faith makes blind E-Book

Klaus Pinkas

• Herausgeber: novum publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 185

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Humanity has alienated itself from its own nature and is heading towards the abyss with its eyes wide open. For while Christianity failed to give rationality a place alongside faith and thus to be credible, the Enlightenment failed to place spirituality alongside pure rationality. The result is a Euro-American culture that has no appreciation for nature and suffers from the illusion of the infinity of the world. However, society is more than just the sum of the people currently alive. Only if we honor the intergenerational contract will humanity have a chance of survival in this finite world. Yoga philosophy, with contemplation at its core, offers a way out of this impasse.

Leseprobe

1. a decision with consequences

When I received my doctorate in law at the age of 33, my wife and I were faced with the question of what to do next. I had been studying for a second degree alongside my job - so the evenings I had needed for my studies were now free. We looked in the Vienna University directory for opportunities to do sport, although these were quite limited due to my blindness. We chose horse riding, sailing and yoga. The sailing didn't work out. We came to horse riding later on in Kashmir, but we didn't go there for the riding, but for a yoga course in an Indian ashram.

We were so impressed by a six-month yoga course at university that we decided to embark on this adventure.

We went there by train because we wanted to find out how far India is from Europe. On the streetcar to the station, a woman apparently asked us if we were going to Semmering (a hiking area near Vienna) because of our sporty outfits. And when I said "No, go on", I felt my knees go weak. So much for the mood between courage and worry at the start of our physical and mental adventure, which subsequently helped me to develop an admittedly somewhat unusual view of the world; I describe it in the book. At the end of this text, I discuss my professional career in the Austrian Armed Forces, which would certainly not have developed as interestingly without this start.

I gave up horse riding in the mountains of Kashmir, which I would have loved, after two situations that could almost have led to serious accidents. We stayed with yoga, which we had started in earnest at the university in Vienna and which is also easy to do with blindness, and we continued our training with an Indian guru. It seemed interesting enough to get involved in a culture in which blind people had become and could perhaps still become seers. In the Bible, blind people appear mainly as beggars and supplicants. Later on, I found out that blindness can even be a certain advantage for the art of yoga. In the recursive vision that yoga is about, subject and object are identical; both are the brain.

In the Bhagavad Gita, one of the fundamental books on yoga philosophy, the king, who is the recipient of the message, is blind, suggesting a close relationship between yoga and blindness. The king is told of the spiritual process experienced by his commander in the brief moment before the battle begins. His charioteer is an incarnated deity who explains the yoga system to him. Yoga arises from the cooperation of consciousness and its rationality with the contents that normally rest in the unconscious. It is therefore the combination of philosophy and religion. When concrete religion is not limited to indoctrination, it listens to the language of mysticism, in which what is usually unconscious opens up to consciousness. Yoga thus opens up the broad spectrum of the mind and promotes the development of wisdom.

The Western way of thinking that I was introduced to through my studies and the spirituality that I discovered as an altar boy in the Catholic Church and perfected with yoga are essential factors in my understanding of social processes.

2. the five layers of consciousness

The most important answer that yoga aspirants need to find relates to the question of who they are. This introduction may come as a surprise; however, the astonishment may be put into perspective if one places the method of the Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl alongside it, "searching for the meaning of one's life". To help the aspirant do this, yoga theory shows him or her five layers of consciousness, which the aspirant can gain insight into with some practice.

The first layer is the physical body; the physical exercises that are usually known as yoga in the West are only one aspect of a cognitive technique based on this philosophy in its country of origin, India. People have a body and it is good if they can find their way around it as well as possible. Turning to the body and yoga training not only strengthens the body, but is also intended to enable deep relaxation of the muscles and internal organs and thus create peace of mind. The health benefits are essentially based on the direct prevention of stress and the effects caused by unhealthy stress prevention such as alcohol, nicotine, drugs and escaping into work. The exercises also serve to acquire the ability to adopt a suitable sitting posture for meditation for an appropriate period of time. You can also lie down to practice relaxation, but the body is more likely to go to sleep than the mind to meditate.

