And Man Created God in His Image and Likeness

Human psychology is one of the most baffling, perplexing, amazing and least explored, even less understood realm of the whole of Creation. It is the source of all art, mystery, myth, symbolism, ritual and everything divine. Indeed, human psyche gave rise to such profound mysteries that have proven to be utterly and completely incomprehensible to this other level of human mind - the more approachable and transparent – intellect or rationale. Human beings today, generally, divide themselves in believers and non-believers. The believers hold dear the archaic dogmas of the past and zealously believe, while the non-believers disregard all the religious non-sense and refuse to believe any more. All of them, believers and non-believers alike, collectively don’t understand, nor do they realize.

They don’t understand, because they look at it from the wrong perspective, which, of course, provides no meaningful view. Leaving believers aside, since they don’t even try to understand, the non-believers, likewise, simply disregard, without really trying to understand either. And to understand, one has to look at religion, myth and symbolism through the aspects of human psychology. To enliven oneself in the minds of those ancient humans and see the way they saw the world, the way they came to interpret it, the way psychology works in all the various manifestation of its intrinsic mechanisms, many of which stem from our instincts, embedded in our behavioral, as well as perceptional frames. Also, there are the practical, social layers of religion that were intentionally built-in, through history, so to provide a moral frame for society, as well as a structural one. If one learns to think in this way and analyzes religion in these respects, gradually, revelation enlightens one’s mind and leaves them in awe in front of the simplicity of the profound. The topic is quite voluminous and quite intriguing too, I am discussing a good deal of it in my book, for me some of these conclusions are truly staggering for a first-time realization, considering that so millions and billions of people don’t really realize it in this way, believers or atheists alike. Later the stunned-effect settles down and ferments into wisdom. Pieces of realization that build up and expand the horizons of awareness and consciousness, as much as burdened with “new age” blink those terms may be, I am using them for what they actually designate. The title of this post says a lot, but there is even more behind it. You see, it is not a matter of whether “God exists or does not exist”, it is a matter of, I’m not really sure how to express it, a matter of psychological adultness, because a great deal of the core motifs of major religions is the Parent element, and not only in religions alive today, but also in those that were forgotten.

On the most superficial level, religion is a form of government that, as all primitive forms of governments, puts “ordinary” people in the position of obedience (thus exploitation) without the right to question or disprove and with no option not to follow, otherwise will be outcast from society. In the past, religion served well as a social glue, since people were quite ignorant and uneducated anyway. Today, it mostly serves as a social segregator and a justification for hatred and discrimination. My God is not your God, your God is not My god, The gods are not your God and my God is your god, but not the God of your Dog. And so on outrageous arguments going on and on, forever. Until, people finally begin to realize. This may never happen, it may happen after thousands of years more, it may happen in a few centuries or in a few decades. Who knows what the unfolded, inexistent future holds in its state of infinite quantum potential.

Anyway, another year, another row of profitable religious celebrations filling the medium with much exaggeration and collective emotion. Now is Hajj time. Muslims from all over the world gear up for this year’s great Mecca stampede, to see the Space Rock, round it a few times in a cleansing ritual of purification from all the sins that have accumulated during the year, throw some earthly stone matter at a Devil’s dummy and ride a new, state of the art and technology Mecca train. Ah, it is the most mysterious thing when religion and technology join hands in unison. Such an awe. Stumbled upon a news article about it earlier today and was very amused by the colorful comments different readers had left below it. About the Hajj and the Mecca train. One reader says:

“Interesting that the train for religious pilgrims was made in an officially atheistic country!!”

Indeed, considering that women may have worked on it too, it is a great sin for hard-liner Muslim men to touch a non-family woman, you know, even indirectly, especially during the Hajj. Allah will condemn them to burn in hell, those disgusting and perverse women touchers. Another reader comments:

“No, Saudi have no army, they pay US to fight their war, and you will to keep oil following, but why not just raise oil prices ans stick it to the American people, George W. Bush in his book the Decision.”

I’m not sure to which comment this not quite coherent reply responds to, but it seemed interesting. Now I saw that there are some collapsed comments, you have to press the little plus sign to see them.

“Let them permit non-Muslims into Mecca and Medina. Let Saudi Arabia permit building of churches and other religion based prayer places just as we permit theirs! One way street is not acceptable for long!”

“What's the over/under on how soon some Muslim militant will blow up this train? I'd say one week.”

