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Why Religion Drives Some People Crazy

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Why Religion Drives Some People Crazy

Leading to Political Strife, Fanaticism, and Terrorism

By George A. Boyd © 2017

Religion influences people at multiple levels. It conditions:

  • Identity – who they believe themselves to be
  • Volition – what choices they are allowed to make, and which choices are labeled as wrong or evil
  • Cognition – what they think and believe about selected topics, which shape their political and social opinions
  • Morality – how they decide what is right and wrong behavior
  • Affect – how they react emotionally to ideas or objects
  • Behavior – what they allow themselves to do, as their beliefs and values direct them
  • Motivation – what desires are acceptable to fulfill and which are not
  • Perception – what mindsets they adopt and which they abandon
  • Cosmology – what mythological world they perceive their spiritual essence dwells, which contains the narrative of how Creation occurred, the spiritual beings that inhabit this inner world, and what is the form of the Supreme Being

This multi-faceted, multi-modal influence that religion has over human beings can completely take over their autonomy, and turn them into instruments for the agenda of the leaders of the faith. People no longer discover who they are; know their genuine thoughts, feelings, and motivations; or make independent choices—they are shaped and molded into who they should be, according to the doctrinal vision of the religion.

When we examine the eight stages of alternate perceptions of the world that can be generated through prayer, hypnosis, and meditation, we find that religion emphasizes two parts of this internalization process. Understanding these stages sheds light upon what is happening to people who come under the sway of religion and how this occurs.

Stage One – You believe in or remember a form of God. You may do some type of activity to praise or worship this Being. You typically make requests to this Being through prayer or supplication. As you practice prayer for some time, you may begin to receive guidance or teaching from this being through intuition. This is called invocation.

Stage Two – You collect your attention and become present. You may be able to focus your attention on feelings that arise in the present time in your body and work them out. This is called mindfulness.

Stage Three – You move your attention along the thread of consciousness you access selected centers of the Conscious mind to relieve stress, lower your anxiety, and gain clarity on what you need to do. This is called practical meditation.

Stage Four – You move your attention along the thread of consciousness into the Subconscious mind, which allows you to travel through the temporal-mnemonic strata of your mind, and to access the system of chakras and your astral body, using hypnosis and meditation. This is called liminal meditation.

Stage Five – You move your attention along the thread of consciousness into the Metaconscious mind to unite with the Self. Through this means you empower you will and activate the executive faculties of your personality to take charge of your life and personal destiny. This is called centering meditation.

Stage Six – You focus your attention upon your three immortal essences of consciousness—your attentional principle, your spirit, and your Soul—to awaken your ability to do conscious, inner spiritual work. This is called awakening meditation.

Stage Seven – You focus your attention upon a center in the Superconscious mind that is in proximity to the form of God to whom you pray and whom you worship. In many religions, this is an integration center in the Superconscious mind, which we call a nucleus of identity—though in some groups, they will have you focus on the spirit or an ensouling entity at another level of the Continuum, other than where your Soul dwells.

After keeping your attention merged in this essence for prolonged periods of time, you come to identify with it. As you contemplate this band of the Continuum and receive teachings from those who are established in this cosmology, it begins to shape your perception, thinking, and beliefs; influence your emotional reactions, attitudes, and moral beliefs; and ultimately, how you act.

Since this is an altered state of consciousness in which your reality testing mechanisms of the mind are temporarily suspended—like being in a hypnotic trance—you can be programmed to believe almost anything, accept it as true, and act on it.

This state of mind is called unitive meditation. In different traditions, it has been called being reborn, gaining Realization, awakening of true faith, recognition of original mind, experiencing Gnosis or Divine Knowledge.

Stage Eight – You use the attentional principle, spirit, and Soul to work on the issues of your personality from a detached perspective, activate the full operation of the faculties of your Superconscious mind, free your spirit to return to its Source, travel in full consciousness as the attentional principle through every band of the mind, and unfold the spiritual evolutionary potentials of the Soul using transformational meditation. This is called transcendence meditation.

