life for the better for the rest of their lives.
4) Helped their loved ones and the people around them change.
5) Found the Truth.

They were helped by a Teaching --- the truest in this world. They perceived it, accepted it, and practice it the rest of their lives. You ask what is this Teaching, that so awesomely helps you gain harmony and get on the true path? First of all, know one thing --- exactly this minor detail is unimportant, any teaching will work. This may be

1) Religion: Buddhism, Christianity, the Church of Christ, the Church of United Munits*, Judaism, Islam, Dianetics, paganism, or the school of the folk healer Porfiriy Ivanov.
2) Eastern martial arts: karate, Wushu, aikido, yoga, mountain-hill wrestling*, the Nanai Boys' fighting style**
3) Clubs and movements: indie songwriting, hippie communes, kayaking clubs, aquarium fish clubs, beekeepers' clubs, UFO contact clubs, the brotherhood of demobilized border guards, or the political party "The One Union of Insulted Forces"
4) Business: (multilevel marketing with trade fairs, seminars, and its own ideology)
5) Psychological sects: group-therapy training, seminars on the removal of complexes, NLP, "Prologues", holotropic breathing***
6) Other.

And second of all, there is no reason for envy --- despite the assertions of "healing" and "spiritual rebirth", these people look sick because

1) Their personality, health, and cognitive capabilities haven't changed in the slightest. Their new habit of burning incense, tearing at a guitar, or dividing people into "auditories" and "visuals" is purely an external touch.
2) One hasn't noticed that they've become freer, more relaxed, and broader in their thinking. On the contrary, despite their loud assertions, they give the impression of wild people, separated from the world, full of complexes and madnesses, because they are incapable of talking about anything but their Teaching, and "the breadth of their views" is expressed through the longing to tag everything with labels "good" and "bad."
3) They are constantly digging at the people who surround them, trying to download their idea into them.

This illness is called fanaticism. Despite misconceptions, it isn't transferred through conversations and proselytizing. Also, it doesn't strike people of any particular age, profession, or intelligence level. There are no methods to "lure" a fully sane, healthy person into the "cult." Fanaticism claims as victims people who are weakened, disappointed, those who have lost the earth under their feet and their place in life. Those who come to fanaticism may be insecure people, such as "teenagers thinking about Life", or those who have suffered a life shock --- those who have lost loved ones, gotten a mental illness, survived a catastrophe. It's important to remember: the human psyche is so constructed that any healthy person who finds himself in such a life situation that he has no real powers to change anything, will unconsciously turn to unreal powers, and in that moment he is particularly disposed to take on a fortunately-encountered religious or philosophical idea. Because of this, religious and political proselytizers love hanging around hospitals and disaster areas so much --- here the chances are high that they'll conscript those who had lost their life's direction and self-control.

How to treat this disease? There is no universal cure; one can merely alleviate the most annoying symptoms. Convince the patient to stop burning incense in the apartment, to do a little less promoting of his ultra-centrist bloc to his Communist neighbour, to not sacrifice black chickens in his office, to wait a little about leaving university and to stop destroying the NLP templates of a customer with out-of-place predicate words. It is categorically forbidden to prove to the patient that he is deluded and there are other points of view (religions, seminars, parties, soccer teams, armed forces) --- his faith will only strengthen as a result of such arguments.

Is there any prevention of this disease? Yes. One should lead a healthy lifestyle, not distance yourself from society, not go crazy about nonsense, and train your own wisdom, tolerance, and healthy curiosity towards different viewpoints and beliefs. Upon discovering fanaticism symptoms in yourself --- immediately consult your common sense.

You are already sick with fanaticism if you believe that

1) Our Teacher is a great Master; he can do anything! And his Teacher, well... Somewhere far away there are Masters who can work inhuman miracles. Chop a tank in half with the palm of their hands. Read people's thoughts by looking into their eyes. Drink a bucket of vodka. Become millionaires by opening a commercial beach in Antarctica. If I spend enough time and energy, I too may be a Master. Although not such a cool one --- it's not given to all.

