With the discussion of the Dalai Lamas influential role in the interfaith movement, his annexation of western science, and his hard-hitting attempt to market Tibetan Buddhism under the present conditions of the jessant consciousness soul, we are beginning to outline some of the fundamental schisms of contemporary spirituality as a response to the NBUP concept. Let us now dig a little deeper and take a look at yet another feature of this insidious development towards spiritual unitism. One of the fundamental elements in the construction of a One World Religion is the “spiritual technology” provided chiefly by the “contemplative traditions” of Buddhism, and rationalized by biased neuroscientists, as we have seen above. The meditative tool box for enhancing subjective “happiness, well-being and health” and take away conflict, stress and guilt is perhaps the decisive sales pitch in the marketing of religious renewal. Since there is no absolute values or ethics in Buddhism and only a pragmatic effort to alleviate suffering and increase happiness, this mind engineering and behavioural modification fits like a glove with the tendency towards smooth individualism, functionalism and fitting in with the future global, unitive system. We need therefore to examine the basic technological approach in order to understand on a deeper level why it is so instrumental and sales effective. Let’s examine the modern lingo of non-dual consciousness.

In the neo-Buddhist segments of New Age, where the practice of traditional eastern techniques of meditation is common, there is a lot of metaphysical speculation concerning states, functions and qualities of “consciousness” and related concepts like “awareness”, “presence” and “mindfulness”. The meditative technique involved here is the open monitoring meditation mentioned by Davidson, which involves non-reactively monitoring the content of experience and acting as a detached observer of feelings and mental events. The method of this type of meditative practice is to suppress or bypass active thinking and transcend normal I-experience by disengaging from and not identifying with any object of consciousness. When there is no objectification, there is also no basis for subjectivity, and the illusive subject-object dualism can be overcome in a state of non-dual (pure) awareness or open presence (as described by Davidson) – that is the general idea. This endeavour is linked up with a negative view of ego-structure and ego-consciousness as such, ascribing no reality to the notion of a human self or to the experience of individuality, which is of course the traditional Buddhist dogma against selfhood (compare with Dalai Lamas address to the Society for Neuroscience). In recent years, a peculiar self-contradictory line of argument for this metaphysical position has evolved in the expanding neo-Buddhist meditation literature verging on mysticism. “Consciousness” and its construction is discussed as a functionality or dimension per se in a completely depersonalized, de-individualized and insubstantial way – to a flip point, where “consciousness” is paradoxically perceived as a kind of hypostatic abstraction or separate entity (reality) possessing all the characteristics of individual consciousness. Hence “consciousness as such” is described as self-reflective, self-aware, self-knowing and so on in its pre- or nonverbal condition preceding any crystallization of ego or being in it. In reality no one and nothing else is there but “consciousness” in its insubstantial and undivided awareness of itself, the inner, unitive, enlightened essence of “consciousness” … the unspeakable blah-blah … resulting in one abstract and highly theoretical book on the subject after the other, in which the gymnastic discipline of “higher consciousness” is propagated.

This is an extremist idealism based on Buddhist philosophy. It is an ontological and epistemological position that could not care less about brain scanning – at least in its original philosophical version. Nevertheless, the Dalai Lama has embraced hard core western science and has declared that he himself is willing to dismiss “many aspects of traditional cosmology as found in ancient Buddhist texts” on grounds of “empirically verified insights of modern cosmology and astronomy”. He wants to indirectly validate Buddhist contemplative practice through neuroscience research, render its theory of consciousness probable and to confirm central Buddhist dogma on the nature of reality – and the prize he is willing to pay, is to abolish aspects of Buddhist cosmology (a huge and bizarre theatre) and also his own philosophical consistency. He can not make up his mind whether and how consciousness can exist outside the body. Of course he has to believe that it can, otherwise he himself is not the reincarnated Dalai Lama, but he does not want to make himself impossible in the scientific community. What we witness here, then, is literally a breakdown in the capacity of Buddhist philosophical reasoning. Only the materialistic, individualized, western, homespun New Age philosopher can place himself in this insane version of full-blown Cartesian dualism, on one hand identifying consciousness with brain states, on the other hand babbling away in the above style about consciousness per se – on one foot adhering to a materialistic, scientific cosmology, on the other foot understanding his inner subjective consciousness as the source of reality. He is a victim and a victimizer of a complete mystification – but what is the Dalai Lama, who ought to know better?!

