“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Martin Luther King Jr.

What does it mean to judge someone by the content of their character? What are we judging exactly? Most people would say something like, “whether they are a good person”. But what is a “good person”? Aristotle would say “a virtuous person”. He explains what he means by this in The Nichomachean Ethics.

Martin Luther King Jr. was an Aristotelian and a Christian. He believed in virtue and character and the possibility of cultivating them. He believed that being a good Christian meant having a good character and that having a good character meant that you didn’t judge people by superficial things like the colour of their skin.

King’s dream was that his children might live in a society made up of wise people who could see into the human heart, rather than foolish people who only judged by appearances. For King, as for Aristotle, wisdom and virtue are closely related. The better your grip on reality, the less egocentric you are. And the less egocentric you are (the more decentred), the holier you are. This is why King’s dream is ultimately a religious dream.

As a religious man, he dreamed that he might become as holy, virtuous and wise as possible. As a civil rights activist, he dreamed that his country might become as holy, virtuous and wise as possible. But he was a realist. He knew the depths of foolishness in the American psyche. This was part of his wisdom.

If you are familiar with my work, you will know that I make use of two different psychological systems based on the six realms of the Bhavachakra, the Tibetan Wheel of Life. The first is a loose translation in which I identify six ego states corresponding to the different realms, namely, Diva, Demon, Victim, Addict, Muppet and Muggle. The second is simply these ego states flipped over into their positive counterparts, that is, Mystic, Shaman, Warrior, Monk/Nun, Philosopher, King/Queen. (The two systems are depicted on the Home Page).

These two “mind-maps” are really just descriptions of what a foolish character and a wise character look like. It is quite a radical claim, because what I am saying is that foolish people and wise people live in different worlds according to different principles. You find this idea expressed in Christianity in the St. Paul’s distinction between the “old man” and the “new man”:

“That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts;

And be renewed in the spirit of your mind;

And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.”

Ephesians 4: 22-24

In my book, The Confessions of a Psychedelic Christian, I relate the six aspects of the “new man” to the three qualities of holiness, virtue and wisdom. The “Mystic Shaman” represents holiness, the “Warrior Monk” represents virtue and the “Philosopher King” represents wisdom. Thus to develop and embody these archetypes is to become holy, virtuous and wise.

Conversely, the six aspects of the “old man”, the unregenerate man or woman, are associated with the opposite tendencies. Thus, the “Diva Demon” represents selfishness, the “Victim Addict” represents weakness and the “Muppet Muggle” represents foolishness. The more entrenched these archetypes, the more selfish, weak and foolish we are.

Look at yourself. Are you cultivating wisdom or foolishness? And what are you doing to cultivate it?

Look at your culture. Is it growing wiser or growing more foolish? And what is your culture promoting? The development of character or the denial of character in favour of identity politics?

I still believe in Martin Luther King’s dream, but sometimes I wonder whether it will come true even in my own children’s lifetime.

“Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock:

And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.

And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand:

And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.”

Matthew 7: 24-27

A meaningful psychedelic trip undertaken for the purposes of insight, healing and spiritual awakening must be done in a spirit of mindfulness. This means that you must engage the same processes of paying attention and not judging as you do in ordinary meditation. You should apply “soft vigilance” to whatever comes up, without reactivity or judgment. Without straining or slacking, your attention should be flexible and responsive. Go with the flow. Use all your senses. Really look and really listen. Really feel. Then, eventually, you will remember what it means to be fully alive and fully awake here and now. You will remember yourself. Perhaps you will remember God.

Worldview attunement depends on the consonant co-identification of agent and arena.

The various aspects of the human ego, which I affectionately refer to as “Divas”, “Demons”, “Victims”, “Addicts”, “Muppets” and “Muggles”, are agents in the arena of the ordinary human world, what I call “Babylon”. Depending on which ego state predominates at any one time determines your existential mode.

“Mystics”, “Shamans”, “Warriors”, “Monks/Nuns”, “Philosophers” and “Kings/Queens”, as aspects of “Buddha Nature” or “Christ Consciousness”, are agents in the arena of the supra-mental, supra-human world of “Gaia”, “the Pure Land” or “the Kingdom of God”. Similarly, the existential mode is determined by which aspect is dominant.

There are actually six arenas (the six realms of the Wheel of Life) in which each of the six “worldly” ego agents can act and six arenas in which the six “spiritual” agents can act. “Babylon” and “the Pure Land” are meta-arenas containing within them the potential for any one of their six sub-arenas to manifest.

