At the risk of being grossly reductionist, here is a gross reduction of Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos to the six archetypes on the “Orthodox Cross”.

Rule 1 : “Stand up straight with your shoulders back”. This is the Warrior archetype. It is also the King archetype. The top lobster is a Warrior King. It defeats the Victim Muggle.

Rule 2: “Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping”. There are two you’s here. The you doing the treating and the you being treated. He could have said, “As a Warrior it is your duty to serve your King.” It resists Victimhood.

Rule 3: “Make friends with people who want the best for you”. This points to the need for satsang, good company and the love of true friendship, philia. In other words, surround yourself with people who recognise your innate sovereignty, who also treat you like a King.

Rule 4: “Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.” Again, this is about the self-image we acquire from the people around us. This is how Muggles define themselves. Only the King is exempt from this social comparison on the status hierarchy.

Rule 5: “Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them.” As a parent, you have the moral duty to make sure your children behave in line with their own innate sovereignty. Your Warrior must discipline them on behalf of the King or Queen in them.

Rule 6: “Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.” This is also the job of the Warrior, since it is about Karma Yoga, right action. Don’t shirk your basic responsibilities by retreating into idealism. Don’t be a Muppet.

Rule 7: “Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient).” Here Peterson is appealing to the Philosopher, but also to the Monk. The Philosopher seeks meaning, and the Monk avoids self-serving short cuts.

Rule 8: “Tell the truth – or, at least, don’t lie.” Again we are in the realm of Jnana Yoga, the pursuit of truth by the Philosopher.

Rule 9: “Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t.” Again, be an open-minded Philosopher, not a closed-minded Muppet.

Rule 10: “Be precise in your speech.” The more precise your speech, the more precise your thought. More good advice for the Philosopher.

Rule 11: “Do not bother children when they are skateboarding.” In other words, let children take the necessary risks in order to develop their own Warrior natures and avoid turning into over-protected Victim wimps.

Rule 12: “Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street.” Appreciate and enjoy the simple beauty of life when it presents itself. Cultivate an attitude of wonder and care. This is Bhakti Yoga, the practice of the Monk.

The first six of Peterson’s 12 Rules are more concerned with the Warrior and the King, and with the composite archetype, the “Warrior King”. The second six focus on the Philosopher and the Monk and the “Philosopher Monk”.

These are powerful and effective antidotes to the “chaos” of the Victim, Muggle, Muppet and Addict archetypes on the Wheel of Samsara. However, there seems to be something missing. Peterson pushes the process of character reformation and character building with the Warrior, with direct action and will-power. It is a call to arms. He calls forth our inner Warrior, King, Philosopher and Monk archetypes.

But deep transformation isn’t as easy as that. It isn’t just a matter of heroic self-transcendence and wishful thinking. If you force yourself to stand up straight with your shoulders back and strike a Warrior pose, you will certainly look and feel like a Warrior. And there is plenty of mileage in “acting as if”. But there is still a strong element of “acting”. The Warrior stance may in fact be just a simulacrum, a pretense, a left hemisphere re-presentation of true Warrior spirit.

For genuine transformation to take place, you can’t start with a simple act of will, or with conscious intent. This is little more than positive thinking. The road to Hell is paved with the good intentions of the left hemisphere. This is a problem with self-help programs in general. You can’t pull yourself up by your bootstraps. You’ll just end up getting your knickers in a twist.

Deep, lasting psychological transformation requires you to step out of the ego system altogether, otherwise the ego will always appropriate any changes for its own ends. And it never ends. You will find yourself in interminable analysis or in perpetual war with yourself and the world. The only way out it out. It’s no good walking the line between Order and Chaos, between “explored territory” and “unexplored territory”. You need to put both feet firmly in the right hemisphere. In other words, you need to become a Mystic and a Shaman.

There are no Mystic or Shaman archetypes in Peterson’s system. This is a serious oversight, since there is no escape from samsara without escape from samsara. And samsara is where we invariably end up, no matter how clever and enlightened we think we are.

 

Broadly speaking, there are three orientations to life. By far the most common is the first, which is a naive acceptance of reality, or “the unexamined life”. This is tantamount to total immersion in the Wheel of Samsara. You play the part of a muggle, diva, muppet, addict, victim or demon without the slightest flicker of self-awareness.

The second is a naive rejection of life. This is the condition of people who have examined life and found it wanting. They see through the charade and consequently suffer a chronic crisis of meaning. In the modern West we call this an existential crisis or a mid-life crisis, because it usually takes about forty years or so for the sheen of samsara to fade. These second types may become religious ascetics, puritans, or worse. They are the life-deniers.

The third orientation to life depends on the second. It is also built on a vision of emptiness and meaninglessness. However, it moves beyond the mere rejection of the world for the sake of a higher one. Instead, it discovers meaning in a return from the spiritual plane back down to earth. It is the difference between the Bodhisattva and the Arhat. It is “returning to the marketplace with open hands”. It is Jesus Christ as world redeemer.

In the first place, we are lost in samsara. In the second place, we escape from samsara. In the third place, samsara is redeemed. But it should go without saying that this is not a once and for all achievement. We get lost again and again; we have to escape again and again; and we must find redemption again and again. True, it’s a life of constant struggle, but at a certain point it becomes clear that it is in fact the only life worth living.

 

There is a lot of talk in IDW (Intellectual Dark Web) circles about the “Meaning Crisis”. The general claim seems to be that the secular worldview we have inherited from the Enlightenment is insufficient to satisfy the deep human need for existential meaning. The story of material progress and technological advance just isn’t a big enough story when it comes to the meaning of life.