2) I also used to be a cripple like yourselves! I also used to suffer from illnesses, disasters, and loneliness! But ever since I've become interested in...

3) O ye blind ones who had not seen the Way! O ye suffering and troubled! And unsuspecting of this! O ye vermin who waste out your life on trifles! We aren't like that! All other teachings are wrong! In the worst-case scenario, they say the same thing, only with different words and in a more complicated way.

4) Especially deeply deluded are our neighbouring schools. Feel the difference! Karatekas are dumb robots. Social-centrists are thieves and criminals. Folk DJs are moral cripples and sellouts to pop. Development Training is just a money scam. The Church of the Coming are dirty cultists.

5) You will be severely punished for your deafness. You will not receive Life Eternal. You will not master Hand-to-Hand Combat. You will not learn to Self-Realize and to Make Decisions. You will not see the dawn on the slopes of Tiang Shang. You will not be Healed. You will not open your own Business. Or your own Third Eye. You will never know Life As It Really Is.

6) The main principles of the Teaching are applicable everywhere. Driving a car using the techniques of NLP helps avoid traffic jams. Teeth that are brushed with a prayer look whiter. And if the physics prof on the exams does kind of a verbal throw, one must react with a verbal parry --- and an A will be guaranteed. It's tested and true!

7) Wake me up at three in the night and ask me who I am? You won't hear my name in response! I will answer without a heartbeat's thought! I am a fighter! I am a Taoist! I am a former paratrooper! I am a practitioner! I am an indie songwriter! I am a hippie! I am a businessman!

8) Humanity has reached a dead end; that is clear to all. If everyone understood the Truth and became like us, life would be so awesome on this planet!

9) Let anyone, just once, open our Book (see our Class, listen to our Songs) and he will understand everything! Try it! You don't want to even try it? Why?

10) Hey, you, passing by on the street! You know what your problem is?

Translator's footnotes:
* - Google reveals only one mention of this, this article, so it may be fictional.
** - a modern Russian idiom, roughly equivalent to "shadow-boxing."
*** - a modern Russian idiom, a catch-all derogatory term for esoteric New Age practices.

Comments

[indicolite.livejournal.com]

Personal confession: I have definitely been guilty of fanaticism about aikido, my high school, pure math, and BPAL. And on a certain level, string instruments, linguistics, and now Type theory and being an NT. I intend to pull back from that latter sin and watch myself closely from now on.

Which shows what a weakened, disappointed, and insecure person I have been and in some ways haven't yet cleaned myself of being. Ouch.

This way of viewing fanaticism reminds me a lot of the story of Rat Park (http://www.walrusmagazine.com/articles/2007.12-health-rat-trap/) and how addicts become addicts because of things missing in their life, not because of some inherent property of a chemical or of gambling or the Internet. I wonder if fanaticism and addiction have similar structures and properties mentally --- the same mental imbalance in different situations may cause someone to seek solace in fundamentalist Zen Buddhism, or in daito-ryu aiki-jiu-jitsu, or in heroin, or in alcohol, or in RationalSnark?

[quantumkitty.livejournal.com]

I don't think everything that looks like fanaticism is an example of what the article talks about. I get Obsessions of the Indefinite Time Period that take over my life and my thoughts, and I talk about them all the time and try to get other people interested in them, but I don't think it's unhealthy or evidence of weakness. It's just the way I am.

[indicolite.livejournal.com]

Indeed; I did not mean "Wow, this movie I saw last week is awesome, I keep singing all the songs from it, you have to see it, it's awesome!" and nor does the author.

What the definition of fanaticism includes, and I think is vital, is negatively judging those who do not have your O. of the I.T.P. I can dearly love a particular movie, but I would be a fanatic of it only if I basically set up that all those who watched that movie are human and the rest who may like other movies are below. Which is difficult to do when it is just a movie in a theatre; a lot easier when you join a fan club. (Conjecture: almost all fanatics except possibly the religious ones require a social group to reinforce their fanaticism. But a lone fanatic raving a hoarse solo at a street corner just looks like a complete lunatic and rightly so; it is in groups that fanatics seem more sane and are more dangerous.)