Religions typically emphasize stage one and stage seven—invocation and unitive meditation. They have you believe in or remember God to establish a relationship. Then they use some modality to alter your awareness so you can enter into mystic union with the spiritual essence that dwells in proximity to that Divine Being. This might take the form of singing or chanting, sacred movement or dancing, using a mantra to focus your attention on this essence, or doing special breathing methods.

There certainly is not a problem with visiting this nucleus of identity or other spiritual essence in meditation. Where it becomes a problem when you begin to operate from this higher center and you become fully identified with it: in this scenario, your religion begins to program you and gradually takes over your life.

Many religions and spiritual groups focus your attention on a nucleus of identity, or the spirit or an ensouling entity outside of where your Soul dwells, and then lock your attention in this state. [We refer to this to doing spiritual work outside the cutting edge of spirituality.]

They use role authority, e.g., the sacred leader, the Guru or Master; sacred text authority, citing scriptures and other holy books; and instill fear, guilt, and shame to indoctrinate you—these methods eventually start to control you. They condition your lifestyle; inculcate their approved doctrine to shape your beliefs, values, and behavior; and have you engage in regular religious rituals to continually remind you of your identification with this religion.

The other forms of meditation of stages two through six and eight—mindfulness, practical meditation, liminal meditation, centering meditation, awakening meditation, and transcendence meditation—operate under your control. You may be initially guided in doing these meditations to learn them, but after you are able to practice them proficiently, you direct where you focus your attention and decide what inner work you do.

We teach you mindfulness and practical meditation in our Foundations of Practical Meditation Program. We show you liminal and centering meditation in our Introduction to Meditation Program. We train you in awakening meditation and transcendence meditation in our intermediate courses, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program.

To do this conscious inner work, you must shift from belief and faith to knowledge and direct verification; you must move from being a believer at stage one to being a mystic knower, who is capable of independent inquiry, contemplation, and actively transforming your spiritual potentials.

Moreover, you must break out of the bubble of programmed hypnotic belief at stage seven to do this. This commonly requires you to deconstruct the perceptual filters and scaffolds of belief that lock you into a remaining in continual union with a spiritual essence. This allows you to settle into your own nature—untrammeled by the hypnotic influence of religions that attempt to mold you into an ideal pattern of their design—and actualize your genuine personal and spiritual potentials.

We discuss in greater depth how you shift from faith to knowledge and how you deconstruct the mindsets and beliefs that lock you into an altered state of consciousness in our book, Religions, Cults, and Terrorism: What the Heck Are We Doing? We encourage you to read this book if this is a topic that interests you and you would like to learn more.

How You Can Activate Your Inner Seeing Power

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By George A. Boyd ©2018

Q: How do people see auras and visions of the spiritual worlds? Is that a special Gift from God, or can anyone learn to do this?

A: Behind physical vision are seven other layers of vision:

  1. The vision of your astral body
  2. Your mind’s eye: what you “see” with your attention
  3. Your personal intuition, which allows you to see what is going on at each level of your personality
  4. The vision of your intentional consciousness, or attentional principle, which we call metavision
  5. The vision of your spirit, which we call heart sight
  6. The vast intuitive vision of your Higher Mind, or Buddhic capsule, that enables your Soul to “see” all of the realms it has opened up as it journeys across the Superconscious mind
  7. The simultaneous vision of each of these different levels from core sight, the Soul’s innate vision

Most people are familiar with the first three types of vision, your astral vision, your attentional vision, and your personal intuition. For example:

When you are asleep and your physical eyes are closed, yet you see the images and scenery of your dreams. This is astral vision. You also use this type of vision when you enter the state of hypnosis, or do astral projection.

You may have experienced listening to a lecture and you were only aware of the content of what the speaker was teaching you. This is attentional vision, which allows you to “see” ideas and associations. You can train this faculty in meditation to explore each level of your mind and activate the higher octaves of vision.

Personal intuition allows you to check in each level of your Conscious, Subconscious, and Metaconscious mind, so you can monitor what you are experiencing. You might check into your feelings, the voice of logic, or your conscience, to help you decide what is the best course of action to take.

By focusing your attention on your attentional principle, your spirit, and your Soul, you can begin to activate vision types 4 to 7.