In Babylon, these are: the Heavenly Realm (Devaloka), the Hell Realm (Narakaloka), the Animal Realm, the Hungry Ghost Realm, the Titan Realm and the Human Realm. In the Pure Land, these are: the Pure Place (which can be either a Pure Consciousness Event (PCE) or Resonant At-Onement depending on whether you are attentionally scaling down in meditation or scaling up in contemplation), the Dragon, the Dojo, the Temple, the School and the Kingdom.

A sense of incongruity, meaningless or absurdity occurs when the wrong agent is in the wrong arena. The cultivation of spiritual character therefore depends on finding the appropriate arena within which to exercise the skills and virtues associated with each archetype. You need to find the right place for the practice of the six yogas (dhyana, kundalini, karma, bhakti, jnana, raja).

Only then can the virtual be realised. Only then can you actually live up to your potential.

If you spend too long on the Wheel of Babylon, you begin to lose touch with reality. This means that things stop being truly meaningful, since, as John Vervaeke puts it, relevance gets uncoupled from truth.

The Meaning Crisis is an existential crisis. In a post-truth world, how do you know what’s real anymore? It’s as though everyone were tripping all the time. Objectivity is lost. Truth is a fiction. All we have is “identity”, which means that we identify with things and ideas simply according to an intuited sense of their relevance. Subjectivism and relativism are the order of the day. The Sophists win.

This explains the exponential rise of bullshit in our culture. “Bullshit” is actually a technical term introduced by Harry Frankfurt in 1986. It differs from deceit or lying in that it is uninterested in the truth to begin with. Advertising and propaganda are the traditional purveyors of bullshit, but it is now endemic in academia and the media. Our culture is drowning in bullshit.

The result is self-deception and self-destructive behaviours. People progressively lose the ability to recognise bullshit and so increasingly bullshit themselves. They start by choosing expedience over truth and following the crowd for the sake of social approbation, what Nietzsche called “herd mentality”, and soon lose interest in the truth altogether.

This is why it is impossible to argue rationally with Muppets. “Ah, but we’re all Muppets now!” they retort. “The Age of Reason is over. Welcome to the Age of Bullshit!”

And they’re right. As long as you remain stuck on the Wheel of Babylon. As long as you remain trapped in Plato’s Cave. But there is a way out for those who want out. As C.S. Lewis said, “the doors of hell are locked from the inside”.

Get out of Babylon.

This very land is the Pure Land.

“Psychotechnology” is John Vervaeke’s fancy cognitive science word for spiritual practice. Psychotechnologies are intentional, sustained mental techniques designed to disrupt ordinary patterns of thought in order to make way for new ones. Strictly speaking, they are a form of mind training, but the most powerful and transformative ones are also types of spiritual training.

The principal psychotechnologies I use in Shamanic Christian Zen training are mantras. However, the mantras are more than just sounds or words – they point to specific mental actions. I will briefly describe some of them here.

Dosa Nirodha Karuna

Tanha Nirodha Karuna

Dukha Nirodha Karuna

What makes a Diva, Demon, Victim, Addict, Muppet or Muggle? Beyond and beneath the particular behaviours associated with each archetype is a particular emotional moodscape – a certain cocktail of hormones and neurotransmitters is activated, creating a different feeling tone associated with each ego state.

The higher the activation, the more you will be in the grip of that state. If your nervous system is flooded with adrenaline and catecholamine, for example, the rage and murderous impulses you experience will make you feel and perhaps even act like a Demon, especially if you have anger management issues.

The Pali word dosa means aversion or hatred. It covers the whole spectrum of negative feeling states from violent rage to simmering resentment. Tanha means thirst or craving. It covers the spectrum of desire, from burning lust to subtle greed. Dukkha means suffering and refers to all states of unhappiness, dissatisfaction and general discomfort.

If you have ever tried to meditate after a flaming row with your partner, you will recognise how difficult it is. In fact, it’s impossible. Until the adrenaline has left your system, you will inevitably just sit there seething. You will encounter a similarly insurmountable difficulties if you try to meditate after looking at pornography, or after hearing some bad news which confirms your suspicions about the terrible state of the world.

If you are wound up, fed up or turned on, you will be unable to focus your energy on constructive tasks or on spiritual practice. You will just have to wait patiently for the effects of your inner drugs to wear off, while at the same time refraining from producing any more. This is, of course, a practice in itself. It is the practice that makes all other practice possible, by preparing an empty space of “apatheia”, in which both the brain’s default mode network and the sympathetic nervous system are deactivated. (For the full mantra, see the blog The Clearing Meditation).