“No, it will be a Christian militant. They are real dangerous and just as plentiful as the Muslim variety. Haven't you heard?”

“And in the US, depression medication advertisements on the rise, in a recession many feel hopeless in finding a job and drug companies want to profit on that. They want a train, they get it. Here’s always a fist fight between the Rep and Democrats, tell he frustrated nation, I know better, but they are all for their self interest and those who paid for their campain”

This one is more like a monologue complaint out of desperation, completely out of topic and out of corporate news channels and popular talk shows as well. We feel sincere solidarity with you, frustrated nation! We all are. Everything is wrong in this world, everywhere. We are in the wrong world, I tell you! Lol, back to the comments.

“Only the men get to ride inside.. the women are strapped to the top like luggage.. so as not to offend the morality police....”

Another reader replies to the above comment:

“Wow, Ignorence is a disease with an optional cure. You need to get cured my dear.”

And a reply to the reply from yet another reader follows:

“Sweeping the realities and problems under stinking carpets are another kind of disease requiring treatment!!”

The debate continues on furiously:

“Just because there are so many Muslims in the world means that there are a lot more ignorant people in the world!!!!”

“That is true for all religions !”

“only stupid people believe in any thing as stupid as religion.”

What did I told ya. They’re all stupid.

“You people do know that all there doing is Worshiping a Asteroid.right?”

“With all of them facing each other's butts, they could be worshipping a hemorrhoid!”

“How is this any more strange than Christians making pilgrimages to various churches built to house the preserved remains of body parts of long dead saints?”

“Another instance of China beating the U.S. in competition for relatively new technology.”

“Yeah, all the U.S. can do is give them the most technologically advanced weaponry on the planet. We suck.”

“Non-Muslims are not permitted even in roads leave alone to the "holy" place!”

Aah, now isn’t this such a dreadful discrimination. Non-muslims must ride on camels through the desert, if they don’t have an off-road vehicle.

“Why don't they just take a flying carpet ?”

Now that’s the solution!

“R.B. continue with that belief at the risk of your enternal soul. There is only one was to true salvation and eternal life; Maximus speaks the truth. Just curious. what is your "religion" anyway?”

Yeah, the usual question does the job in friend-making and foe-telling. Here is the link to the article with all the comments.

Questionnaire:

Basic questions.

What is your race: Homo Sapiens

Where are you from: Earth

What is your religion: God doesn’t have religious preferences, don’t be ridiculous, only humans do! LoL

End

P.S. It is interesting to note, in regard to the alleged healing properties of religious artifacts, usually bodily remains of death saints or icons, that the "miracle" effect does occur. However, it is not the bones themselves that create it, but the channeled collective believe that boosts and amplifies the individual self-suggestion. This is the same as the Placebo effect. The mind-power of the believer heals the body through the power of suggestion. It is quite an interesting effect, very little explored and acknowledged by contemporary science. Probably because pharmaceutical industries doesn't want people to heal themselves, 'cause they'll be out of business.

These potentials of the mind are very real, as well as telepathy-related and similar shrouded in mystery abilities of the mind. It is just that the way these things work and occur is different than what the movie and entertainment industry had come to present them as. For instance, when you experience "telepathy" you don't actuallty read a mind like a text book, but rather you tune into certain intuitivie suggestions pointing to certain aspects, mindsets, tendencies related to a certain person, usually a person that you know. Something related to frequencies again, that we don't really understand yet.


Finally, back to speaking of poorly understood religion and religious fanaticism, here is an interesting video to see:

Title: Jesus Camp (2006)




Uhum, religion can be quite a disturbing ideology. Just as any rationality-deprived ideology. This is another problem in our postmodern world that needs to be properly addressed and resolved in the future. Yeah, let's just fix it then. Look who's talking of fasting (clip above).

Marketing, Psychology, Politics, Manipulation and Consumerism. Enlighten Your Unconsciousness To the New Trends

Quite an insightful documentary on how theory of psychoanalysis was adopted by corporations to create the modern consumer society. The shift from products that you need, to products that you simply desire. Creating the need for products, rather than responding to a need with a product. The workings of the unconsciousness brilliantly utilized in mass marketing. Group behavior, psychology of the crowd, social engineering and commercial manipulation. It's like McDonald's former "Super size", they observed that people felt guilty buying twice the same portion, but this guilt was bypassed if the portion was enlarged. Managing the irrational judgement of the masses and guiding it to consume.