Realize that all of these forms of vision are operating just behind your physical vision in progressively deeper layers. To tap these other layers of vision, you need to (a) focus your attention there, (b) allow your awareness to open into this level of the mind, and (c) let your sensory energies withdraw into this deeper layer of the mind, where this higher order of vision operates.

What is true for vision is also true for the other senses—hearing, taste and smell (these conjoin in the deeper aspects of inner sensing), and touch—when you are able to withdraw your sensory currents into these deeper layers of the mind, these other subtle senses begin to function.

This withdrawal of sensory currents is called Pratyahara in Yoga Philosophy. You do this when you fall off to sleep, or when you enter a state of hypnosis—this allows you to activate the senses of your astral body.

When you collect your attention and concentrate upon the mental schema of something you are learning, you use attentional seeing. When you are deeply concentrated, you are just aware of what you are learning.

Your astral body’s vision regularly sees auras. If you travel in your astral body through the physical universe into what we call the Astral Light, it is possible to behold the inhabitants and scenery of the dimensional worlds or “Astral Planes.”

If you would like to learn more about the different levels of vision, you may enjoy the Vision Workshop, which is one of our Public Access Webinars. You can order it on our website, and read the notes and listen to the guided meditations, so you can learn how to access these deeper levels of sight.

For those of you who have not meditated before, and would like to learn to use attentional sight to explore the levels of the Conscious, Subconscious, and Metaconscious mind—beyond just focusing on a mental schema for a subject you are learning in school or on a project you are doing for your work—you can learn how to do this in our beginning meditation program, the Introduction to Meditation Program. This is available online, or you can do an in-person class with one of our trained Introduction to Meditation teachers.

If you have meditated before, and you would like to learn techniques to awaken your immortal spiritual essences and activate your four highest octaves of sight, you can take one of our intermediate classes, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation or the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program.

If you can learn to focus your attention and withdraw your senses, anyone can learn to see auras and view the inner Planes—and with time and practice, to fully utilize each of your seven inner octaves of sensing.

Uncovering Conscious Experience

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Uncovering Conscious Experience beneath Ideas, Beliefs, Opinions, and Values

By George A. Boyd © 2017

One of the challenges of the modern seeker is discovering what is their actual conscious experience apart from the ideas, attitudes, beliefs, opinions, and values that create a secondary conceptual and perceptual filter over their inner witness. The first thing the seeker must do is to differentiate the content that is arising in the mind and to recognize it. The thought things of ideas, beliefs, opinions, and values need to be identified for what they are—as you withdraw your attention from these cognitive layers of the mind, you are able to awaken as the conscious witness of mental content, and achieve mindfulness and conscious presence.

This article came out of a dialog I had with my Higher Self in two separate sittings. The first question and answer session drilled down on defining what are ideas, beliefs, attitudes, opinions, and values. The second session focused on the difference between facts, opinions, and conscious experience.

Here’s the dialog:

Q: What’s the difference between on idea and a belief?

A: An idea is an image that encapsulates meaning. It combines visual models, verbal statements, and a written explication that describes and supports the idea.

A belief is an internalized verbal statement that:

  1. Makes a judgment about truth or falsity of an idea
  2. Give arguments why something is true or false
  3. Stores information related to the belief that reifies the contention why the statement is true or false

Q: How is an opinion different than a belief?

A: An opinion is a belief you express verbally—you state your belief aloud or communicate it through writing.

Q: How is belief different than attitude?

A: Attitude is the physical and emotional expression of a belief. What you believe often becomes charged with emotions, and shows up as certain facial expressions or postures that communicate the belief non-verbally. For example, people who are self-righteous—who believe they know the final and absolute truth, based of their reading of a scripture or other authoritative book—will hold their body in a certain way; and they’ll express their beliefs arrogantly and condescendingly.

Q: How is a belief different than a value?

A: Values assign rules or standards for making judgments. Values commonly condition beliefs. For example, if you hold a value that sex outside of marriage is wrong—if you believe in that value, you will affirm it, and you will attempt to act in consonance with that value. When your behavior matches your values, you will experience integrity; if you act counter to that value, you will experience inner conflict.