Anyway, they all move in the same direction – away from normal I-experience and active thinking towards some kind of I-less hyper-presence. The mythologeme here is higher functioning (enhanced, expanded, accelerated, more direct awareness), a display of a veritable neurological firework and a wild gamma radiation! The normal, reasoning I-function is slow and limited in comparison with this super mind, which is far more perceptive, emotionally undisturbed and balanced with an instinctive intuition and intelligence as quick as lightning! And tons of empathy, for sure! This state of mind is set forth as something extremely attractive and covetable, but no one is really there besides perhaps an automaton, a kind of conditioned non-self. You are supposed to believe that your individual consciousness is dispensable, because “consciousness” is “one” (everything is consciousness and we all share in it), and there is nothing better than to unite with it and in it as soon as possible. When you get there, you will understand how you were really never yourself! Now, before you hasten to do just that, let us try to understand this condition of apparently enhanced “awareness” from another perspective. Generally, the enhancement and expansion of awareness rely on a systematic increasing of the subtle energy level attained through breathing-, channeling- and chakra-exercises in a part of the etheric, that is not connected with active thinking through the neocortex, combined with a restructuring, control and tuning of the polarity system on all levels obtained through tantric techniques of circulation and imagination. This could also represent the downside of the empathy exercises mentioned by Davidson. The artificially increased energy level (which in some cases is drawing on other people’s energy, too, and certainly on collective energies) provides for an expansion and loosening of the etheric in its connection with the physical body. The main point is that the boosting of the etheric body is organized from below and upwards, very often including the powers of sexuality (kundalini) and instinctual emotionality through various transformational techniques. With the provoked etheric expansion you actually obtain an altered state of consciousness (since consciousness is seated in the etheric and not in the physical brain). You might say that part of the (lower) etheric which has hitherto remained “unconscious”, is now made “conscious”, and since this is a direct consciousness, not mediated and inhibited by the physical brain, you can explain both the peculiar “directness” of perception and awareness and the confluence connected with this state, often conceived of as a form of “heightened presence”. You can also understand the “magnetism” and “magnetic radiation” of this (sub) human organization.

If we apply anthroposophical knowledge to this condition, we realize that by operationalizing the natural physical, etheric and astral polarity structure this way, you will, when you are expanding consciousness into the etheric bypassing the cognitive system, inevitably be drawing in the evil polarity of Lucifer-Ahriman – Ahriman below in the etheric, Lucifer above in the astral. You move away from individual thinking and turn to instinctual perception. As we know, the (etherically based) process of normal thinking in and through the brain (neocortex) is in reality a reflection of the higher thinking in the etheric, the cosmic thoughts, the Logos, the Christ. Precisely this organization of the etheric head, which is also constitutive of the human I (personal identity), is suppressed and circumvented in Buddhist open monitoring meditation! Instead of contact with the higher Logos through a human I and reason, contact is sought and obtained with the two other (evil) directors of human perception and intelligence in the lower etheric and astral bodies, resulting in a takeover of the intellectual and mental system by the ahrimanic-luciferic duo, wrongly construed as “higher consciousness”. Apart from the above-mentioned direct “presence”, this state is characterized by an instinctive astute and highly apprehensive (but rigid) intellect caused by ahrimanic possession of the etheric-mental body, and a fantastic, luminous and seemingly wise mind due to a luciferic enthralling of the astral body. The human I with its original structure of self and freedom is subjugated. This so-called “higher consciousness” as “streaming light” is in fact nothing but illusion. It is “knowledge” without any power of differentiation or practical value – only with the knowledge of how to reproduce and recondition itself in others. This alternative understanding represents in our view a more accurate spiritual picture of what is perhaps physically manifested in the specifically conditioned neurological pattern of meditating monks.

When in this kind of spiritual aspiration there is no discrimination and no I, there is neither recognition nor segregation of Ahriman and Lucifer, and as a result they will certainly take possession of all human faculties. They will block any higher spiritual development and fixate man in a polarity of materialistic identification and subjective fantasy driven by the lower instincts. No doubt the victim of this self-surrender will experience extraordinary perception and psychic phenomena corresponding to the ahrimanic and luciferic powers, but at the expense of his spiritual freedom and purpose in life. On the experiential level there might be a subjective sense of “nirvanic” freedom – like a floating, a dissolving, a flooding, a submersion, an expansion, when you are becoming a vehicle of demonic super beings – and there will no doubt be “streaming, bright light” in the mental aura, but the energies and the function you are caught up with, correspond in reality to a combination of a flea circus and an anthill. The surrender of the I and the constant oppression of cognitive processes has stripped away from you the very foundation for any spiritual development, since the three future higher members of man unfold in and through both structures. The best evidence of that condition is the static situation that soon sets in. There is no real productivity, but a constant reproduction, since neither Ahriman nor Lucifer intends to let man get anywhere for real. Stale repetition of rapture and fanatic discipline – the same message on and on – upward happiness-jumping, that is the agenda.

Again, we must emphasize that this meditative conditioning historically has produced very little of practical value measured by the time spent on it. There was never ingenuity in any field of human existence, nor any social initiative resulting from this practice – the Tibetans, for example, being one of the most ignorant, superstitious, oppressed and backwater people on earth prior to the contact with modern civilization. It is the modern western individualized and rational mind, which has the potential to balance and uncover the ahrimanic-luciferic powers and penetrate forward to a new spiritual world view by covering and uniting inner and outer dimensions with a knowledgeable consciousness, retaining discriminative powers and selfhood on a higher level, not the old collective mind with its inbuilt tendency towards regression and atavism. This progress is made possible in the first place by the Christ impulse, which is the only real and true dynamic principle for human spiritual development. The fact, that eastern traditions of wisdom and spirituality in their New Age versions are so very successful today in the religious marketplace, can be explained only from their complete compatibility with the ahrimanic-luciferic distortion of human intelligence and perceptiveness and the ongoing degradation of human dignity in our super materialistic age. Their modernity is due to their being obsolete and hence useful for the false spirits of time. And so we find here the true schisms of contemporary spirituality – the dividing lines and points. A spiritual development without any real understanding of the Christ event, without the eternal value of the human soul and spirit, without the real meaning of the I and its freedom of thought, without moral fantasy and intuition in action, without a spiritual cosmology, without an initiation science, without knowledge of the evil powers and so forth, can never unite humanity in a true spiritual quest.


Adam Michaelis
July 2009