Rant 21: Masters of Puppets

[Irreverend Hugh, KSC]

RANT 21
Masters of Puppets

?¨All in all is all we are.?Æ
-Kurt Cobain

?¨The most cherished principles are the greatest lies.?Æ
-Peter J. Carroll  (Liber Null: Liber LUX)

?¨The difference between ideas and beliefs is that ideas may be true but beliefs are always false?ñIf something were really true for us, we would not have to make an effort to believe it.?Æ
-Peter J. Carroll

You bow before no gods, goddesses, kings, queens, rulers, or authorities? But how many of you can say that you also refuse to bow before the worst, most severe authoritarian dictator of them all?ñthe ego? That figment of the mind. That trick of perception that convinces you of your self importance even to the point of committing suicide if it feels you haven??t lived up to it. That insidious thing that tries to get you to believe that you are the center of the universe when in reality there is no center and the only importance you could possibly have comes from the relationships you engage in.  

If your ego really exists then why do you need to validate it using names, labels, justifications, beliefs, schemas, stories, roles, and lists of accomplishments? It??s as if you are afraid of the reality that the ego has no intrinsic existence. Afraid or not, upon investigation, you will find that this is so. The Buddhists call it shunyata ?¨relativity- contingency-emptiness?Æ or anatman ?¨no-self?Æ. Some Tantric Buddhists call it sahaja ?¨spontaneity?Æ. The ego is a figment. A fiction. You create it in conjunction with the world in which you live. Anyone who tells you that there is a real essence of your ego is lying both to you and to themselves. Such a person has not investigated beyond a mere study of dogmatic perspectives.

It is in defense and maintenance of this ?´ego?? that all manner of fears can be brought into your heart, forcing you to comply with whomever can protect or ?´save?? your ego, and hating or avoiding those who threaten your ego. But who can really threaten your ego if you recognize that it is a fiction? Who can save your ego if not yourself, the creator of it? What need is there for any maintenance and defense of something that exists only as a perceptual trick and a half-shadowed collection of social roles?

The masters of illumination, enlightenment?ñthe spiritual adepts and master occultists leave us with puzzling instructions about how to realize that ego is a fiction. We understand few of those instructions until we ourselves start to get over ourselves and see how our perspectives have tricked us. In language, only those who are masters and crafters of words (like poets, writers and certain thinkers) are able to realize how much people can be bewitched and trapped by the definitions of words. Concepts can become prisons. Likewise, only those people who master their minds can be able to see how much their thoughts, ideas, and perceptions can limit them. They become aware of the subtle trick from which the sense of ego arises and then blinds us to anything outside of that sense.

?¨However innocuous they might seem, habits in thought, word, and deed are the anchor of the personality. The magician aims to pull up that anchor and cast himself free on the seas of chaos.?Æ  -Peter J. Carroll

Your self-awareness consists of nothing in itself. It is not identification with your experiences. It is not perception. It is not thought. It is not feelings. It is not your heart. It is not the absence of these things. It is not dependent upon that cluster of opinions about yourself that you call ego, though it is often trapped by it. Investigating self-awareness is as if you were to peel an onion to get to the center?ñyou would find nothing left of the onion. It seems to not be there at all, but it is the fullest expression of magic.

After hearing [or reading] this, are you now ready to dissolve the attachments you have to your ego and proclaim the highest freedom of psychological anarchy?  You may think that such an anarchy will lead you to madness, but you are wrong. Madness comes from a mind crushed into limitations and obsessions. Freedom comes from a mind that has no beliefs, no intellectual or emotional hierarchies, and no authoritarian ego?ñthus, psychological anarchy, the hoped-for-result gained from mindfucking, is mental maturity in its most flexible and fullest experience.

The ideology of the ego is the screw that holds all other ideologies together. One can not have a religion claiming to be the one true faith without an ego. Likewise, one can not have a ?´revolutionary movement?? or ?´philosophical outlook?? without an ego. Let??s view ideologies from outside their own dogmatic self-perceptions and denials?ñfor DESPITE what ideologies claim, the results of ideological solutions, plans, arguments, and other such rabidity, have been catastrophic. Millions of people have been slaughtered. Millions of dreams have been repressed. Millions?ñbillions?ñfor the sake of ideologies, whether they are theistic and religious, or materialistic and scientific. Ideology is for idiots. It is time to recognize the horror show of fixed-beliefs and dogmas for what they are. The only benign ideologies are the ones that are either dying out or have yet to gain any political power. Once ideologies gain political/state power, they show their true colors. I reiterate that ideology is for idiots. It is a fantasy of the Masters of Dumb. And they use that fantasy to put their puppet strings into your mind, wrapped in the elusive fragmentary glimpse of life called ?´ego??, so that they can assure that you will do, say, and think the things they want you to.