So where do we find meaning? Well, on one level, there is no meaning crisis. We can find meaning anywhere. What is the meaning of life for an addict? Getting high. What is the meaning of life for a muggle? Belonging. What is meaningful for a victim? Resentment and self-pity. For a muppet? Fighting the good fight. For a diva? A sense of superiority. For a demon? Death and destruction.

The genius of samsara is that there are different sources of meaning. If one starts to wane, just move round the Wheel and pick up another. Bored of the cosy “sorge” world of muggles? Try getting high. You might risk the sense of belonging and acceptance you enjoyed before, but even if you get seriously addicted, you know you’ll be welcomed back eventually. Or you might decide to attack the muggle world, “the system”, and join a band of muppet brothers. Then you’ll derive meaning from your struggle for justice and freedom, from a sense of solidarity with your comrades and ultimately, from martyrdom.

But what happens when you see through the whole show? What if all these sources of meaning seem ultimately hollow and meaningless? What if even the fame and fortune, power and influence of a diva seems utterly pointless? That’s when you have a real meaning crisis. Then you are in the position of King Solomon in Ecclesiastes: “vanity of vanities; all is vanity” or of Camus’ existential anti-hero Meursault: “I had lived my life one way and I could just as well have lived it another. I had done this and I hadn’t done that. I hadn’t done this thing but I had done another. And so?”

This is an uncomfortable place to be. But if you are on a spiritual path, it is unavoidable. If you want to escape samsara, the meaning has to be drained out of it, otherwise you will be continuously pulled back into its orbit. Your desire is directed beyond; your meaning must come from elsewhere. This is fine if you decide to become a hermit or take monastic orders. You can (to a certain extent) remove yourself from samsara. But what if you live in the world?

Jesus said, “If any man comes to me without hating his father, mother, wife, children, brothers, yes and his own life too, he cannot be my disciple.” This is a hard saying. It makes sense from a spiritual point of view, but it puts a bit of a downer on everyday life. It’s not easy to live hating everyone. There is a serious problem here. It is not peculiar to Christianity, of course, but affects all religions. In order to transcend the world, you need to hate the world, but if you hate the world, how can you be said to have transcended it?

But Jesus was only talking about disciples. You should only “hate” everyone if you want to be a disciple. Apparently, Jesus only had twelve disciples, which isn’t many. Over and again in the gospels it is made clear that he has one teaching for his disciples and another for everyone else. They are his “inner circle”, privy to the deeper spiritual knowledge reserved for the elect.

So what were the disciples privy to? And why does it mean you have to hate your mother and father? I imagine it would have to do with Jesus’ most dramatic claim, that he was the Son of God: “I and the Father are one”. If we are to take this as the expression of an actual lived experience, as opposed to an abstract, theoretical statement of fact (which would then be the self-appellation of a liar, a fiend or a lunatic), it would have to be an experience of radical unity.

I find the usual Christian view that Jesus called himself the Son of God simply because he was the Son of God totally vacuous. How would you know that you were the Son of God unless you experienced being the Son of God? Or rather, unless you experienced something that warranted those words? Something that the words “Son of God” pointed to? My guess is that an experience of such transcendental insight would be something akin to the experience of unity produced by a high dose of DMT.

If Jesus had such an experience, he would understandably struggle to communicate it. He might say that he was one with God and that he was in everyone and that everyone was in him. But other than sounding pretty, it wouldn’t make much practical sense. If he were to say, “we are really all one person”, his followers would simply retort, “no we’re not”. To support their position, they would only need to point out the simple fact that they were patently not one person but different people. Jesus might respond with something like, “Alright fair enough, but when you transcend your ego and are united with the Universal Consciousness, then you will see that we are actually the same person, even though it seems as though we are different people.”

If the disciples had the same experience of unity, they would know exactly what he was talking about and they would be able to see the unity reflected in each other. They would treat each other with deep recognition and understanding, as if they really were in some mysterious sense the same person. Perhaps they had glimpses of unity. They must have at the very least believed that what Jesus was telling them was true and aspired to share in his vision.

But Jesus was clearly the only one who had the full-blown experience of unity. He was the only one who could say with any confidence that he was in everyone and everyone was in him. So in the end, since he was the only one who knew that he was God, he was the only one who could say that he was God (or more modestly, the Son of God). It then made as much sense to say that his disciples were one in Him as it was to say that they were one in God. He was the living proof of the living God.

If the twelve had all completely understood, if they had all had the same experience, there would have been twelve Sons of God, but then again, because they were all one, there would still actually only be the one, “only-begotten” Son of God. St Paul was alluding to this when he said, “Not I, but Christ lives in me”.

In any case, it seems that only with his death and resurrection did the penny finally drop for the disciples. Until that point, they believed in and followed Jesus, but they didn’t really get what he was on about. They knew how difficult it was to achieve and to retain the vision of unity. Which is why Jesus’ death and resurrection became the symbol of redemption. Jesus couldn’t destroy the world of samsara, the world of division, but He could redeem it. This great insight at the climax of the Christian story made Bodhisattvas out of his disciples and made Christianity a religion of redemption.

Redemption means that it is okay to be on the Wheel of Samsara. It’s okay to be a muggle, a diva, a muppet, an addict, a victim, even a demon. It’s okay to be human. We need to forgive and be forgiven. But this is only possible through “Jesus”, which means, through the vision of unity with God and all humanity. The ultimate meaning of life is incomprehensible to our petty human minds. It is ineffable. It is impossible to communicate to those who haven’t experienced it for themselves. But neither is it possible to remain in that state. We have to come back to the world of duality.