Q: What is a fact?

A: A fact is something that our senses and reason determine are objective reality—something that exists whether we believe it exists or not. Facts are objects you can detect through your senses or instrumentation: for example, you can extend your physical senses to view extremely tiny objects through a microscope.

  • Facts are measureable.
  • Multiple witnesses can verify them.
  • They exist at a specific location in the physical universe.
  • They can be observed at a specific time.
  • They are documented through written accounts or photographic, audio, or video recording.
  • The person experiencing the fact has intact and normal sensory, perceptual, and cognitive functioning—for example, a person under the influence of a hallucinogenic drug could not be said to demonstrate intact and normal sensory, perceptual, and cognitive functioning.
  • It can be represented as data that can be analyzed, calculated, computed, and communicated to others.

Q: In our modern contentious political environment in the United States, there seems to be a discounting of facts based on beliefs in a certain political ideology. Factual reporting of statements of witnesses is labeled fake news. Facts are ignored or cherry picked to support a particular agenda. Facts are discredited if they do not agree with political or religious orthodoxy. What creates this phenomenon?

A: The facts are what they are—regardless of whether someone chooses to consider them or not. Science attempts to uncover facts and verify they whether their hypotheses about these facts are accurate.

On the other hand, these political actors hold strong beliefs that support their values, which they express as opinions. These values and beliefs are primary; they will cling to their beliefs even if the facts do not support them.

Opinions appear to operate in several ways:

  1. You form opinions about what facts mean, and what they imply.
  2. You decide whether a fact is real, or whether it is an artifact or optical illusion.
  3. If you have political or religious beliefs, you may decide not only if the fact is real, but also if it is right or wrong, or if it is good or evil.
  4. You may decide whether a fact is relevant, or whether it can be ignored. For example, a biochemist detects glucose in a cell, when he is searching for the presence of a specific protein. He may note the glucose is there, but he will ignore it, because it is not relevant the protein he is seeking.
  5. You decide if a fact fits into mental category, schema, or classification, or not. You decide whether a fact should be included in a discussion of a topic or not, or whether or not it is germane to a dialog you are having.
  6. You decide if a fact fits into an ideological, political, or religious belief system’s doctrine or not.
  7. You decide whether a fact is important to you personally or spiritually, and whether or not you need to take action.

Typically, opinion type 6 heavily influences these political actors. Their doctrine is primary, and they reject any facts that do not fit in with it. This system of beliefs filters their perception, and forms a mindset through which they view reality.

These perceptual filters, or mindsets, operate in most people. These mindsets may not be founded upon political or religious beliefs, but they do lock people into a particular perception about what is possible and who they can become in the future.

Q: How is it possible to become conscious? It seems most people are completely entrenched in their mindsets and belief systems, so they cannot see any other viewpoint.

A: To become conscious, to become aware and mindful, you have to transcend the field of mindsets, of the nested array of values, beliefs, opinions, and ideas that form them, and collect your attention.

When you are established in conscious experience, you observe:

  • Your body position and movement in the present time
  • The environment around your body and become aware of what your senses are experiencing in the present time
  • The physiological activity of your body and your experience of your muscles, organs, and other tissues in the present time
  • Your feelings and emotional reactions in the present time
  • Your thoughts arising in the present time
  • The different identity states of the ego and the thoughts, feelings, actions and perspectives each identity state embodies
  • The memories that arise in response to different stimuli

As you go deeper in meditation, following the thread of consciousness to deeper strata of the mind, you eventually encounter the three immortal principles—the attentional principle, the spirit, and the Soul. When you reach these essences and come to identify with them, it shifts you out of the mindsets and belief systems that captured your attention. You wake up within. You experience that you are separate and independent from these gossamer palaces woven from belief and you are the conscious witness of all that occurs in the mind.

We teach the method to isolate your conscious experience and direct it along the thread of consciousness in our beginning class, the Introduction to Meditation program. We teach you how to awaken your conscious essences in our intermediate classes, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program—and how to use them to transform your spiritual potentials.