Channeling and shaping people's opinion, views and even the way they think. The birth of PR and lobbyism in modern society. Wow, stunning.

Can the individual ever be truly free? It seems that true freedom is found only outside the crowd.

And what about Equality? Are individuals truly equal or is it just a democratic bullshit? To start with, individuals can have very different starts in life. Your parents may be rich and I may be born an orphant. But, what if two individuals have the same start in life? Say two persons from two average middle-class families. The one is keen to learn, goes in university and graduates, then works and begins to make good money. And the other is lazy, not interested in studying, but just trashes around and does nothing meaningful. Can these two individuals truly be thought of as equal? Well, no, they cannot be equal. People are not equal, because they have different levels of motivation. Thus, social equality is just as an empty concept as freedom of the masses is. 
Life circumstances and family environment can make a great difference between individuals and the opportunities they may have in life, but in the end it is about motivation. About how far you want to go, in your life, in your character, in your knowledge.

However, still every individual has a right of dignity, of pursuing his or her ideals, freedom of speach and so on. And, of course, an individual can always consciously choose a lifestyle of seclusion and self-sufficiency like a hippie, not aspiring to career or making money or whatever, just enjoying the beauty of nature without bothering about nothing much and without complaining either.

However that, the biggest question of all is, can society function in any other way after all or is this the only way for things to be? (See documentaries below). Or may be the last question is born out of a lack of imagination?! Can human civilization follow any other path of development than the one it currently is on? Is there any other way and most importantly, even if there is, how can it be achieved? Is it possible? A world without military technology, without different Gods, without exploitation, a world of higher intelligence and clearer reason

Documentary title: Century of the Self.

(I cannot agree with the title though, by "Self" they mean "Ego-self").

The documentary follows and analyzes business, social and political developments in the 20th Century and the intimate entanglement of those three.

Episode 1 - Happiness Machines 1 of 6

YOU are part of "the masses", lol. Seriously.

"Understand, Neo, that most of these people are not ready to be unplugged, and many of them are so inert, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it."

Morpheus

Episode 2 - The Engineering of Consent 1 of 6

Although I do agree with the psychoanalytic notion that you can change people (to the better) by expanding their understanding. However, something went very wrong down the line with this enlightened ideal. And that was its use for social engineering and consumerism. Psychoanalysis should be practiced the Jungian way and exclude psychiatry from its methods. I think the methodology is wrong, very. But hey, how do you establish the right way to do it without going through the wrong ones first?! Lol. 

First it was "Repress the primal emotions", then it was "Free the primal emotions", now it is Be freely repressed or repressedly free or something in between with or without emotions, aah, forget it, just go to a pharmacy near you and by yourself a pack of Prozac - it's good for you and it's good for the business, thus everyone is happy and feeling good.

Now I finally understand why Freud gained more popularity than Jung, when the ideas of the latter were far more profound and potentially life-altering on the self-realization level. Because Freud's ideas were commercially applicable for manipulation of the masses, while Jung's were meant to truly bring deeper understanding and psychological clarity to the individual. And if I create a, say, popular entertainment blog, it will have far more hits than this one.

Oh well, people just don't like to think, left aside they are being taught not to. Lol. Everything in this world is about making money and nothing more, nothing less. Making money at any cost

Episode 3 - There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads: He Must Be Destroyed

Ah, experimental psychology. Experimenting with people and society. Now isn't that cool.

- Hey, what's your job?

- Oh, I'm a radical psychologist.

Speaking of creating trends and commercial persuasion, do you remember this Purple initiative of Yahoo!, I'm not sure when it was, two ot three years ago, when they promoted on their website that that year was "Purple year" or something like this and that everyone should have something purple, whether your sweater, or dress, socks or bike or etc. Yeah.

I just didn't understood why they encouraged people to express their ugliest emotions like aggression and hate? I mean, where is the liberation in this, without reaching to the source of these emotions, there is no realization, but only primal release of pressure?!

I guess people were pondering their new-found freedoms of public expression of their true opinion and discontents. See, one of the many negative effects of the opression of the Church, it makes people pervert and totally lacking of self-control when confronted with freedom.

And I thought the methodology of the Freudians was wrong, lol, just see all those people packed in a room screaming and cursing like crazy, so brutal. By the way, these therapeutic methods weren't invented by those radical psychologists. For instance, Aleister Crowley is known to have practiced similar with his disciples.