There is a place for spiritual community, where brothers and sisters in Christ can see the unity of God reflected in each other and establish a little Kingdom of Heaven here on Earth, or to use Buddhist terminology, where an Enlightened Sangha can create a Pure Land. This is ultimately what the institutions of Church and Monastery point towards. The hope is that the ultimate unity will be fully realised one day in the Eschaton. Until that day, however, we have to make do with the existential reality we find ourselves in. Until then, we have to accept the world as it is.

The world is redeemed through the vision of ultimate unity, not condemned by it. It becomes meaningful again. There is value and meaning in all six worlds of samsara. It is good to belong. It is good to succeed. It is good to fight for a just cause. Even a bit of greed, hate and fear are okay. But the meaning we derive from these things are not absolute. We can take it all a bit more lightly, with a pinch of salt,  in the knowledge that the greater meaning is beyond the wheel altogether. But this greater meaning does not destroy the lesser meanings. Jesus said, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.”

This is the only real solution to the “Meaning Crisis”. The meaning of life is not about rejecting the world. It’s about redeeming it.

 

I recently had the guilty pleasure of a YouTube binge (when the cat’s away…). The algorithm on my computer decided I was in the mood for some Christian apologetics so I ended up watching Justin Brierley (of Unbelievable? fame) in debate with Stephen Woodford (Rationality Rules) swiftly followed by the latest episode of Word on Fire, in which Bishop Barron comments on the recent Joe Rogan interview with Richard Dawkins, on the back of the release of his new book Outgrowing God: A Beginner’s Guide to Atheism, which I then obviously had to watch as well.

I was curious to see how “Rationality Rules” in particular would argue against the reasonableness of Christian belief. How would atheists respond to the theist arguments I was familiar with? What was the comeback? Interestingly enough, there wasn’t one. Woodford merely repeated the usual atheist anti-religious platitudes without engaging with Justin Brierley’s points at all, while at the same time taking great pains to present himself as the epitome of rationality. He came across as by far the more dogmatic, almost as if he was the one who held to a faith-based worldview immune to rational argument, instead of, as he clearly hoped to persuade us, his “irrational” religious opponent.

So what is the atheist worldview? According to both RR and RD, we are merely evolved apes. We are mostly if not wholly determined by our genetic inheritance and the chemical processes going on unconsciously in our brains. Free will is basically an illusion and there if no objective morality beyond socially agreed norms of behaviour, which are ultimately only “good” because of their “survival value”. Even out ability to reason is the product of an evolutionary process directed by natural selection based on survival.

We are just animals. All the fancy religious guff about the specialness of human beings is just an expression of speciesism and anthropocentric arrogance. At the end of the day, we are just animals, cleverer than walruses, but not any “better” than them. Maybe we can speak more eloquently than they, but when all is said and done, they are much better swimmers. Who says people are better than walruses? Maybe The Beatles were right all along.

This, it seems, is the great crime of religion, that it has alienated us from our true animal natures and the natural world of which we are an integral part. We have become the “Super Predator” destroying everything in our path precisely because we refuse to accept that we are just animals and have no rights beyond any other. Presumably, if we truly and honestly admitted to ourselves that we are nothing but evolved apes, we would stop lording it over all the other animals. Really?!

The false logic is breathtaking. Why should we then have any moral obligations at all? Why shouldn’t we dominate everything within our power? Isn’t that the whole point of the “survival of the fittest”? If we are driven by pure animal self-interest (even if dressed up in fancy clothes), why bother keeping up the pretense? We don’t need to pretend to the other animals of course. They don’t case what our motivations are. We pretend to each other simply because we prefer to live under the illusion that we are “human”. The more “enlightened” among us slyly wink at us. They know better.

If you sincerely believe that you are nothing more than a puffed-up animal, you can have no claim to Reason or Value beyond the self-interested demands of personal and collective survival (genes look after their own apparently). There is no such thing as the Good, the True or the Beautiful. These also are just pretty romantic illusions spun out of the loom of philosophical vanity. Things are only relatively or subjectively “good”, “true” or “beautiful”, if they somehow promote “survival”.

According to naturalist atheists like Woodford and Dawkins, we are animals. In which case we belong to the bottom right corner of the Tibetan Wheel of Life. Utterly determined by our biological needs and appetites, we have no free will, and therefore no possibility of rational or ethical choice. We may believe that we are rational, ethical and free creatures, but it’s just an illusion.

According to the Tibetan Buddhists, the animal realm is a close neighbour to the hungry ghost realm and the hell realms. This shouldn’t be terribly surprising. If you really are ruled by nothing but appetite and self-interest, what is to stop you taking this dismal state of affairs one step further? In one direction, you become a “hungry ghost”, an addict enslaved to all manner of desires which can never finally satisfy.

There are four broad types of addict: substance addicts (addicted to food and stuff, drugs and alcohol) and behavioural addicts (addicted to sex and love, entertainment and information). This is exactly what you would expect if you were really an animal with excessive desires and no free will. The other direction is into the demonic realms, which are ruled by the destructive negative emotions of rage, hatred and violence. Here manslaughter, torture and murder are commonplace. But these things are not “evil”, according to the naturalist atheists. They are just an expression of natural exuberance (Rationality Rules reasons that Genghis Khan cannot be called evil in any absolute sense for example).

