Tag Archives: indoctrination

Considering Illumination in Religion

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By George A. Boyd © 2019

Q: Is genuine Illumination possible through religion? Or is additional spiritual training required?

A: Religion generally conveys two aspects of spiritual development, Indoctrination and Theology. To reach Illumination, most individuals go through the stage of Mysticism before they can achieve Illumination.

In Indoctrination, you are taught beliefs and values that your parents and clergy ask you accept without questioning. They introduce you to moral rules, which you expected to follow—when asked about these rules, you are told that these have the authority of the scriptures, so you are simply to obey them to please the Divine. You may be asked to attend religious ceremonies, perform specific prayers, or participate in certain religious rites, but you are not given any reasons why you must do these things.

In Theology, you study the scriptures of a faith, the history of a religion, and read the writings of its learned and holy saints and teachers. You may be asked to think about what you have read and come to any understanding of what these scriptures mean, and how you can interpret the teachings of this faith for the current time. Many who study Theology go on to a role of ministry or teaching within the religion.

In Mysticism, you consciously experience the spiritual agencies that operate through that religious tradition. You may have dreams, visions, or revelations that angels, saints, and even the founder of a faith communicate to you deep truths. You typically enter an altered state of consciousness through prayer or meditation and commune with these spiritual agencies.

In Illumination, the Soul travels through the band of the Continuum where the archetypes of the Religion dwell, and your Soul has an intuitive prehension of core truths.

In your family and in your religious organization, you are indoctrinated. In religious studies, you are taught to gain conceptual knowledge about the faith.

In mysticism, you actually go within to visit the levels of the Great Continuum where the religion dwells. You do not simply follow tradition and re-enact time-honored ceremonies, but you learn something new, you discover something, something is revealed or shown to you.

In Illumination, the synthesis of your Soul’s learning and realization is impressed upon your higher mind, which has been called the Illumined mind, Buddhi, or Bodhi. In this state, you maintain a continuity of consciousness for all that you have experienced in the inner worlds, and you are able to communicate that through your intuitive thought stream, through speech as teaching or satsang, or as inspired writing.

It is good to gain an intellectual understanding of your faith, but to gain the greatest value, it is important to have a direct experience of the truths that your religion has anchored in the Plenum as great ideas or archetypes. To do this, you need the tools of meditation.

In our intermediate courses, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation or they by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program, we teach you the specific skills that enable you to have mystical experiences, to tap into your Soul’s native Illumination, and to transform the Soul.

Spiritual transformation allows your Soul to progressively deepen its penetration into the mysteries of religion, uncovering them where these dwell on the Great Continuum of Consciousness. If you want something more profound than the intellectual understanding of theology, or scholarly study about religion, we invite you to learn the tools from us to enable you to have these more satisfying spiritual experiences that can only come from entering the realm of mysticism and Illumination.

Going Off the Deep End into Cultism

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By George A. Boyd © 2019

Q: You include several techniques for working on the personality in your intermediate meditation courses, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program. How can I be sure I’m not fundamentally altering my personality, like what happens in cults?

A: We can characterize seven major levels of work on the personality, together with the methods that are used to access each layer. These are briefly described below.

  1. Your actual experience – this is your moment-to-moment experience in the present time—what we call the zone of the Conscious mind. Mindfulness, being present and observing your mental activity objectively, taps this level. The deeper form of mindfulness, Vipassana, in which you actively process and release the material arising in the present time, also operates at this level.
  2. Your story about your experience – this is your ego’s attempt to show itself to others in a favorable and positive light. At this level, you seek to appear logical, right, and acceptable in the eyes of others; you may present yourself to them as successful, competent, and expert, even though you are not. This is the layer in which you encounter your defense mechanisms. Psychodynamic therapies interface with your ego at this level, accessing both your owned personal narrative and your disowned “shadow.”
  3. Your emotional reactions – This includes your emotional “conclusions” about what your experience means. This influences your self-image. This layer is the emotional truth that you feel beneath the false impressions you convey to the world through shaping your appearance, what you disclose to others, and what you tell others about yourself. Humanistic therapies tap this level.
  4. The network of beliefs associated with your emotions – This makes up your essential “programming” that colors your mindset. This is the perceptual set through which you view the world and what seems possible to you. You can change this programming through autohypnosis and affirmation. Cognitive behavioral therapy works with the limiting, self-sabotaging, and misery-creating beliefs you harbor at this level, and attempts to reconstruct them. As you uproot this conditioning that separates you from your Soul, you can begin to align your personality with your authentic Self and connect with your Soul’s creative expression and purpose.
  5. Changing selected beliefs to conform to a doctrine or philosophy – Cults and mind-control groups use this method to control your personality and to make it obey a set of moral or ideological principles. This might take the form of living up to ideal behavioral standards, obeying the commands of the group leader, or conforming every aspect of your life to a prescribed lifestyle. You may be indoctrinated to hold beliefs acceptable to the doctrine of the group. You may be “brainwashed” to re-identify with a new sense of personal identity. You may be manipulated to give up your personal life entirely and live only to carry out the leader’s agenda and the group’s mission.
  6. Spiritual detachment – At this level, you enter an altered state of consciousness in which you re-identify with a spiritual essence—nucleus of identity, spirit, or ensouling entity—and regard your personality as unreal or dream-like. Here, you detach from your life entirely and pursue spiritual development. In some groups, receiving a new spiritual name, taking monastic vows, or abandoning personal ambitions and dedicating your life to spiritual practice accompany this new state of identification.
  7. Dissolution of your personality – In some spiritual traditions, you may be trained in practices that actually turn off the personality and interfere with its ability to function. The aim of these practices is to dissolve the ego and personality so that you ultimately realize your Oneness with the Divine.

Cults co-opt many of the methods used at layers one through four—such as focusing on issues, hypnosis, affirmation, and shaping beliefs—to establish you in a new state of identity. They indoctrinate you in their belief systems and philosophy with an aim to control you. They may have you remain in a trance-like altered state of consciousness to have you separate and disidentify with your personality.

In Mudrashram®, we teach methods in our intermediate meditation courses to allow you to interface with levels one, two, and four. We show you these methods to enable you to connect with your authentic Self and your Soul, to express and actualize your unique gifts.

Once you adopt modalities that move you into zones five through seven, you enter the territory where you begin artificially controlling the personality to follow another’s agenda. This occurs in cults and spiritual groups where you learn your personality is flawed, evil, or an illusion; you are urged to conform to an ideal lifestyle or live in an altered state of consciousness.

If you steer clear of shaping your personality according to religious doctrines and other people’s values, you will avoid going off the deep end into cultism and fanaticism. Honor what is actually within you and work with this. If you complete this inner process, your personality will become an instrument of your own Soul—not a slave to someone else who controls you.

If you are exiting a cultic group and you are trying to make sense of what happened to you—and you want a structured way to approach this—you may wish to consider signing up for our Cult Recovery Program.

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.