Anyway, I thought that the hippie movement was a natural development of sub-culture societies in USA and, this documentary suggests that it was actually driven by psychological circles?! And I also thought that the hippie movement changed the conventions of fashion, and it turns out that they didn't, Marketing did! Ah, the ignorance.

The business was thinking hard "How to appeal to this new breed of *individuals*, how to tap them in. Of course, this is it - offer them product variety!" Ingenious. A.k.a 1960s 
- Hey, you are so individualistic with this pink ipod of yours.

So, marketing is strongly connected with social research and statistics (Duh) exploring the different lifestyles of people and stereotypes that assemble in groups. "Yo, let's target that *group* with our new product line".

I long suspected there is no true individualism, lol, it's because human psyche doesn't has infinite combinations, just like our DNA. It turns out that, the concept that "Everyone is a unique person" is again a marketing concept and is by no means true. Noone is unique, everyone falls into types, lifestyles and groups. What a bleep.

Episode 4 - Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering



So, is the business flexibly adapting to new trends in society or is it creating them? Remains unclear. It is both ways around, I guess.

You can also find the documentary series here and watch it via Google video.


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P.S. Dear Reader, if you happen to find yourself overwhelmed by too much heavy to digest information, please, get a grip on yourself. You have the tools to build yourself consciously and stir your life into whatever desired direction, just take it easy, be focused, perseverant and think. And remember:

"There is no realization without pain" 

C.G.Jung 

A commemoration to Carl Gustav Jung – The unrecognized spiritual guru of the last century

Carl Gustav Jung, born on 26^th July , 1875 in the small Swiss village of Kessewil, is the pupil who surpasses his master. And later in his life, Jung descends so profoundly deep to the very edge of human soul, plunging into the collective realm beyond the individual mind. A realm that he notices in the form of common symbols used by peoples worldwide, collective intuitive perceptions that all people share as a part of this collective psychological frame that serves as a foundation for the individual mind. In his life Carl Jung traveled the world, wrote a considerable volume of books and accumulated empirical experience with his practice as clinical psychoanalitician, as well as his personal experiences of plunging deep into the unconscious and hidden layers of his mind.

Jung's unique approach to psychology has been influential in countercultural movements in Europe, the United States and elsewhere since the 1960s. He emphasized understanding the psyche through exploring the worlds of dreams, art, mythology, world religion and philosophy. Although he was a theoretical psychologist and practicing clinician, much of his life's work was spent exploring other realms, including Eastern and Western philosophy, alchemy, astrology, sociology, as well as literature and the arts. His most notable ideas include the concept of archetypes, the collective unconscious and synchronicity.

Jung emphasized the importance of balance and harmony. He cautioned that modern people rely too heavily on science and logic and world societies would benefit much from integrating spirituality and appreciating the unconscious realms.

“Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.”
(A citation about observing and analyzing yourself)

Until the very end of his life, Jung preached in lectures, articles, books and documentaries the need for realization and integration of the unconscious part of our personality and self. He emphasized on the deepening psychological controversies and tension that accumulates in the modern human, who lives in an externally advancing world and yet achieving little to no conscious mental advancement to balance and harmonize humanity on the whole. And that is why the world is in this grotesque shape today, this mental primitiveness that is the average standard for the contemporary individual – slave to delusions, mental passivity, religious and political ideologies.. A patient and later on close friend until his death in 1961, Marie-Louise von Franz, shares one of his last confessions saying to her one day with grim and heavy feeling that he “..was not able to open people`s eyes, so that they wake up from the dream of this insanity.”. And indeed, he lived through both world wars and grieved helpless and unheard amids the confusion that permanently settled in the world since then.

Today Jung exists in the shadow of his early-age teacher and mentor Sigmund Freud, being largely not understood and his profound revelations about the nature of human soul ignored into the dusty pages of books. He lived before his time and humanity was not ready yet for such a profound step in their spiritual evolution.

"As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being. There is no coming to consciousness without emotional pain."

There are no angels and demons in the skies above, those images are impressions of man himself. We behave more like demons driven by our primitive emotions, but we have the potential to transform into angels a.k.a a more mentally advanced and heightened beings.

"The darkness which clings to every personality is the door into
the unconscious and the gateway of dreams, from which those two twilight
figures, the shadow and the anima, step into our nightly visions or, remaining
invisible, take possession of our ego-consciousness."
Carl G. Jung


Carl Jung, first row on the right, and Freud in the middle


Matter of Heart - An archive video material about C.G.Jung through the eyes of all those people who knew him in person.