Apathy And Fundamentalism

These two trends – apathy and fundamentalism – affect all walks of life where we do something (collectively) that we no longer understand. They are two ends of the same stick: apathy is withdrawal, whilst fundamentalism is renewal of the form, without care for the function. Apathy indicates that we no longer wish to exert energy for unknown benefits; fundamentalism indicates that we are still committed. We probably know these trends most in the context of religion, but one can see them in politics, science, education and business.

Apathy and fundamentalism are ‘diseases’ of long term contact with a philosophy that has lost contact with its source. Newcomers to that philosophy don’t experience either of these feelings. If they seem to have ‘bought in’ to fundamentalism, it is only because they are still seeking the true source of that philosophy, which clearly isn’t going to be found among the apathetic. The crunch point comes later, when they can find nobody who can explain the philosophy in ways that make it come alive. Then they must decide whether to continue investing in the formula, or give it up – or sit on the fence for a bit longer.

The root of both apathy and fundamentalism is that people approach a philosophy – any philosophy – looking for a ‘golden key’: a formula for a better life. And the formula they find might be one that would actually ‘work’, if only it were applied in the right context and in the right way. Very few philosophies arise out of malice – deliberate will to mislead. Most arise because one person had a breakthrough, and then actually understood (for themselves) at least something of how it had happened. They then set about trying to teach others how to repeat that experience.

These breakthrough experiences correspond to the aligning of certain ‘forces’ that would normally oppose the breakthrough – the new state of being. They happen by accident, at first, until the person experiencing them understands the nature of those denying forces, and how they can be realigned. But even then, there is an old saying that applies: “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.” Even when a person is led right up to the denying forces, they may not possess an appropriate frame of mind to see them. Or they may miss the main breakthrough and instead find a different breakthrough of their own: a ‘false dawn’.

In the 1960’s, in the West, there was great hope that the use of psychedelic drugs could loosen the grip of the rational mind and allow breakthrough states to occur more often. In essence, this built upon the realisation (from Eastern and other teachings) that this rational mind, with its fixation on formulas for success, is one of the biggest sources of those denying forces. But as those older cultures had already discovered, weakening the rational mind in that way doesn’t provide any lasting transformation, and the only result – in the end – is addiction to the short-term, chemical effects.

For breakthrough states to occur – for the gate to be opened – we need that rational mind to be working properly. It is that mind which provides the ‘key’ to the gate, by aligning the otherwise denying forces. It is that mind which carries the breakthrough experiences ‘down’ and uses them to provide material for learning how to align those forces. It needs to recognise how those forces are aligned, during a breakthrough experience, and then re-create that alignment. The reason that its fixation on formulas for success gets in the way is because it doesn’t look at the whole picture of how the gate opened; instead, it invents a formula based on only part of the truth. And then it tries to teach that partial truth – that formula for success – to others.

The first requirement on the rational mind – if it is to become the key to breakthrough experience – is that it must abandon the idea that it can ‘know’ the key. It must, instead, ‘be’ the key. Or rather, its knowing and being must be fused together, which will also be the result once the gate stays open. Until that time, though, it must focus on ‘being’. And it will – if sufficiently diligent at that – discover quickly that its being is too fractured for that. It is too much built on attachments and on variable, unconscious habits. In short, its main concern is set on things that are unrelated to the breakthrough experience that it wishes to repeat, and are merely ‘demands of life’. Faced with choosing to ‘die’ to these demands, or choosing (by default) to keep addressing them, most rational minds choose the latter. After all, they heave learned those habits in order to maintain comfort, or avert discomfort, and why would they give that up?

In older cultures, it was understood that if one wished to become a shaman – a wise person – one had to leave the tribe and live alone for an extended period. In that time of separation, one could step away from the usual habits of social interaction, and focus on one’s inner world. One could learn to quiet the habits of the mind – all based on unconscious ‘knowing’ – and hone one’s ‘being’. Then, when the breakthrough experiences happened, one would be in a fit state to just observe: to see how the gate had opened.

This separation from the tribe isn’t the same as a modern-day ‘retreat’. In the latter, we come with our social baggage and habits, and we don’t stay long enough to leave them behind. We know we are going to return to ‘ordinary life’ soon enough, so all the plans and formulas for that life are, at best, merely held in abeyance. We don’t have the ability to take them out and examine them: to find that they are merely adopted and ultimately useless. But most people don’t even have a proper ‘retreat’; they have, instead, an ‘escape’ – more commonly known as a ‘holiday’.

Given the combination of poor and incomplete teaching, together with no clear commitment to training the rational mind, it should be no surprise that for the majority of people, any philosophy loses its core and becomes merely another ‘pattern for life’. And like other, such patterns, those who come to it will eventually either abandon it – become apathetic – or try to cling to it as if the mere formula holds a power to transform. Whatever the field, no mere formula can ever replace genius. And what is genius but a breakthrough state – the proper functioning of a direct perception of the universe?