We encourage you to reflect deeply on these different elements of the cognitive strata of your mind, and learn to isolate your attention from the ceaseless cascade of thought things that separate you from your naked awareness that exists behind this river of thought. Then you can shift from being locked in the hypnotic absorption of mindsets and belief systems and become a conscious being.

Tools for Different Spiritual Objectives

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By George A. Boyd © 2018

Q: How are Mudrashram® meditation practices different than those I get from other groups?

A: Each group gives you tools appropriate for the job they do. Here are some examples:

  • A Wiccan or Occult group will show you how to unite with your Soul Spark and activate the upper Subtle Realm octave of will, which we call the Magical Will, to bring about manifestation and to protect against evil influences.
  • New Thought or New Age groups that operate on the Abstract Mind Plane and Psychic Realm give techniques that enable you to unite with the wave of the present time and your Higher Self, to process issues to completion, to activate the Soul’s power to manifest its transpersonal will, and to awaken your psychic abilities.
  • Jewish and Christian groups train you to commune with the Holy Spirit in the inner altar center of the Christ consciousness or Moon Soul nucleus of identity in the First Planetary Initiation. You learn to connect with God and listen to His guidance, and receive His blessings in your life.
  • I AM Movement groups lift your attention to unite with the Mighty I AM presence nucleus of identity in the Second Planetary Initiation, where you can activate the Omnific power of the spoken decree to manifest your intention.
  • Yogi Preceptor lineages teach you how to unite your attention with the cosmic consciousness nucleus of identity in the First Cosmic Initiation, and to transform this essence.
  • Light-Master-led groups reveal to you how to awaken the cosmic soul awareness nucleus of identity in the Second Cosmic Initiation and unfold it, while concurrently guiding the spirit on that segment of the Continuum to its origin.
  • Cosmic Masters awaken you to unite with your Astral Soul and progressively move this essence towards its source.
  • Supracosmic Gurus initiate the Supracosmic seed atom upon their Path and lead it progressively to unite with the form of the Divine that dwells in the Supracosmic brain chakra.
  • Transcendental Sphere Sat Gurus focus your attention on the spirit upon their Path, and lead this essence to its origin in the highest Plane at that level of the Continuum.

You will learn different techniques to achieve these varying objectives. These groups will train you to focus your attention on a different spiritual essence. In groups that teach you to transform your spiritual essence, you will learn different techniques for unfoldment.

Mudrashram® spiritual practices are keyed to your cutting edge of spirituality, and lead you to progressively complete your spiritual development in Subtle, Planetary, Transplanetary, Cosmic, Supracosmic, and Transcendental bands of the Great Continuum of Consciousness.

You can learn about the steps of our Integral meditation system in the article, “What Is Integral Meditation?” You can find out about the major meditation techniques we teach in our description of the Introduction to Meditation Program; our intermediate courses, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program; and our advanced course, the Mudrashram® Advanced Course in Meditation.

We invite you to study about different approaches to spirituality and to identify one that resonates with your sense of truth. You may enjoy our “Study of Spiritual Paths” webinar series, which goes into greater depth into each of these perspectives. [You can access this webinar series under our Public Webinar category on this page.]

We welcome you to study with us if you feel our approach to spirituality seems right to you and matches the spiritual objectives you wish to achieve.

Faculties of the Soul’s Intuitive Knowledge

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By George A. Boyd ©2018

In our intermediate courses, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program, we teach about the seven chords of Jnana Yoga, the octaves at which the Soul uses its innate intelligence and intuition. You can read about these seven chords of Jnana Yoga in our Library [you can get a free library membership here—if there are particular areas that interest you, please let us know on this page where you sign up for the Library.]

This intuitive thread, which has been called the Antakarana, stretches from the physical brain to the Soul. With each meditation, insight, and revelation, you activate this thread and build the Soul’s knowledge and wisdom.