Peace of mind is important for any progress on the path. Just as only a calm surface of a lake allows us to see into its depths, such calmness also offers insights into the natural navigation system of the human being. Through human education, the child is cultivated; through the yoga technique, the adult can reawaken his "primal nature", which rests in the unconscious, so that culture and nature can work together in him without contradiction. The clear view through the surface, which eliminates the manifestations of the mind such as knowledge, memory, imagination and fantasy, opens up the view of the original being.

At its core, the yoga technique is empirical; you become an observer of your inner processes. Until meditation releases the inner view of the "primal nature", much more banal thoughts come to mind - such as whether you have locked the door at home or turned off the light, whether you should write a letter, and so on. The important thing is not to think the thoughts and carry them on, but simply to perceive them. And to stay in the mode of observation. If you know the observer mode from everyday life, this skill helps you in meditation; if you learn it in meditation, it helps you in everyday life.

On the second stage of the yoga path, the aspirant focuses on their energy. He senses whether he is strong or weak, full of energy or exhausted; but he also senses how much energy his various emotions are endowed with. The means to intervene in his energy balance is the breathing technique, which plays a very important role. The nervous system, which is also the carrier of energy information, exists in two forms:

The somatic nervous system is subject to the will; the autonomic nervous system is normally controlled involuntarily. Only with the breath and two specific expressions (specific praying and singing) can a person influence the autonomic nervous system. Many yoga schools work with breathing exercises, some focus on praying and singing. The aim is to listen to the voice of the inner self, not to indoctrinate it. The words or phrases used for this are mantras, which are called "mind-stoppers" and serve this purpose.

The third is the thinking layer; if the aspirant enters this layer, he becomes aware of his consciousness. He has practiced by paying attention to the body and breathing; now comes the observation of the mental functions. Yoga theory summarizes them as the "fourfold inner organ", which consists of the functions of consciousness, thinking and cognition as well as ego-consciousness. By activating his own ego-consciousness, the yogi also gains social intelligence. Democracy needs independent people who focus on the community; autocracy is structurally made up of psychologically dependent people who have fallen for an egoist. Often there are also mixed systems; in this case, people follow the so-called cyclist system by hunching upwards and stepping downwards ("He who does not learn to obey does not learn to command").

In India, there is probably nothing that does not exist - there are certainly countless spiritual movements. There are also spiritual movements that focus on the dulling of consciousness; the yoga we are talking about here recommends mindfulness. The Indian yogi Swami Vivekananda (1863 to 1902), who was the first to bring yoga to the West, put it like this: "Wake up and stand up and realize the infinite powers that are within you".

For children, the state of attention is natural; they also enjoy learning - but sometimes this stops when they start school. But that's down to the school. If adults are lucky enough to be involved in shaping their lives, they will also choose to live an interesting life, in which case alert awareness will be part of their lives. On the other hand, they can also allow themselves to drift into a dull consciousness. Yoga is a culturally developed, spiritually active way of life that can be taught and learned and that opens up additional opportunities for decision-making.

Self-confidence is expressed as an aspect of consciousness. If you consider how often even physically healthy people's self-confidence swings into the side zones of arrogance or a feeling of inferiority, it's no wonder when it comes to physical deficits. Overconfidence and an overcompensated sense of inferiority are important players in private and political tragedies.

In 1940, the year I was born, social Darwinism was still in full bloom. Charles Darwin took a major step forward by developing the theory of evolution. Unfortunately, however, he named selection as the most important criterion for the process of evolution; he obviously did not realize that something must have already existed and therefore come into being before it could be selected.

It was only 150 years later that Joachim Bauer pointed out this lack of representation in his book "The Cooperative Gene". Social Darwinism developed from Darwin's mistake. This is the doctrine according to which all life is a struggle for survival. National Socialism elevated this to a state doctrine and immediately claimed the right to destroy anything it deemed unsuitable - including physical and mental disabilities.

Darwin himself was not a "Social Darwinist" in terms of his view of humanity; it was only modern-day brain research that presented cooperation and creativity as the primary evolutionary factors and showed that selection would only have a secondary effect. Following the idea of Social Darwinism, National Socialism elevated competition, which ultimately led to its own failure, to the status of a benchmark. Today, this idea is still the godmother of the economic structure from which the human habitat suffers for the time being. According to the law of nature that Darwin actually meant, this behavior is inappropriate for humans and certainly not optimal.

