Q: Why are there so many crazy, crackpot ideas that people believe in?

A: People believe in crackpot ideas—conspiracy theories and strange notions of pseudo-science, religion, and politics—because they are unable to verify what they believe. They will tell you they believe these things “on faith,” or because it is written in their scripture, or some person they regard as an authority has said it, or they got it as a revelation in an altered state of consciousness.

Verification is part of the discriminative aspect of the mind. When these inner “crap detectors” are working, they are going to deconstruct or correct these crazy notions. When these inner sentinels of the mind are sleeping or disengaged, people will drift into full crackpot mode.

What are these nodes of discernment in the mind?

1. Sense perception – This constructs your “world picture”—what you see in your environment around you. Under normal conditions, this aspect of discernment will give you an accurate perception of what is in the space around your body and where your body is in relation to the objects around you. For example, you will recognize the stove and the dining room table in your house or apartment, and notice how far your body is from them.
2. Reason – This is your reality-testing mechanism. It detects the truth or falsity of statements based on evidence. When people enter and remain in altered states of consciousness, this aspect of the mind shuts down, and people become susceptible to believing anything that is suggested to them. When reason is not operating, people are walking around in a hypnotic trance.
3. Intellect – This is the part of your mind that can solve problems and model problems. To find out if something is true, you perform a test to see if the hypothesis you generate is likely correct, based on a statistical criterion you set. If your statistical test shows that something is likely true 95% out of 100%, you can deduce that it is probably true in most cases—while you can’t be entirely certain that you have proved your hypothesis, it looks like it is likely true. This is the method science uses to arrive at understanding of the world.
4. Temple of Science – This is the collective repository of all of the tests and studies that have been done on any particular topic. When enough tests lend credence to a theory, scientific consensus accepts this as a current paradigm. For example, thousands of tests and observations have been done to verify the theory of evolution is likely correct.
5. Illumined mind – When the Soul takes the Fourth Planetary Initiation, it fully awakens its Buddhic vehicle of consciousness. Through the heart and throat centers of this form, the Soul can detect the content of each nodal point the Soul has opened and of each Nadamic tone the spirit has purified. This generates discernment for the Way of the Soul and the Path of the spirit. Those that complete the Fourth Planetary Initiation affirm, “I am the Way and the Path.” This forms the foundation of spiritual discernment for the Planetary and Subtle bands of the Continuum.
6. Interpenetrating Awareness – When a disciple awakens the Mahatma form on the Bridge Path, activating the medulla center of this form yields the highest discriminative awareness for all levels of the Continuum below this station on the Path. It gives instant knowledge for whatever information the disciple asks—this is like a powerful spiritual search engine that can access information about whatever spiritual topic the disciple wants to know.
7. The Wisdom Mind of Satchitananda – In the heart center of the form of the ensouling entity of the seventh Transcendental Path, which we call Satchitananda, there is an intuitive switchboard that directly and objectively perceives the content of the mind for multiple parameters. These parameters are:
• Knowledge of the element of earth
• Knowledge of the element of water
• Knowledge of the element of fire
• Knowledge of the element of air
• Knowledge of the element of Aether or space
• Knowledge of the Experiential Mind, the field of memory for sense impressions and life events
• Knowledge of Reason, the analytical and discriminative faculty
• Knowledge of Ego (Ahamkar), the identification with the body, reason and life experiences
• Knowledge of the Will, the principle of choice and arbiter of action
• Knowledge of the Self: the field of the Knower, the instruments of Knowledge, and the Known
• Knowledge of the Mythic Nucleus of Wisdom of the Subtle Realm
• Knowledge of the Creative Nucleus of Power, the Soul of the Planetary Realm
• Knowledge of the Omniscient Nucleus, the Monad of the Transplanetary Realm
• Knowledge of the Compassionate Nucleus, the Astral Soul of the Cosmic Sphere
• Knowledge of Omnipresent Nucleus, the Supracosmic Soul of the Supracosmic Sphere
• Knowledge of the Omnipotent Nucleus, the Soul of the Bridge Path
• Knowledge of the Path of the Violet Ray of Creation, T1
• Knowledge of the Path of the Rose-Saffron Ray of Creation, T2
• Knowledge of the Path of the Emerald Green Ray of Creation, T3
• Knowledge of the Path of the Golden Yellow Ray of Creation, T4
• Knowledge of the Path of the Royal Blue Ray of Creation, T5
• Knowledge of the Path of the Rainbow Ray of Creation, T6
• Knowledge of the Eternal Path of the Primal White Light Ray of Creation, T7
• Knowledge of the Essence of Satchitananda