At the core of this thread there are seven essential aspects of the Soul’s intuitive wisdom. These include:

  1. Discernment – This enables your Soul to recognize its own nature and differentiate its essential nature from its vehicles of consciousness and the phenomena of the inner Planes. At the culmination of discernment, you gain Soul Realization, or Gnosis. This faculty has also been called Viveka, or spiritual discrimination.
  2. Mandalic reasoning – This faculty is anchored in the brain center of the Soul’s essential vehicle. It resembles a series of concentric circles (some perceive this center like concentric spheres) that mirror each stage of the Soul’s development—from the first nodal point of the Subtle Realm to your current state of spiritual evolution. Through mandalic reasoning, you can tap into the knowledge you have gained at each nodal point of the Path; you can also locate archetypes on different Planes that correspond with one another—this is the basis of the esoteric dictum, “As above, so below.”
  3. Multi-dimensional knowledge – This allows you to plumb the energetic thread that connects each of your vehicles of consciousness, and to access the knowledge of each of those vehicles. This operates through the seed atom of each vehicle of consciousness; it permits you to plumb the content corresponding to any nodal point in any vehicle of consciousness. This inner coordinate system allows you to locate specific content in any vehicle and to bring it up. This has been referred to holographic knowledge.
  4. Depth intuitive knowing – This enables you to know the identity state contained within each vehicle of consciousness, to declare it (e.g., the I AM declaration of Jesus in the Bible, “I am the bright and morning star”), and to empathically enter the experience of others. It is this faculty of intuitive connection that enables you to take the perspective of the Soul when you do healing, psychic readings, coaching, depth counseling or psychotherapy, or ministry.
  5. Connections with the intellect – This expresses in seven ways; most people utilize one or more of these connections with the Soul’s illumined mind to receive and communicate the information they gather:
    1. Visual-symbolic – This resembles a cascade of images or symbols that enter awareness in meditation. You need to reflect on each of these images to glean additional information about it.
    2. Verbal intuitive – This inspired verbal guidance and inspiration speaks through you and you hear yourself speaking it. This has been called satsang, channeling, or prophecy—depending whether the source of the information comes from, respectively, your own Soul, another spiritual entity, or the Divine Spirit.
    3. Silent thought reception – Here you receive guidance and direction through silent intuition. You hear the thoughts directed to you in your mind. This mode of transmission of guidance and information has been called telepathy. You commonly access this connection through asking questions to your Soul—we refer to this as the “tell me circuit.”
    4. Visual thought reception – In this connection type, when you ask the Soul a question, it moves your attention within you to the level where you can directly experience the essence about which you are curious. So, for example, if you wanted to know what is the form of the Divine at the top of the Abstract Mind Plane, your Soul would guide your attention to the level of the Continuum where you actually would behold that Being. We refer to this as the “show me” circuit.
    5. Behavioral guidance – Through this connection, you receive plans for sequences of action, blueprints for building something, or guidance for new behavior you have never practiced before. For example, this connection is activated in those who have a calling to build temples. We call this the “praxis circuit.”
    6. Creative inspiration – This is a downpour of poetry, artistic images, or literary or dramatic dialog that you capture through your particular artistic gift. You sense that your Soul is expressing through you, and you put it down, for example, through writing it, painting it, recording it, or sculpting it.
    7. Systemic view – This gives you the big picture of a system. We call this synthetic form of perception global intuitive perception. It enables you to view how all parts fit together into an integrated whole.
  6. Integration – This alchemical process enables you to change elements of your unconscious mind into an aspect of consciousness that you can utilize. You access integration through a series of evocative techniques drawn from meditation, psychotherapy, and hypnosis. When this aspect is operating, you typically will be encountering and interacting with an element of your unconscious mind, and progressively changing it until it can be re-integrated into consciousness. This form of intelligence has been called synthesis or integrative reasoning.
  7. Jnana Shakti – This is the innate energy of the Soul’s illumined mind that operates each of these six essential aspects of intuitive wisdom. This aspect is awakened during the sitting we give for Jnana Yoga in the Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and in the introductory session of the Mudrashram® Advanced Course in Meditation.

Each of the seven chords of the Soul’s intelligence and intuitive wisdom can be accessed through evocative questioning and attentional focusing techniques. You can learn about these methods in our intermediate and advanced meditation courses.

We encourage you to study the activity of each of these faculties of your Soul’s intuitive wisdom, and to learn methods to enhance their operation. This will enable to allow your Soul’s innate genius to flower and to have full expression in your life.