Common steps and sub-activities
Questioning and doubting all existing beliefs
In the section on memory I have described first of all what memory holds – the learnt function and the database of facts - and then gone into a little more detail about the types of things we hold in memory – Memory – the types of model in memory and Memory and systems and consequently just how many systems we attempt to learn. I have also provided a very simple explanation of how we use the database of facts – Memory – traversing the database of facts.
I also go into a little detail about how we form memory – one major factor being the extraordinary impact emotion seems to play in forming memories – Memory and emotion. As an extension of this I also have a look at all the subliminal models we may have in memory that we don’t even realise we have – Memory and subliminal models.
What I hope should come out of all this is that we know nothing.
Our memory does a moderately good job of keeping us alive and fed and warm, occasionally it doesn’t. But on the whole what we know is nothing in the scheme of things – we are – all of us without exception – terribly terribly ‘ignorant’. And it is no use you saying ‘speak for yourself, I have a double first at Oxford for botany’. I would still say exactly the same.
A double first at Oxford tends to mean that you have been able to cram a lot of information from books other people have written into the limited capacity of your memory and regurgitate it during an exam. That is all. I did it too.
It means nothing.
We know nothing; and the ones that read books all the time as opposed to observing what is happening about them know even less. As a little spirit once said to me ‘leaves lie, Rosie, leaves lie’.
So everything we know is a belief system - not the truth, not fact, but a belief system and it gets in the way of spiritual experience in a major way.
This entry is absolutely key, absolutely key.
For more essential background information I urge you to read the section on Belief systems.
Method
I have provided a selection of options for you to choose from as this area is a difficult one to achieve
Method one - Being with children
Method two - Read challenging books
Method three - The guru
A guru or a helper or a mentor can be extremely useful. Gurus can be masters of destruction, especially if they have been through this themselves. They are there to destroy beliefs not replace them, you should come away with an almost empty mind
I would like you to read this again. If the guru tries to implant their own beliefs you have the wrong guru. Be very very wary, there are some nasty people out there whose objective is power over people and money.
I have provided an example of a good guru in the observations. Irina Tweedie’s guru was Bhai Sahib who attacked every belief she had, but replaced it with precisely NOTHING - absolutely ideal……
Method four - Aleister Crowley’s forced change of views
Method five – Erickson’s contradiction
Method six - Lewis Carroll’s forced belief in the ‘illogical’
Method seven - Contradiction
Method eight - The ‘acid test’
This final method I have devised is one I found helpful, it is a way of testing belief systems for their validity. You might find that if you apply these tests you get rid of a vast number of your beliefs – a good start. You can then go back to the previous methods.
How to Know Higher Worlds – Rudolf Steiner
When we are sufficiently matured for these experiences, we receive what is called symbolically the ‘potion of oblivion’. That is, we are initiated into the secret of action uninterrupted by the lower memory.
This is necessary for an initiate, who must always have complete confidence in the immediate present. We must know how to tear down the veils of memory that surround us at every moment of our lives. Otherwise, if I judge today’s experiences by those of yesterday, I become subject to many errors.
This does not mean that we should deny our prior experiences. On the contrary, as far as possible, they should always be present. But initiates have to be able to judge each new experience on its own merits and let it work upon them, untroubled by the past.