If we are “animals”, we are also inevitably on occasion “demons” and “hungry ghosts”. But that’s fine because it’s all perfectly natural. We are not responsible for our actions anyway. It’s not as bad as all that, however, because atheists are also generally humanists. This means that although they believe that we are just evolved apes, they also believe that evolved ape societies have evolved in such a way that we have become highly socialised, and our animal instincts have to some extent been tempered and subjugated by social pressure, a condition we call the “human condition”.

Humanists don’t think we are just animals. They think we are human. What they mean by this is that we have evolved social structures and practices which have lifted us above the level of brute nature in which the rest of the animal kingdom lives. We have clothes and houses, read books and use knives and forks (or chopsticks as the case may be). In other words, we have civilization. Which is generally a good thing, notwithstanding Freud’s anxieties about “civilization and its discontents”.

This is in no way incompatible with the naturalist claim that we are evolved apes. We are simply evolved apes who have also evolved complex social arrangements. These arrangements obviously include concepts such as goodness, truth and beauty, although these ideas are ultimately socially constructed and have no absolute reality outside the social contexts in which they emerge.

The human world is thus a world of socially constructed conventions. Members of the human world are members of a “polis”, which only grants membership to those who abide by the norms, conventions and laws of the polis. It is thus based on a “social contract” and on mutually agreed values. Conform to the prevailing culture, with all it’s morals, laws, manners, aesthetics, etc. and you enjoy approbation as a valuable and valued member of that society. Those who are especially successful within any social system will inevitably rise to the top and enjoy greater powers than the rest of the population. These become the “high and mighty”. Don’t conform on the other hand, transgress or break socially accepted behaviour, and you will be punished, imprisoned, exiled or put to death.

But because human societies are only ever commonly agreed social constructions temporarily established by the coercive power of the majority, rival social conceptions will always emerge to challenge the status quo. When perceived injustices grow beyond a tolerable level, a portion of the population will fight to overthrow the existing system in favour of a more equitable one. If they are successful, a new social order becomes established.

This socio-political reality explains the top half of the Tibetan Wheel of Life, which consist of the three higher realms: the “Human Realm”, the “Asura (Fighting Spirits) Realm” and the “Deva (Heavenly Host) Realm”. Just as the Animal Realm is the default position in the lower half of the system, so is the Human Realm the default position of the higher. We are ordinary Animals, but sometimes degenerate into Hungry Ghosts and Demons. We are ordinary Humans, but sometimes become Devas or Asuras. In my updated terminology, we are either muggles, divas or muppets.

This sums up the atheist worldview: we are basically Animals (and therefore also Hungry Ghosts and Demons) but also Humans (and therefore also Fighting Spirits and Devas). It is a closed system. Our position on the Wheel is determined by extrinsic forces. All things are contingent and inter-connected and there is no absolute, objective truth, goodness or beauty. Since the conditioned nature of the system precludes anything acting on the system form outside, there is no Transcendent God but neither is there free will or consciousness. All these are merely clever illusions generated from within the system itself.

The religious worldview is very different. Here there is a God, which is the transcendental ground of goodness, beauty, truth and consciousness. Human beings are neither mere animals nor mere humans nor a strange amalgam of the two. Rather, human beings are “children of God”, made in the image of God.

The classical arguments for the existence of God are therefore also arguments for the existence of the children of God. I will consider seven such arguments. The first three deal with the question of Being. They are the Cosmological Argument (why is there something rather than nothing?), the Fine-Tuning Argument (why are the universe’s physical constants so precisely fine-tuned for life?) and the Origin of Life Argument (how could organic life emerge in a pre-biotic environment?). Atheist hold out for future scientific advances to eventually solve these problems, but only because they misunderstand the nature of the problems.

The other four arguments are more immediately relevant to our present lived experience. They are the Ethical Value Argument (how do you derive an “ought” from an “is”?), the Aesthetic Value Argument (what is Beauty and what’s the point it?), the Argument from Reason (a naturalistic explanation of reason undercuts itself) and the Consciousness Argument (how can consciousness emerge from purely material processes?).

These seven argument for the existence of God also describe the essential qualities of a human being according to the religious conception. If we combine the first two arguments, the Cosmological and the Fine-Tuning arguments, we end up with six. The archetypal human being who can embody the cosmic understanding of existence contained in the first two arguments is the Mystic. The next argument, which deals with the essential nature of life, is personified in the archetype of the Shaman.

The other four archetypes correspond to the remaining four arguments for the existence of God. The Warrior archetype represents Karma Yoga and our intuition of goodness and moral value. The Monk archetype represents Bhakti Yoga and intuition of beauty and aesthetic value. The Philosopher archetype represents Jnana Yoga and our ability to reason and intuit truth. The King archetype represents Raja Yoga and our intimate intuition of our own consciousness and will.

For materialist atheists, none of this exists. It’s just fantasy. They experience reality as consistent with their beliefs about it and therefore assume it must be true (for the simple banal reason that it is rational). For them, life is just the play of “animal nature” and “human nature” on the Wheel of Samsara.

For the religious on the other hand, whether Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, Sikh, Taoist, Jewish, Muslim or Christian, the experience of reality is very different. Reality is about communion with Being, Consciousness and Bliss, and with the transcendental realities of Goodness, Beauty and Truth. Human beings are not understood as deterministic biological creatures or socially constructed humanoids. Human beings are children of God, created by God in the image of God, just “a little lower than the angels”.

But only the religious worldview can accommodate the reality of free will, consciousness, goodness, beauty and truth. Only the religious worldview can rescue humanity from the modern atheist nightmares of totalitarianism, anarchy, rampant capitalism and techno-slavery.

It really is time we outgrew atheism.