The next family of psychotechnologies is the mindfulness and “headlessness” practices. These are well known and widely available. I like to use a mantra adapted (or “exapted”) from Kashmir Shaivism:

Parashiva

Shiva

Shakti

These refer to transcendent consciousness, immanent consciousness and qualitative phenomena, the immediately given objects of consciousness.

I also use a sequence of seven mantras called The Ray of Creation:

Amun Ra Atum Ka Ba Gaia Jah

where each mantra represents a stage in the evolution of the universe: Emptiness (Amun); Energy (Ra); Form (Atum); Life (Ka); Mind (Ba); Global Consciousness (Gaia) and Universal Consciousness (Jah).

Then there are the Transcendentals:

Peace Love Goodness Beauty Truth Consciousness Bliss

and the various psychotechnologies associated with each of the spiritual archetypes:

Mystic Shaman Warrior Monk Philosopher King

and their corresponding yogas:

Dhyana Kundalini Karma Bhakti Jnana Raja.

Unlike the emotionally activated ego states (Diva Demon Victim Addict Muppet Muggle) their spiritual counterparts are characterised by a state of “cool flow”. Compare the manic rants of a Muppet with the dispassionate reflections of a Jnana Yogi Philosopher, for example.

The most visible demonstration of “cool flow” is in the coordinated physical movements of the Warrior, who channels the Chi (energy) in a consummately controlled and natural way, even in the heat of battle.

To sum up then, the various psychotechnologies can be grouped under three broad headings in Shamanic Christian Zen training:

1. Apatheia
2. Mindfulness
3. Cool flow

The Tibetan Bhavachakra or Wheel of Life can be understood as a cross-section of human reality in six of its most salient permutations. I have taken the liberty to loosely translate them into English vernacular as Diva, Demon, Victim, Addict, Muppet and Muggle. In most depictions of the Wheel of Life, you will find an image of the Buddha outside the Wheel, usually on a cloud somewhere above it.

If we can identify six archetypes in our Human-All-Too-Human Wheel of Samsara, what archetypes might we hope to find in a Buddha’s Nirvana beyond the Wheel? If human psychology includes some constellation or other of these six subpersonalities, what constitutes a Buddha’s psychology?

I contend that we can identify six matching archetypes in awakened Buddha Consciousness, if we “looking-glass” the human ones. What we end up with is the Mystic, Shaman, Warrior, Monk, Philosopher and King archetypes, corresponding to the six yogas, Dhyana, Kundalini, Karma, Bhakti, Jnana and Raja yoga.

A Self-Realised Master Yogi, who embodies all six yogas and personifies all six archetypes is a Living Buddha. Strictly speaking, he or she is no longer human, and so no longer transmigrates around the Wheel of Life. He or she is “in the world but not of the world”. He or she is identified with Gaia rather than Ba, with the planet as a whole rather than their individual bodymind or the distributed cognition of the human social matrix. He or she is a “Buddha in Babylon”.

Buddha recognises Buddha. But human consciousness cannot see beyond the limits of the human Wheel of Life. This state of affairs creates a paradox: spiritual teachings can only be understood by spiritual beings, but it’s human beings that need them. Which is why we must suppose that all human beings have Buddha Nature, an incipient germ of spiritual awakening buried somewhere in their psyches, a pearl of great price smaller than a mustard seed, ready to sprout at any moment.

Once this baby Buddha (or baby Jesus) is born in the soul, the business of spiritual training in the yogas can begin in earnest. For as Dogen Zenji said, “training and enlightenment are one”.

“And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:

therefore the LORD God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken.

So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.”

Genesis 3: 22-24

Who are the Cherubims guarding the way back to the garden of Eden? Embodiments of cynicism and fear.

Cynicism arises as a consequence of eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But it is a far bigger problem now than it ever was when Genesis was written. You might go so far as to say that it’s a defining characteristic of modernity and postmodernity, especially in the West. On a psychological level, it manifests as an aspect of what Freud called “the Superego”, or as a subpersonality, variously called “the Cynic”, “the Critic”, “the Scoffer”, “the Know-It-All”, “the Blackadder”.

The adult ego is adept at dismissing anything that challenges its control and authority as infantile and silly. Freud himself fell under its spell when he dismissed religion as regression to a primitive state of childish dependence. Jung, on the other hand, didn’t fall for such rationalist cynicism.

Where the Cynic relies on ridicule and mockery to circumvent any perceived threats to the controlling ego, the Frightened Child just runs away and hides under the covers. At the first sign of danger or difficulty, it shuts down in a kind of psychological narcolepsy.