Faust part two – Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Ah, now the learned man begins to preach
What you can’t touch is quite beyond your reach
What you can’t grasp does not exist for you
What you can’t calculate cannot be true
What you can’t weigh cannot have any weight
A coin you have not minted must be counterfeit
Observations
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- 101 Zen stones - Your light may go out
- A young boy - Questioning and doubting one’s existence
- Al-Ghazzali - The Alchemy of Happiness - 05 On what prevents spiritual experience
- Albertus Magnus – On union with God - Suppressing Memory
- Albertus Magnus – On union with God - The importance of peace and purity of heart
- Ashtavakra Gita - 16 Special Instruction
- Asvaghosha - The Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana - Spiritual interactions
- Asvaghosha - The Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana - The Diamond
- Asvaghosha - The Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana - The ego
- Asvaghosha - The Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana - The problems of the 5 senses
- Asvaghosha - The Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana - The reason for reincarnation
- Asvaghosha - The Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana - What is nirvana
- Aurora consurgens - 11 An allegory of purification by fire
- Balzac, Honoré de - Louis Lambert - 07 Conscious, Subconscious and Higher spirit
- Boehme, Jacob - Aurora - Spiritual path
- Bowie, David - 1984 Loving the Alien
- Buddha - Diamond sutra - 06 Faith
- Burton, Sir Richard - THE KASÎDAH 06 1
- Burton, Sir Richard - THE KASÎDAH 09 2
- Carlyle, Thomas - Sartor Resartus - They only are wise who know that they know nothing
- Comenius - Didactica Magna - Develop reasoning and logic, reduce memorising
- Comenius - Didactica Magna - Promote the value of personal ‘revelation’
- Dao de Jing – Chapter 10
- Descartes, Rene - The unreliability of the 5 senses
- Dr Seuss - Green Eggs and Ham
- Dr Seuss - The Cat in the Hat 01
- Dr Seuss - The Cat in the Hat 02
- Emerson, Ralph Waldo - All history is subjective
- Emerson, Ralph Waldo - Self Reliance - The relations of the soul to the divine spirit
- Epictetus - The Enchiridion - 05
- Epictetus - The Enchiridion - 13
- Epictetus - The Enchiridion - 24, 25, 26, 27, 28
- Experiential avoidance and appraisals of voices as predictors of voice-related distress
- Gladstone, William Ewart - Home schooling - Education policy
- Gurdjieff - And De Hartmann - Songs of Sayyids and Dervishes
- Gurdjieff - Beelzebub's tales to his grandson - Schools and Caesarian section
- Gurdjieff - Beelzebub's tales to his grandson - The Brotherhood
- Gurdjieff - Beelzebub's tales to his grandson - Three brains
- Gurdjieff - De Hartmann Piano Music
- Gurdjieff - De Hartmann: Musiche e Danze Sacre 1di2
- Gurdjieff - Ouspensky learns about leaking energy
- Gurdjieff - Ouspensky learns about the destructive effect of negative emotions
- Gurdjieff - Sacred dance
- Gurdjieff - Sacred dances
- Hesiod - Works and Days - Sloth!
- Huxley, Thomas - Miscellaneous quotes
- Kālāma Sutta, the – Buddha – Doubting all beliefs
- Koestler, Arthur - Janus - The need to question beliefs
- Korean mystic shamanism – Methods – Questioning and doubting all existing beliefs
- Krishnamurti - Be a light unto oneself
- Krishnamurti - The Network of Thought - All human experience and knowledge is within oneself
- Krishnamurti - The Network of Thought - Man has always sought something beyond the physical existence
- Krishnamurti - The Network of Thought - Where there is attachment there is corruption
- Lalla - Knowledge is a garden
- Lane Cooper - Louis Agassiz as a teacher - 00 The children took their own share in the instruction
- Lane Cooper - Louis Agassiz as a teacher – 04 Promoting a broad education and set of interests in pupils at all levels – avoid specialisation, encourage generalisation
- Lane Cooper - Louis Agassiz as a teacher – 06 Learning how to observe properly
- Lane Cooper - Louis Agassiz as a teacher – 07 Avoid book learning, suit the subject to be observed to the interest of the student
- Lane Cooper - Louis Agassiz as a teacher – 08 Vary the objects being studied in order to improve perspective and objectivity