 

The Wheel of Samsara is a thumbnail sketch of the human ego. By “ego” I don’t just mean the distinctive manifestations of selfish behaviour that invariably elicit moral censure in others, I mean the basic structure of the human personality – any personality. Think about your name. What’s in a name? Your name somehow contains the whole bundle of ego states which make you who you are. You are a bundle of muggles, muppets, divas, addicts, victims and demons, just like everybody else, though differently configured. Amazingly enough, you can actually dimly sense your own unique configuration, just by saying your name.

On an individual level, the Wheel of Samsara is the “Ego System”. On a collective level, it is what Rastafarians call the “Babylon System”. The tricksy bit is that, all claims to the contrary, most religious people as much part of the Babylon System as everyone else. They have just re-arranged the furniture a little. If they are only nominally religious and live reasonably good, moral lives, they will be predominantly Type 1 or Type 2 muggles (“Home Muggles” or “Work Muggles”). If they are excessively religious, they will most emphatically be Type 4 muppets (“Fundamentalist Muppets”).

Rational, scientific minded secularists who think that they see through all the illusions lesser mortals labour under (the self-designated “Brights”, or “Enlightenment Bunnies” as I like to call them) are just as wrapped up in samsara as those they patronize with such abandon. Their “Chief Feature” is Type 1 muppetry (“Scientific Materialism”). Again, if they are nominal materialists, they will most likely live on the muggle side of the street. They will probably call themselves humanists, and may even live as good and morally virtuous lives as religious muggles.

All so-called “exoteric” religions exist within the Babylon System. If they are genuine, well-intentioned and orthodox, they will promote the cultivation of positive, pro-social feelings and behaviours and will help people be good muggles. They will defend people from too deep or frequent a descent into the addict, victim and demon realms and will divert energy away from the muppet and diva realms.

Exoteric religion is for muggles. Which is a good thing. The more muggles in society, the better. Muggles don’t want trouble. They just want to get on with their lives, and generally get along fairly peaceably and harmoniously. They are good neighbours and good friends. They are not to be sneezed at.

However, problems arise when muggles start to get itchy feet. For some restless souls, Muggle Land is just not enough. They want adventure and excitement, or at least something more meaningful than the daily round. Oscar Wilde clearly felt this when he said, “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all”.

But where can a bored, disaffected muggle dandy go? He could take a trip round the Wheel and enjoy a spot of hedonism and depravity à la Dorian Gray, or perhaps a taste  worldly success or, failing that, some good old fashioned protests and rioting. Alternatively, he could step off the Wheel altogether.

Stepping out of the “Ego System” is basically ego suicide. The person you thought you were, embodied in your name, disappears. Your old self dies. This is what “esoteric” religion means. You die to your self and are reborn as something else, hence the perennial esoteric motif of death and resurrection (which is why the essence of Christianity is esoteric, despite most practicing Christians being firmly exoteric).

Esoteric religion is also known as “mysticism”. A mystic is someone who enters the mystery beyond the egoic world of the Babylon System. In mystical consciousness there is no personality to speak of. What is there then? There is what Buddhists call “Buddha Nature”, the essential enlightened consciousness within each of us. No matter what twisted configuration of ego states we may play out on a rainy day in Babylon, behind it all is our intrinsic Buddha Nature.

In Christian Mysticism it’s called “Christ Consciousness”. As St. Paul succinctly put it, “Not I, but Christ lives in me”. In Vedantic Mysticism it’s called “Krishna Consciousness”. It doesn’t really matter what you call it. The important point is that it is not you. Not your usual you anyway. It is your “True Self”, your “Higher Self”, the Atman, Buddha Nature.

If you are ruled by your left brain hemisphere, you are automatically in the Ego System, and by extension, the Babylon System. If you are religious, your religion will be exoteric. It will have nothing to do with deeper spiritual realities. You will be you, identifiable (at least to yourself) by your name.

If you are ruled by the right brain hemisphere on the other hand, you are not that which your name points at. You are a Buddha, an “Awakened One”. You have escaped samsara and crossed to the other shore. If you identify with a religion, you will understand it esoterically, as a signpost to a completely different way of being. You will be a Mystic, and also, in time, a Shaman, a Warrior, a Monk, a Philosopher, a King, a Poet and a Priest.

And what’s more, you won’t be bored any more.

 

“Materialism” can mean one of two things. If you are “materialistic”, you love shopping. If you are a “scientific materialist”, you believe that everything that exists is material. Biology is a sub-set of physics. Psychology is a sub-set of biology. Everything can be ultimately explained in terms of complex arrangements of matter and material processes.

Muggles are materialistic. They judge themselves and others according to their material possessions and material-acquiring-capacity (money). They don’t think much beyond the stuff around them. They spend an inordinate amount of time and energy on stuff. They feel lost without it.

Muppets are materialists. They think that scientific descriptions of regularities in Nature qualify as solid and robust metaphysics. They fail to understand that physics is not metaphysics. They would probably retort that science has no need for metaphysics. But then again, neither does snooker. Human beings do, however.

I am constantly taken aback by the arrogance and philosophical ignorance of scientific materialists. In one sweep they dismiss religion and philosophy as outmoded and unnecessary. Science is the only reliable truth. And science says that only matter matters.

Science doesn’t say anything of the sort of course. Science has absolutely nothing to say about anything beyond it’s self-delimited field of inquiry. Philip Goff makes this point with great perspicuity and lucidity in his book Galileo’s Error. Galileo explicitly defined the limits of science: scientists observe the external behaviour of natural phenomena but are silent about the intrinsic nature of things. Science does not ask what something is, only what it does. The soul, consciousness and experience are intentionally left out of the equation.