Lovers of Eris, you are free. Why give up your freedom to the slavery of ego? If you are afraid of psychological anarchy, you are truly afraid of life and thus deny yourself the means of freedom. There is no law.

(Aftermath 47th, 3169 / December 5th, 2003)

[B23.77]

Many of the spiritual masters in the world talk about annahilation of the ego.  The ego is the self, esp. as contrasted with other selves or the world.  If there is no ego then who I am is actually the universe... perhaps.  A book about the left hand path: Aghora reads that all beings have egos, which might or might not be true.  He also says that eating feces out of a monkey's ass is akin to dinner at the Ritz.  Ego magic can also be used for liberation, not just dominance and enslavement.  Ego is the will to be different than all these blokes.  To not necessarily follow master Sai Baba like my father does or smoke crack like some people do.  Or is the family and friends and objects of this life just puppet sheep followers of me, who might or might not be some kind of messiah?  They only exist because I do?  Are you your own person, so to speak?  Sometimes it seems that way, but there is a lot of deception in the world.  A fnord-load of bullshit makes truth a dubious affair.  Are you even able to think for yourselves?  Am I the God of all of this?  How do I know that you are not all just a figment of my imagination?  I think it's wise and best that I don't think that I'm messiah or the center of the universe.  I do think you should all change to a solar and cannibis powered civilization, but I'm not the only one... maybe, maybe.  Meanwhile, "Bob" Dobbs for messiah in 2004!

[Trollax]

Interestingly enough, the existentialists believe that there is only one mind, the conscious preconscious and unconscious are all stratified divisions we are saddled with by society and trick us into theinking that we can repress and bury unwanted events. R. D. Laing wrote a book called the divided self, about dissociateive mental disorders and said that they arise from an unwillingness to integrate the events of one's life into a whole... (i.e. continually dividing freedom from facticity) which results in schizophrenia multiple personalities persecution complexes and paranoia.

Neitzsche called the ego's mandate 'Will to truth' and said that it was the cause of all suffering in the world, that helpless before the will of truth we are bent and twisted in horrible ways to the whim of a frightened child, but once again that child is us, torturing ourselves...

Personally (if there even is an ego) I tend to look on it as a survival instinct, nothing more nothing less, a survival instinct that thanks to our humongously complex society is left to run rampant unless someone consciously steps in and makes a change. but if there is no ego, then even survival instinct is a myth. And once more we have one of the universe's never ending mysteries.

[B23.77]

If ego is equivilant to survival instinct, then maybe, just maybe, non-ego is equivilant to death.  Judging by experience it is death, but my psyche was not chemically balanced back then.  I was on the teeter-totter of amphetamines.  There is no will to truth in this psyche.  There is no quest, besides a few wonderings.  There is only pure truth of the living dead.  The ego and the non-ego.  Perfect balance.  What 'r' ya gonna do about it?  Christen me?   *Shudders*  because they just might.

[B23.77]

Oh wait!  Mu-tan's the mu-ssiah now.  Phew!

[Lord_Caramac]

Oh, by the way, there's a Metallica-styled truetype font called "Pastor of Muppets"... I find that name rather funny.

[B23.77]

If ego is equivilant to survival instinct, then maybe, just maybe, non-ego is equivilant to death.  Judging by experience it is death, but my psyche was not chemically balanced back then.  I was on the teeter-totter of amphetamines.

I was just on a bad trip.  I don't think non-ego is the same as death and I don't think of ego as just a survival instinct unless one is contrasting with death.  Non-ego is just non-contrast with the world/universe.  Maybe reality is a paradox of egos and non-ego.  I mean there are differences.  A rainbow is one but has contrast between the colors.

[Cthyga]

This person would love to attain that blessed state of egolessness. It has been the goal of this person for quite some time...

...but somehow I can't...

And thinking "I wan't to" only worsens the problem. This person would love to find the way out("GET OUT") of this trap...

..sometimes it seems as if the door is there..reachable... all that has to be done is..

I have to open it.. DUH!

Cthyga
--
running in circles and trying to byte his arse