- Lane Cooper - Louis Agassiz as a teacher – 09 Make every mistake into an opportunity for learning
- Lane Cooper - Louis Agassiz as a teacher – 10 - 'Look, look, look'
- Lilly, John - On questioning all beliefs
- Louis Jacolliot - The Bible in India - 04 The Story of Krishna: Preaching the law/disciples/Ardjuna and Sarawasta
- Louis Jacolliot - The Bible in India - The Thoughts and maxims of Krishna
- Meister Eckhart - Selected writings - Question all beliefs
- Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for depressed individuals improves suppression of irrelevant mental-sets
- Monroe, Robert - The Belief system territories
- Mullis, Dr Kary - A first experience of LSD
- Nietzsche - Daybreak - Christianity has succeeded in transforming Eros and Aphrodite into diabolical kobolds
- Nietzsche - Ecce Homo - The concept ‘sin’ invented together with the instrument of torture which goes with it
- Nietzsche - On the Genealogy of Morals - If a temple is to be erected, a temple must be destroyed
- Nietzsche - On the Genealogy of Morals - The exploitation of the sense of 'guilt'
- Nietzsche - On the Genealogy of Morals - The ripest fruit is the sovereign individual
- Nietzsche - On the Genealogy of Morals - Too long the earth has been a madhouse
- Nietzsche - The Anti-Christ - On the commission of sins
- Nietzsche - The Anti-Christ - Religion is a profound discontent with the actual
- Nietzsche - Thus spake Zarathustra - As long as men have existed, man has enjoyed himself too little
- Nietzsche - Thus spake Zarathustra - Those who grave new values on new tables
- Nietzsche - Thus spake Zarathustra - What falleth, that shall one also push
- Nietzsche - Thus spake Zarathustra - When I came unto men, I found them resting on an old infatuation
- Osho - Absolutely Free to Be Funny
- Pauli, Wolfgang - Dream of October 1949
- Plotinus - The Enneads - All the virtues without exception are purifications
- Plotinus - The Enneads - Inner vision as a means of 'purification'
- Professor William James - Louis Agassiz, Words Spoken at the Reception of the American Society of Naturalists [Dec 30, 1896]
- Qu’ran - The Qu'ran alone is to be followed - Surah Al An’am
- Rolle, Richard - Incendium Amoris - On Divine love
- S'RÎMAD BHÂGAVATAM – Canto 11, Chapter 09 – Reducing conflict
- Sahib, Bhai
- Schulz, Charles - The Church is a refuge for flaws in our make-up
- Schwarz, Jack - Extract from It's Not What You Eat But What Eats You
- Shakespeare, William - Hamlet Act 2, Scene 2
- Songs of Flying Dragons – Reducing obligations, Justice and forgiveness
- Songs of Flying Dragons – Worshipping that which is bigger than us all
- St Vincent - Digital Witness
- Stolz von Stolzenberg, Daniel - Viridarium chemicum 1624
- Sumerian poems and lamentations – 16 Penitential Prayer to Every God
- Tarot - 02 Minor Arcana - 08s Learning
- Tarot - 03 Minor Arcana - 07s Redemption [Rebirth]
- The Ceasing of Notions – 01 Pacifying the heart
- The Ceasing of Notions – 02 The eradication of delusions
- The Ceasing of Notions – 03 How does one become a buddha?
- The Ceasing of Notions – 04 Finding the Way
- The Ceasing of Notions – 05 The limiting effect of the 5 senses
- The Ceasing of Notions – 06 Reality
- The Ceasing of Notions – 07 The mind that knows cannot know itself
- The Ceasing of Notions – 08 The Way
- The Ceasing of Notions – 14 Emptiness and The Way
- The Ceasing of Notions – 23 Ego and Rules vs No-Ego and the Way
- The Inner Mental Method of reaching the Heavenly Immortality through Golden Elixir
- The Lotus Sutra - 02 Expedient Means - 2 Desires as the cause of affliction and endless reincarnation
- The Lotus Sutra - 04 Belief and understanding - 1 Charity and the use of similes
- The Means of achieving spiritual experience - Shaivism – 02 Suppressing Memory
- The Means of achieving spiritual experience - Shaivism – 07 The methods of the ‘Bhakta’
- The Merovingian - The Matrix - Cause and effect
- The Sutra of Hui-Neng - There is nothing true anywhere
- Through the Looking Glass - Ch 05 - 1 Wool and Water
- Tolstoy, Leo - Confessions - The need for faith
- Tulsidas - Vinaya Patrika 92
- Wells, H G - Lecture delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, November 20th, 1936
- Wirth, Oswald – 13 Death
- Wirth, Oswald – 18 The Moon
- Wirth, Oswald – 22 The Fool
- Yassawi - 18 from HIKMET 71
- Zhuang Zhu - Qigong puffing and blowing