Due to its astounding success, however, especially in the development of ever more impressive technologies, we seem to have forgotten the limits of science. It appears as though science is capable of explaining everything, of offering a grand TOE (theory of everything), and taking the place of metaphysics and religion. But it only provides knowledge of the exterior of things. When it comes to essence or meaning, the “why” and the “what” rather than just the “how”, it can’t help us.

Scientific materialists need philosophy if they are to escape their materialistic strait jackets. They need to read Philip’s book. They need to read Mind and Cosmos: Why the Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False by Thomas Nagel. They need to read The Science Delusion by Rupert Sheldrake. They need to read Science and Religion by Alister McGrath. They need to read Miracles by C.S.Lewis. But they probably won’t.

The “Materialist Fallacy” is the first philosophical error affecting muppets. The second is the “Relativist Fallacy”. The third is the “Egalitarian Fallacy”. The fourth is the “Rationalist Fallacy”. In a discussion in the pub last night my antagonist committed all four fallacies in the space of half an hour. This is not uncommon in Muppet World, since the four fallacies naturally reinforce each other.

The Relativist Fallacy is the belief that all interpretations are equally valid because they are ultimately subjective and so have no external reference point or standard beyond themselves. The Egalitarian Fallacy is the belief that it is in fact the case or if not presently the case that it is desirable that all human beings are or should be equal. As with the Relativist Fallacy, just a little reflection reveals how contradictory and ridiculous this belief is.

The Rationalist Fallacy is the belief that reason and logic are sufficient for making sense of the world, as long as the words used to describe it are taken in their most literal sense. The rationalist has no time for metaphor. Which makes sacred scriptures like the Bible completely nonsensical and impenetrable. So whether you choose to “believe” it or not, a literal, rationalistic reading of scripture makes you a Rationalist Muppet, whether you are a tub-thumping religious fundamentalist or a tub-thumping anti-religious fundamentalist.

Perhaps it is no accident that the people I argue with on our Wednesday night discussion meetups are predominantly computer scientists and computer programmers. The Muppet Fallacies are a perfect match for left brain hemisphere dominance.

I studied poetry at university. I experimented with psychedelics. I went to illegal raves. I stayed at a Zen monastery. I read spiritual classics. I listened to sacred music. I went to church. I went for walks. Art, literature, music, religion, nature, the body, spiritual experience: these are the province of the right hemisphere. Science, binary logic and computer code are the darlings of the left. How to bridge the gap?

How can God even begin to make sense in Muppet World?

 

What do you wish for? Let me hazard a guess. You wish to be happy and for all beings to be happy. You wish to have peace in your soul and peace on Earth. Am I right? If not, I wouldn’t bother reading on.

So you wish to be happy. Not just fleeting happiness, but lasting happiness. Not just a temporary satisfaction of present desire but a permanent state of satisfaction. So what is that? Obviously not euphoria, ecstasy or bliss. That would be exhausting. Even if you lived in a perfectly orchestrated pleasure palace with perfectly timed breaks between pleasures, you wouldn’t necessarily be happy.

Maybe “happiness” is the wrong word then. It’s not so much about the highs of extreme positive emotion. It’s about feeling good at a more terrestrial level, feeling comfortable in your own skin, feeling that everything is alright with the world, feeling that just being alive is enough.

It might be easier to define happiness negatively rather than positively. If you are happy, you are free of negative emotions. You are free of greed, anger and fear. If you are happy, you are free of confusion. You see the world aright.

So lasting happiness depends on the state of your soul, or the content of your character.  As the saying goes, “wherever you go, there you are”. You cannot run away from yourself. If your character is sound and strong, you will be satisfied wherever you are. If not, even the most splendid palace will be cause for complaint.

The telos of human life, the aim, goal or meaning of life, is not really “happiness”, it’s “character”. Happiness is a by-product. The claim of Seneca, Marcus Aurelius and the Stoics (and almost all religious and philosophical schools throughout human history) is that the wiser you are, and the more virtuous and mature, the happier you are, in sickness or health, prosperity or adversity. Care of the soul is primary. Everything else is secondary.

“Character” is not “identity”. Identity is a poor substitute. You could say it is a displacement of character, an impostor, a simulacrum, a devious sleight of hand of the ego. The “Wheel of Samsara” describes six archetypal identities which are in fact the principal obstacles to the true development of character. They are the main obstacles to spiritual development.

You subconsciously or consciously identify yourself as a diva, for example. You are possessed by a “Diva Spirit” and express “Diva Nature”. You have Fame, Fortune, Power and Influence. You feel entitled to your superiority complex. But you don’t necessarily have a good character and you are not necessarily happy. You are possessed by Pride and Vanity.

If you identify as a muggle, you are either a Safe Muggle (Types 1 and 2) or an Ambitious Muggle (Types 3 and 4). You are either content to stay within the confines of family or societal expectations or else you aspire to divahood and work or hussle your way up the muggle pole. You need character in order to succeed of course, but your “Muggle Nature” will still be in defined by Ignorance and Spiritual Indolence. You will see nothing beyond worldly success.

If you identify as a muppet, you identify with a particular narrative and worldview. Type 1 and you are a scientific materialist atheist and vociferously believe that everything that exists can be reduced to material processes and that anyone who thinks otherwise is a superstitious fool. But if you’re an atheist simply because you haven’t really thought about, you’re a muggle not a muppet. It’s only the evangelical, militant atheists who qualify as muppets, because their atheism is really just another form of fundamentalist religion.