Cynicism results in ironic detachment. Fear results in dissociation. Thus it is the Cynic and the Frightened Child that stand guard at the gates of Eden and bar the way to the Tree of Life, maintaining our pathological disengagement with life.

The Happy Child, on the other hand, is full of life, energy, courage, curiosity, innocence, imagination and trust, qualities that the cynical and frightened adult ego has lost. Which is why you won’t get far with psychedelics until you connect with your inner Happy Child.

The Psychedelic Way is a way of magic, adventure, playfulness and wonder. It is the way of the little heroes of children’s fiction, of Alice, Christopher Robin, Peter Pan, Momo and Chihiro.

“And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them,

And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.”

Matthew 18: 2-3

Remembering God means awareness Here and Now of the presence of God.

And awareness of the presence of God depends on your presence Here and Now.

An intellectual grasp of theism or enlightenment is beside the point.

Remembering God Here and Now is the same thing as remembering Zen.

So Wake Up.

Be Here Now.

Even though remembering is more fun when you forget

(And the Prodigal Son is celebrated more than his brother)

Keep your forgetting short.

Don’t let it last a lifetime.

Keep remembering.

And if you can’t remember,

Remember the magic plants.

They are more than happy to remind you.

The French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre wrote a play called Huis Clos, No Exit, about three characters trapped in a room for all eternity. The most famous line from the play is “l’enfer, c’est les autres” or “hell is other people”.

Not everyone shares Sartre’s apparently misanthropic sense of the hellishness of society. He was clearly something of an intellectual snob for a start: “I found the human heart empty and insipid everywhere except in books”. But many people are uneasy to varying degrees, which is why the perennial problem of the right relationship between the individual and society never goes away.

Sartre was obsessed with the idea of authenticity, a preoccupation shared both by the psychoanalysts and cultural Marxists of the time. Erich Fromm is the figure who best exemplifies both these approaches, most famously in his book The Fear of Freedom, originally published in 1941, just three years before Sartre’s play was first performed.

Sigmund Freud believed that civilization depended on the ability of individuals to conform, but that this was achieved at the cost of neurosis: “when an instinctual trend undergoes repression, its libidinal elements are turned into symptoms, and its aggressive components into a sense of guilt.” (Civilization and Its Discontents). Freud’s thesis is very much in line with Jean-Jaques Rousseau’s famous dictum that “Man is born free and everywhere is in chains”, except that for Freud the chains are internalised, more akin perhaps to Blake’s “mind-forg’d manacles”.

The Muggle answer to the problem of Sartrean social discontent is to try your best to fit in. But that solution has already been ruled out by the existential demand for autonomy, freedom and authenticity. Also, conformity may have some merit in a sane society, but what if the society itself is unhinged? As Jiddu Krishnamurti put it, “it is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society”.

Even in a relatively sane and healthy society, the Muggle Way is a satisfactory way out of Sartre’s existential discontent only for those who don’t feel particularly trapped in the first place. For those who feel it keenly, the Muppet Way seems more promising. If we really are in a profoundly sick society, then isn’t the correct response to either pursue socio-political reform, or else overthrow the whole rotten edifice and start again? The revolution versus reform debate simmers away continuously in the minds and hearts of political dissidents and discontents, but the Muppet Way is the way of permanent revolution.

Unfortunately, as the numerous revolutions of the twentieth century volubly attest, this usually simply fulfills the old adage, “out of the frying pan and into the fire”. It seems that the Utopian visions of revolutionary radicals don’t actually pave a way out hell but rather plunge us into a deeper one.

So what about the Diva Way? What about worldly success, fame and fortune? Can enjoying the best society has to offer reduce and even erase our discontent? Will a night at the opera with champagne and caviar do the trick? Apparently not. At least not according to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal entitled Don’t Envy the Super-Rich, They Are Miserable.

The Victim Way obviously won’t get you out of your existential discontent either. Impotently bemoaning your lot and blaming every man and his dog for it, although providing some psychological relief in the short term, inevitably ends up compounding your discontent. The only real practical utility is to provide more fuel for the Muppet Way.

The Addict Way similarly offers immediate relief with long-term negative consequences. In moments of weakness it may seem that the way out is at the bottom of a bottle, but it never is. And the Demon Way, the way of violence, murder and suicide, is best left well alone, for obvious reasons.

There is no way out of this closed room. There are no doors. Huis Clos.

Except upwards. For this is a room without a roof (Pharrell Williams) and the only way is up (Yazz).