Can we help?
Our history is the history of consciousness. 2000 years ago we were conscious of belonging to a tribe or a small village in the forest. Later we became conscious of belonging to a country or a religion. Today we belong to a group of countries under the names of “The East” or “The West”. We have not yet reached the level where we are Homo sapiens before anything else. We should keep in mind that we all come from the same Big Bang that got divided into matter, dark matter and dark energy. Somewhere along the way a human soul must have appeared that was divided into individual souls. You cannot reshape an individual soul without also reshaping the human soul in general.
We live among different levels of matter, plants animals and humans. Those levels are not segregated. You can find in any of them some characteristic of the level above it. Look for instance at the way ‘mobility’ was implemented at different levels. In humans we can change the shape of our body and make tools such as shoes, cars, train, ships, and planes to move our body farther and quicker. The animals are limited to changing the shape of their body. The plants are even more limited. All they can do is to let their seeds to be blown in the wind. Mobility is percolating from one level to the levels below and its successive implementations get more and more limited. Love seems to come from a higher level. It diffuses through many levels until it becomes limited to sexual attraction.
Let's free the soul from the material world
Let’s start with something simple such as ‘chocolate’. How do you distance yourself from chocolate? You could move to a cavern where there is no temptation. This is very commendable but there is no guaranty that you will not return to chocolate when you come back from your cavern. A better way would be to face your craving for chocolate until something changes in your soul that gives you the strength to enjoy some chocolate and lets you free to stop eating at will. We use your body to identify our attachment to the material world and bring changes to our soul.
We use our body to identify our attachment to the material world and bring changes to our soul.
After your victory over chocolate you can try to get your freedom back from the TV set. Maybe a TV with pedals would help! When it is not worth pedaling the TV stops! The goal is to use TV without abusing it.
As you progress, you will be trying to recover your freedom from money. Those pieces of paper can be exchanged for anything material. Your soul will not move to higher world as long as she cannot dominate her craving for money. Remember the children’s story of the giant who could not get up because he was attached to the ground by many little ropes. Money is tying us to the material world with its many little ropes.
Imagine a society where money would be secondary. Instead of looking for the highest return you would invest in companies that create more happiness for your fellow men. If you have to choose between gun and butter you would choose butter. The main concern of the CEO would be to better satisfy his customers instead of satisfying his shareholders. The pharmaceutical industry would try to make cheaper and cheaper medicines.
Science made us conscious of the laws of the material world. We learned to follow rules. We learned to think. After learning swimming, a day comes when we must try the deep end. We must transpose what we have learned in a limited environment into a wider environment. We should venture outside the limits of science. What we call life, love and the need to belong do not have a mass, a shape, a color and an electric charge. We should develop The Arts in our life. We should pay less attention to the skyscrapers and more to the museums.
Sadomasochism
One more way to help our soul is to get our sadomasochism under control.
Masochism is what makes you take a chance with your life on the freeway to save a few seconds when you have nothing urgent to do. Gambling is a combination of mathematical probabilities and sadomasochism. The casino provides the mathematical probabilities and the gamblers bring their sadomasochism. Did you ever take a chance to be late or to run out of gas? What exactly did you feel when you saw people in a circus risking their life for your entertainment? Could you feel some sadism in the air?
We go even further. We even try to make our personal opinion into law and use the judicial system to enforce it. We justify our action by saying that “It is for their own good”. We want the world to be perfect and it can only be perfect by following our own ideas. We want to impose our ideas on others. The real reason is that we don't have our sadomasochism under control.
This is nothing new. The Romans designed many ways to make the defeated to suffer as much as possible before dying. How can you explain the refinement in the many ways people tortured their victims in the Middle Ages - and even today? How can you explain torture?
Wars are an opportunity to suffer and make others suffer. We had thousands of wars that are difficult to justify. What we call ‘geopolitics’ is sadomasochism at the government’s level.
That could lead to a different conception of good and bad. The ‘bad’ appears when entities fight each other. The more separate entities you have, the more opportunities that the ‘bad’ will appear. Unity is Paradise. Multitude is Hell. What a pity we had to leave the Big Bang!
Is there a need for sadomasochism? Let’s try some empathy.
- Our ancestors did not master the use of fire without getting some blisters. That was only a beginning. There is a price to pay for everything. We associate the idea of progress with the idea of pain.
- Life in society would not be possible without some rules. In a democracy the individual has all the rights and delegates some of his rights to the government. We all drive on the same side of the road. Sadomasochism starts when you make rules that are not necessary.
- Some people need sadomasochism in their sex life.
Even the most beautiful
flower needs manure
- Even the most beautiful flower needs manure. This is an association of opposites that you can find everywhere. Some masochism could be part of the design of our world.