Type 2 and you are a postmodernist who believes that everything ultimately reduces to relativistic mush (either “Theory” or “New Age” mush). Type 3 and you are a political revolutionary activist and believe that the world is so corrupt that it needs to be razed to the ground. Type 4 and you are a religious fundamentalist who agrees, but who hopes that God will do the razing for you. Whichever brand you are called to identify with, you are basically “ideologically possessed”. Your Muppet Nature is chiefly characterised by the twin vices of delusion and dogmatism.

If you identify as a victim, you may find your sense of identity in collective solidarity with an oppressed group. If you have an ambiguous or fluid sexuality, you may find your sense of identity (and implicit victim status) in the LGBTQI+ “community”. If you are an ethnic minority and feel that this defines you negatively, you may find it in the BAME “community”. (I use scare quotes because I don’t think they are real communities). If you are a woman and feel that you are continually oppressed by the patriarchy, you will find confirmation and solidarity by identifying yourself as a feminist. These are Type 1, 2 and 3 victims.

Please don’t take this the wrong way. I am not dismissing or denigrating the value and importance of civil rights movements, whether women’s rights, gay rights or black rights. I am just pointing out how an over-emphasis on these issues to the point of basing your identity on them, can lead to psychological problems in the form of a deep sense of victimhood. Of course you can perfectly well be gay, black or a woman (or all three!) without being a victim. “Intersectionality” argues that you are “three times a victim” if you are a black lesbian, but that is a subjective, not an objective claim. There is a world of difference between believing you are a victim (which is a psychological condition) and actually being one (which is an existential fact).

You can fight against social injustice without necessarily adopting a victim mentality or subscribing to a victim narrative. It may be that there are simply some wrongs that need to be put right. This takes courage and character, not “identity”. The victim narrative is a vicious circle. The more you identify as a victim, the more powerless and oppressed you feel, which confirms your victim status, and prevents you from taking steps to strengthen your character.

The fourth victim type is the environmentalist who identifies with possibly the biggest victim of them all, Mother Earth. We are exploiting the Earth. We are abusing the Earth. We are destroying the Earth. We are raping our Mother. We are a cancer on the planet.

Again, care for the environment is obviously not a bad thing. In fact, it is absolutely essential. There are real challenges we need to face in order to keep the balance. We need to deal with the problems of species extinction, pollution and waste and climate change. We need to keep deforestation and over-fishing in check. All this is beyond doubt and beyond dispute.

But the victim narrative is not helpful. It is both psychologically damaging (many people are now suffering from “eco-anxiety”) and even potentially environmentally damaging, since it prevents people from seeing and addressing environmental problems realistically. Reacting (and over-reacting) to problems on the basis of emotional panic can have grave unintended consequences.

In sum, all four victim types are ruled by the debilitating and distorting vices of Fear and Dejection, which are again serious impediments to spiritual progress.

If you are an addict, you are either a substance addict or a behavioural addict. Types 1 and 2 are substance addicts: food and shopping in the case of Type 1’s and drugs and alcohol for Type 2’s. Types 3 and 4 are behavioural addicts: love and sex in the case of  Type 3’s and  entertainment and information for Type 4’s. If you are a demon, you are probably a tramp (Type 1), a criminal (Type 2), an abuser (Type 3) or a killer (Type 4).

I don’t mean to judge or pigeon hole. I am just pointing out how forming an identity around any of these types can divert our attention and energy away from the true telos of human life, which is the development of character.

The Wheel of Samsara describes the endless inter-play of stories and identities we attach to. The Orthodox Cross points to the development of true character. It begins with the Mystic, which is all about forgetting and unknowing. You forget your identity, your life script and your fixed belief systems and narratives and open up a space for your essential, unalloyed humanity to shine through.

The Mystic Shaman represents a shift from the left brain hemisphere to the right hemisphere. It represents the awakening of the mind and body in unmediated, global awareness, free from the identitarian bondage of the left hemisphere. From this place of freedom (firmly rooted in the right hemisphere) the Mystic Shaman can then employ the necessary functions and qualities of the left hemisphere to strengthen and develop an all-round, healthy, balanced character.

The Warrior Monk archetype facilitates the development of virtue and the Philosopher King the development of wisdom. Both virtue and wisdom are only possible through the harmonious collaboration of the left and right brain hemispheres, but with the right as the “master” and the left as the “emissary”.

Character is not about being this or that, left-wing, right-wing, gay, straight, white, brown or black. Forget your identity. If you really want to be happy and for others to be happy, you need to be virtuous, wise and not a little holy. It’s a life’s work, but it has the advantage of making life worth living.

 

“What are the roots that clutch? What branches grow out of this stony rubbish?” (wonders T.S. Eliot) They are the roots and branches of Ego, of the Default Mode Network, of Left Hemisphere Dominance, of the Babylon System, of the Matrix, of Satan, of the Anti-Christ.

They are Pride and Vanity. Anger and Hate. Fear and Dejection. Lust and Greed. Delusion and Fanaticism. Ignorance and Indolence.

Pride and Vanity make us divas. Anger and Hate make us demons. Fear and Dejection make us victims. Lust and Greed make us addicts. Delusion and Fanaticism make us muppets. Ignorance and Indolence make us muggles.

There is no escape from the forest of Samsara without cutting the roots and branches of vice. But where is the axe? Not in the forest but beyond it. There is no cutting the roots and branches without escape from Samsara.

What is beyond Samsara? What is beyond the dark forest of the fallen world?

Beyond Samsara is God. God is the only way out.

Escape from Samsara is escape from Ego. So forget your Ego and remember God.