Even though my genetic blindness only became apparent after this time, the social Darwinist attitude still had some after-effects. This can cause difficulties for self-confidence. I experienced my increasing blindness not only as painful, but also as embarrassing. I reacted to the threat of blindness by repressing it; that does little good and is tedious. In chapter 8, I write about what happens when repression becomes a social attitude. Today, society ticks differently; the ideas of integration and inclusion reduce the social pressure on the sick and disabled and the self-image is no longer disturbed by a false external image.

At a time when there is scarcity and not enough food for everyone, competitive thinking will be unavoidable. And if selection thinking, which places struggle at the center, is dominant, hardship becomes permanent. The socially dominant consciousness and the individual consciousness of the majority in society can be the same or different; they only converge over time.

In a society in which a culture of cooperation prevails, there is less danger of narrowness - givers and takers win. In the development of spectacles, social Darwinists saw the danger that people with eye damage could also reproduce. For those who focus on cooperation, the development of spectacle grinding sets the stage for the development of micro- and telescopy and thus a cultural gain. Peter Mitterhofer also developed the typewriter for his blind friend. This invention did not help him too much - he could only write, but not read what he had written. Overall, however, it was a cultural gain. The ancient Greeks were obviously so familiar with this idea that they even depicted this mode mythically. The invention of the wheel was therefore due to the paralyzed demigod Pelops, in order to make him a wheelchair. In addition to war, which is supposed to be the father of all things, care is also the mother of many things.

The fourth layer of consciousness is what the yogis call the function that stands for knowledge. While knowledge is static, cognition as the acquisition of knowledge is also dynamic - you have knowledge, you gain knowledge; knowledge without wise implementation is not worth much. In order to be successful in the world of ideas, it is good to quiet the mind for a while; at this level, knowledge from the outer world and knowledge from the inner vision flow together and wisdom develops. The Prophet Muhammad described the scientists of his time as "donkeys laden with books". However, the religion that he initialized also solidified. German literature brings the following thought to the subject: What one has inherited, one must also acquire in order to possess it."

Creativity, which goes beyond this, is based on good perception and is dependent on good processing. To fulfill both functions, yoga brings meditation into play, which involves the practice of both concentration and relaxation. The alternation of different states of tension leads to creative moments that can generate new ideas.

Thinking differs from meditating in that the former is rationally controlled step by step; the meditator can specify a topic, but leaves the process to intuitive development. You can meditate - i.e. think deeply - about anything.

Yoga is a mind training through mindfulness. My yoga school recommends concentrating on certain parts of the body; one of these points is the center of the forehead between the eyebrows above the root of the nose. If a bright spot appears at the point of concentration, you have succeeded. At first, the phenomenon appears as a diffuse bright spot; after further practice, it becomes a very small shining spot.

The forehead point and the other physical concentration points relate to the central nervous system; one point is located in the crown of the head and five others along the spine. The heart as a meditation point is also important in the Eastern Church.

There are also states of consciousness in which both the waking state and the relaxed sleep state are present at the same time. This state often occurs spontaneously when waking up and falling asleep and is conducive to solving problems. Meditation is a state of mind in which the conscious mind opens up to the unconscious. This technique involves the special ability to perceive the impulses and ideas that come from the unconscious without immediately burdening them with thoughts. Meditation is good when the active brain functions are brought to rest and only the impulses that the brain emits are observed. The comparison between old knowledge and gained experience will take place in the subsequent normal consciousness anyway.

Creativity is also fostered when one engages with other cultures as unprejudiced as possible, for example with the history of philosophy and religion as well as with the ways of life of other peoples. Yoga offers such a different way of understanding and thinking that can arouse the curiosity of an alert European. The philosophy of yoga extends far into social issues; the practice of yoga, however, begins with the care of one's own body, which is important to many people. The path takes some effort, but through well-being and some early gains in knowledge, the effort can pay off and motivate you to continue. It is probably also the effort involved in yoga that makes it a minority culture in India. It is easier to believe in a god, of which there are many in India.

Yogis refer to the fifth level of consciousness as the state of bliss. This state can also occur spontaneously; if it is permanent, the yogis call it enlightenment. This quality is not easy to come by; in India, where this possibility is considered to be expected by the culture, such people are always to be found; Mahatma Gandhi was one of these special ones in whom something like divinity was to be seen.