And what I did, my dear, was precisely judging those who practiced another martial art than aikido, went to another high school than mine, wore other perfumes than BPAL, played the oboe and not the violin, and didn't know about normal subgroups. :)

[quantumkitty.livejournal.com]

Are you saying you negatively judge(d) people who aren't NTs, too?

[indicolite.livejournal.com]

Yes. As irrational, mindless, airy-fairy, touchy-feely, why the hell can't they see what's going on in the simplest of proofs, yammering-about-nothing, so concerned with pleasing everybody, following the rules, always think they're right, romance-and-unicorns, attention span of a two-year-old, making leaps of logic like a pole-vaulting party on lilypads...

I even judged the Judging. I think there's extra credit and honourary citation on the Fanatic's Diploma for that.

Writing it down in a particularly memorable way should hopefully keep me from doing it again.

[siderea]

BPAL DOES TOO SOLVE ALL EARTHLY PROBLEMS!!!1!elventyone!!!

[indicolite.livejournal.com]

Alas, I have a counterexample. To my devastating disappointment that made my faith waver and my fanaticism crumble, Scherezade's contribution to my attempts to prove the Halting Problem came to resulted in a still-faintly-good-smelling mark of D.

[siderea]

You must not have used enough. :D

[indicolite.livejournal.com]

I was expecting you to take the argument that the Halting Problem isn't an earthly problem and hence cannot be viewed as counterexample to this statement under these criteria.

I'll have to fill buckets with BPAL, then, after my aforementioned Awesome Master Teacher has drained them of vodka in a gulp.

[m-danson.livejournal.com]

Or the right kind... try them all!!!

[goth-hobbit.livejournal.com]

Mr. Kaganov is a wise man, and his observations correlate with my own observations and experience.

I became, as a pre-teen and young teenager, dedicatedly religious; a Christian of the humorless and judgmental variety. The reason for this lapse in (relative) sanity was having my parents duke it out over which one of them would wind up with custody of me. There was no child support or other financial consideration at stake -- just me. To make matters worse, my mother's side of the family chose to play fair, whilst my father's side did not. My grandmother's church claimed that they could make me Happy, and I fell for it. Thankfully, I came to realize that it wasn't working. (The conflicts that I had with the youth minister -- which ended in him telling me that I was going to hell for asking too many questions -- didn't help matters.)

Since then, I've done my level best to keep a rational and balanced view of the Universe, my place in it, and that of other people. There are still things which challenge my ability to do so; SUV drivers and people who continue to vote Republican and support the current administration's policies are the worst. I don't even look down upon those who have not Seen the Light of small-batch essential oil perfumes -- except when those people stick their alcohol-laden, cat-piss commercial perfume reeking arms in my face and try to convince me that what they're wearing smells good.

[indicolite.livejournal.com]

Not only is he a wise man; he actually has a degree in clinical psychology, with specializations in the psychology of religion and in psychopharmocology. So I really like how he effectively distilled in one sentence, "It's important to remember: the human psyche is so constructed that any healthy person who finds himself in such a life situation that he has no real powers to change anything, will unconsciously turn to unreal powers, and in that moment he is particularly disposed to take on a fortunately-encountered religious or philosophical idea."

Well, I think that there is an escape clause on the looking-down part of fanaticism if the people you're looking down on are actually interfering with you. That way, they are well-defined people doing a particular thing, and what is actually grating at you is a particular behaviour; if once they stop sticking their arm in your face you're fine with them, you're not a fanatic. Far more dangerous would be scorning people simply by definition: "I know nothing else about you but that you are not (a BPAL fan, a Wushu-ist, an NT, a Democrat) and therefore you are an object of my dislike, distrust, and pity."

[indicolite.livejournal.com]

"I know nothing else about you but that you are not (a BPAL fan, a Wushu-ist, an NT, a Democrat) and therefore you are an object of my dislike, distrust, and pity."

Thought: racism, national chauvinism, sexism, and other prejudices are another form of fanaticism.