God is Three-in-One: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The Father is the transcendent Parashiva. He is Emptiness, Energy, Matter, Life, Mind, Earth and Universe: Amun Ra Atum Ka Ba Gaia Jah.

The Son is the incarnate Shiva. He is Mystic, Shaman, Warrior, Monk, Philosopher, King.

The Holy Spirit is immanent Shakti. She is Peace, Love, Goodness, Beauty, Truth, Consciousness and Bliss.

Let this triune God be your axe to cut down the tree of Samsara at the very root. Then reject Satan and all his works, and the tangled forest of vice will never again grow back to stifle your spirit.

 

The Wheel of Samsara is the eternal round of transmigration through six realms: the muggle (human) realm, the diva (heaven) realm, the muppet (titan) realm, the addict (hungry ghost) realm, the victim (animal) realm and the demon (hell) realm. We experience the muggle and muppet realms as “Earth”, the addict and victim realms as somewhere between “Earth” and “Hell” (call it “Purgatory”), the demon realm as “Hell” and the diva realm as “Heaven”:

We experience the diva realm as “Heaven” but it is a fool’s paradise, a pseudo heaven. It doesn’t last and is characterised purely by pleasure, fame, fortune, power and influence, purely “worldly” goods. It leads to ego inflation, which inevitably sets the diva up for a fall, the greatest fall epitomised by the fall of Lucifer, who fell straight from Heaven to Hell.

Up to a certain point, the mugglish aspiration to reach the worldly heaven of the diva realm does in fact exercise the virtues and so does overlap with genuine spiritual development. This is because to get anywhere in the world, it is necessary to bring the lower impulses of the addict, victim and demon under strict control. You’ll never make it to the top if you’re constantly swayed and derailed by Greed, Fear and Hatred. You will also need to keep your muppet in check so that it doesn’t sabotage you on ideological grounds.

Psychotherapy is good for liberating you from the self-defeating demands of the addict, demon, victim and muppet. Life Coaching is good for helping you up the muggle ladder. But even if you do make it to the top, the diva realm will never fully satisfy you. You may even fall down to a lower level out of sheer boredom.

There is no ultimate satisfaction on the Wheel of Samsara. There is no salvation. There is no deliverance. There is only the eternal return of the same. As the Buddha taught, the only escape involves stepping off the Wheel altogether. He called this realm beyond the six realms “Nirvana”, which roughly translates as “cessation”. Nirvana is reality as it is experienced beyond the round of Samsara, reality as it is experienced once you have stopped being a muggle, muppet, addict, victim, demon or diva.

“Cessation” or “stopping” requires “kenosis” or “self-emptying”, “mu-shin” or “no-mind”. It requires stopping the incessant chatter of your “monkey mind” and stopping the incessant itch of your “ants” (anxious negative thoughts). It requires falling still and letting go. It basically requires meditation, “Dhyana Yoga” (“Ch’an” or “Zen”).

The bridge from the Wheel of Samsara to Nirvana can therefore only be crossed by the Mystic. Through meditation, the Mystic transcends the limits of the Samsaric world and enters a new world, a new dispensation, a new covenant, a new existence. Then, from the Mystic realm of Dhyana Yoga, she passes to the Shamanic world of Kundalini Yoga, the Warrior realm of Karma Yoga, the Monk realm of Bhakti Yoga, the Philosopher realm of Jnana Yoga and the Kingly realm of Raja Yoga.

These six Yogas constitute the Orthodox Cross:

Practice of the Yogas, separately and together, makes you stronger. It strengthens your body, heart, mind and soul. In truth, physical health, emotional health, mental health and spiritual health all require work (yoga) and the development of moral fibre and strength of character. This is the essential point, the key to unlock the prison of Samsara. It’s not just about being meek and mild, kind and considerate. It’s not about being weak. Nietzsche understood this, but few understood him.

The stronger you are, the easier it is to resist the lure of the Wheel of Samsara. It is spiritual weakness that makes us fall into the self-defeating patterns of the victim (“Be afraid. Be very afraid!”) and of the addict (“Go on. Just one more!”) and of the demon (“F*** you. I f***ing hate you!”) It is spiritual weakness that makes us fall for the complacency of the muggle, the self righteousness of the muppet and the arrogance of the diva (“I’m normal! I’m right! I’m the best!”)

It takes spiritual effort and persistence. For escape from Samsara is not a once and for all event. You will find yourself back on the Wheel over and over again. So just keep escaping. Keep escaping until there is no more Samsara and no more Nirvana, but only Satchitananda (“Being-Consciousness-Bliss”) in all worlds and in all directions. Don’t give up! There is nothing to compare in Earth or Heaven.

 

 

Everything is a teaching.

Lost souls remind you to find your way.

Great souls remind you who you are.

The whispering serpent reminds you not to listen to snakes.

The smiling sun reminds you to smile.

 

The cosmic battle for your soul is here on Earth.

Heaven and Hell beckon continuously.

It’s true.

And yet…

But it’s still true.

 

No one has the last word.

There is no last word.

Learn true learning.

There is no end of learning.

But beware of false prophets.

 

Rest in great natural peace.

Everything is reconciled.

Remember.

Believe in God.

Have faith in faith.

 

Be strong in faith.

Be strong in love.

Be natural. Be strong.

Remember the teachings.

Don’t worry about the teachers.

 

Teach love and peace.

Be good.

Be beautiful.

Be truthful.

Be soulful.

 

Tell her you’re sorry.

Tell her you love her.

But not necessarily in words.

Be happy.

Have fun.