Nodes one through four comprise our personal and societal aspects of discernment; spiritual discernment arises from nodes five through seven. In the Subtle Realm—particularly the Lower Astral Plane—and the Psychic Realm, and the First and Second Planetary Initiations, sojourners through these realms do not have a touchstone to verify their experiences.

Much is constructed from the gossamer threads of belief and the tendrils of faith, and reliance on the veracity of sources from whom they learn these beliefs. Until they are able to subject these beliefs to the bright light of discernment, they will cling to these beliefs despite any verification they are true. Consequently, they gently drift into the intoxicating world of the crackpot.

The Boyd Crackpot Scale

We can characterize seven different levels of drift into crackpot mind:

1. The individual is mostly sane, but harbors odd ideas about one to three topics.
2. The individual continues to maintain relative sanity, but has odd ideas for four to ten topics
3. The individual begins to shift from a rational stance to conviction about his or her beliefs, which cannot be verified; more than ten odd ideas make up his or her constellation of irrational beliefs. Those initially exposed to religious or political ideas may move into this posture. Here the conviction is not complete—the individual may be persuadable at this level to come back to reality, and may have some openness to examining his or her beliefs.
4. The individual begins to rationalize and defend his or her irrational beliefs, and rejects evidence to the contrary; at this level, an individual has become immersed in a conspiracy theory or a system of pseudo-science, political, or religious beliefs. At this level, the individual will likely push back on any attempts to dissuade him or her of the fallacy of his or her beliefs—and he or she is “locked in” to the conspiracy theory at this stage.
5. The individual begins to believe he or she is under attack or is persecuted for holding his or her beliefs. At this level, he or she begins to adopt paranoid ideation. Those for whom suspicion and mistrust begin to pervade their view of the world may develop a paranoid personality disorder.
6. The individual’s beliefs start to condition his or her behavior, and he or she begins to act strangely in most situations. At this level, the individual may enter into schizotypal personality disorder.
7. The individual’s beliefs become bizarre and delusional. He or she may hear voices that tell him or her weird things; he or she may hold beliefs that are totally irrational. At this stage, the individual has migrated into paranoid schizophrenia.

Your beloved, eccentric uncle or aunt—substitute whatever relative, friend, or co-worker that is in your life that demonstrates eccentricity—who has some odd ideas, is likely operating at level one or two.

People begin to drift away from reality at level three and four. These are the people in your life that are caught up in conspiracy theories, or have come to believe in the odd notions of pseudo-science, or have been convinced to believe in a religious or political ideology. Also, people that become involved in religious cults, or hate and terrorist groups operate at these levels.

At levels five through seven, the eccentric person in your life has begun to exhibit mental illness. These individuals need professional help—unfortunately, many of them are beyond the reach of even the most skillful interventions of mental health professionals. They will remain in the upper crackpot worlds, oblivious to rationality and reality, and will abide in these states until death liberates them from this continual hypnotic trance—or until their inner illumination ignites, to dispel the lies and delusions they have come to believe.

You can avoid becoming a crackpot through subjecting your beliefs to your personal and spiritual discernment faculties, and by not simply believing in ideas that you cannot verify. Start with the foundation of what you can verify:

• Listen to the voice of wisdom within you.
• Apply the criteria for discerning truth.
• Hold any ideas you cannot verify as unproven hypothesis.
• Analyze the reasoning that underlies claims and conjectures. If it is flawed, reject it.
• Exercise critical thinking. Do not accept ideas without fully vetting them.
• When your Illumined Mind begins to operate, allow it to reveal what is actually there in the inner worlds and not what imagination and magical thinking constructs.
• Verify your intuitive impressions through examining them with the direct perception of your attentional principle.

If you will develop wisdom and discernment, you will steer clear of the pitfalls of crackpot mind.