Outside of this culture, Christ is someone in whom his followers "saw" divinity. Medieval mystics such as Hildegard von Bingen and Meister Eckhart developed a thesis that would make this phenomenon understandable: The human soul is a spark from the omnipotence referred to as God. The term "AUM" used in yoga and Buddhism for GOD means "everything" and thus avoids a narrow concept of God. If you are able to imagine the sum of information, energy and matter, you have a broad concept of God and can accept or leave behind all narrower concepts.

Although concepts of God arise not only as reflections from encounters with other people, but also through encounters with animate and inanimate nature, Christianity did not develop a sensitive relationship with the world. The field normally occupied by natural religions was empty; the Enlightenment, which knew how to satisfy short-term interests, found a free playground.

When the realization of the unity of the cosmos and the world as well as of animate and inanimate nature emerged in the Orient in the centuries before the turn of time, science and religion were not yet separate; this spiritual progress was incorporated into culture as a one-god belief. However, this cultural flight of fancy is easier to continue as a formula than in its real meaning. Thus, both in the Near East and in the West, this quality has only survived as a religious belief; Western science has not allowed itself to be restricted by this requirement and has engaged in separate sciences and made enormous progress without, however, living up to a qualified claim. In the natural sciences, nature has only recently begun to be understood as a unity, namely since the various current ecological crises; in the human sciences, holistic thinking began with Sigmund Freud's perception of the unconscious. With yoga, at least a small part of society has made an effort to see the whole and its parts as a connected whole.

Although not exclusive, some people's souls are not completely independent of cultural guidelines and are so developed that you can see their connection to the whole; because they have experienced this bliss, they are also strong in life. This state of mind reflects a positive image of humanity. It brought the medieval mystic Meister Eckhart personally before the Inquisition and has not arrived in Europe; it could amount to pantheism. If one does not go so far as to accept the cosmos as the body of God, but sticks to the Christian concept of God, then more respect for and more love of nature would also prove its worth.

Enlightenment or being awakened - terms used in yoga or Buddhism - refer to an optimal state of consciousness that can occur in deep meditation and continues to have an effect on daily life. The bliss experienced in such meditation is said to correspond to the blissful feeling of a female orgasm. Yogis live in a body that is no different from the bodies of other people; they differ in their consciousness.

The optimization of brain functions is probably based on a high quality of information processing. Enlightenment is obviously not easy to achieve; I don't know why nature makes it so difficult for people to reach this level of culture; after all, other high levels of culture such as science and art don't come easily either. So much for the five layers of consciousness.

3. yoga as the classical enlightenment of India

Yoga takes both rationality and sensitivity very seriously; this results in the recommendation to be critical. This recommendation applies particularly to the aspect of enlightenment and to those who claim to be enlightened. We know of a Tibetan and an Indian guru who had great success in the West and eventually fell victim to the gullibility of their followers; they became arrogant. This possibility was already mentioned 2500 years ago in the first manual of yoga teachings. On the other hand, we in the Western world can also be critical of our own culture, which threatens to lead us into luxury-induced ecocide (destruction of the living space). In Europe and America, the inner path to happiness is not really developed and is only attempted in a rudimentary way; rather, people try to realize their happiness in the outer world. The result of this is the state of the current world, in which materialism behaves towards matter like cannibalism towards man.

Yoga is the classical enlightenment that originated two and a half thousand years ago in India, when it was an advanced civilization; yoga promotes the development of man's "primal nature". Christianity took the path of overcoming human nature and replacing it with Christian culture. With the introduction of original sin, it discriminated against people in order to have an argument to lead them in an authoritarian manner. This method of domination was also used against the Jews by holding the murder of Christ against them. At best, you can run a state in this way today, but not a soccer club.

Despite a strong intervention by the Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who considered human nature to be the basis for the education of children, the attitude of the church, which considered its culture to be the basis of education, remained dominant for a long time and still has an impact.

Although the theory of original sin refers to the Jewish creation story, it is based on a speculation that does not exist in Judaism. It was initialized by the apostle Paul and further developed by the church father Augustine; Paul was the only apostle who had not known Christ personally. In order to increase the value of Christ, he placed the value of people below their quality. Original sin remained hidden in the Latin language for a long time and only entered the German-speaking world in the twelfth century.