I decided to write an article on the topic of philosophy and meditation. Some people may prefer articles to videos :).
I will try to do a smaller series on this topic.
Note: some information in this article needs to be supplemented in the video for proper understanding.
What is the purpose of philosophy?
While in the past, historical records show that there was such an interest in meditation and meditation techniques that the know-how for meditation and meditation techniques was not publicly available and was only available to the "initiated", today, on the contrary, the opposite problem is that hardly anyone is interested in them.
Nowadays, people have perhaps the lowest interest in philosophy in the history of the planet, which is not good. Even the few people who are interested in philosophy, in the vast majority of cases, end up in toxic forms of spirituality such as churches, religions, sects, and misguided forms of esotericism. A misguided form of esotericism is even worse than having no interest in philosophy at all.
Christianity
We should not underestimate the enormous boom of Pentecostal Christianity today, all over the planet. To a certain extent, it is possible to understand people who succumb to Pentecostal Christianity's sectarianism. Believers are bored by the boring and lukewarm standard church; they are looking for deeper spirituality, excitement, experiences, and altered states of consciousness.
And just as a matter of interest, I was absolutely shocked by how ambitious and successful Pentecostal Christians are, even in a strongly rationalist and atheistic state like the Netherlands. You won't believe it, but in a medium-sized Dutch city, a Pentecostal sect not only has great success but even runs its own primary school, where they indoctrinate four-year-old children with religious fanaticism. In the Netherlands, school starts for four-year-old children. Once, the parents of such a child were terrified when the little four-year-old boy came home and claimed he wanted to kill his mother to please God. The manipulated parents, also members of this sect, downplayed the seriousness of this problem, claiming that the children at school were shown some biblical film from the Old Testament, which the child misunderstood. The truth is that the child understood the Bible very well because there is a lot of violence in it. Perhaps the child saw a scene from the biblical story where Abraham was to sacrifice Isaac.
I have all this information from the Netherlands not through the media, but through real acquaintances, so the concern that someone would try to defame Pentecostals through media propaganda can be ruled out.
On the one hand, various Christian and political nationalist politicians claim that we must protect children from the omnipresent LGBT plague, and there are also various hoaxes of the Russian hybrid war against the West, such as children in schools being taught to change their gender. On the other hand, I am more concerned about the Christian plague, when a boy claimed that his mother should be killed.
On the one hand, Christians reproach Muslims for their religion not containing love, on the other hand, when a boy from a Christian sect wanted to slit his mother's throat, that is also not right. Christians and Muslims have nothing to reproach each other for, especially in the context of the entire history of Christianity and Islam, Islam was far less violent than Christianity.
Furthermore, I see no difference from an energetic or psychological point of view between fanatical Christianity and Islam in terms of enslaving the human soul.
I have also been quite involved in the study of history. The period when people in human history had probably the greatest interest in the topic of spirituality was the period from about one century BC to the seventh century AD. Although this period was not ideal, I believe that I would probably understand people from that time better than contemporary ones. It was the rise of Gnosticism, whose origin dates back to before Christ; Christ also lived during this period, and after Christ, there was a huge expansion of advanced Gnostic spirituality. Until the seventh century, Gnostics and pagans could still function freely, but then harsh persecution and massacres of all who rejected the Catholic Church began.
What is really interesting is that even pagans largely "envied" Christians for their strong interest in spirituality and their ascetic life, and they reacted to this by creating certain pagan monasteries.
On the other hand, we should not idealize and uncritically admire the so-called early Christians. Today, we would call them a manipulative sect, where spirituality was practiced very intensely, fanatically, and ascetically. On the other hand, we have historically documented evidence that Christian leaders promised the imminent return of Christ, people truly believed it, sold all their property, and religious leaders enriched themselves from this property. This is mentioned, for example, by the critic of Christianity, Celsus. Several modern sects are known for doing something similar. It is something incredible and fascinating that the practices of both prehistoric and contemporary modern sects are very similar, as religious leaders promise the end of the world and people sell their property to their religious leaders.
Given the enormous expansion of sects, especially Pentecostal Christianity, it makes sense to talk about sects in more detail.
Sects are divided into two basic types: closed and open.
In general, it is typical for sects to try to close themselves off, not be open to the public, not be transparent, and often try to lead their members to sever ties with relatives so that they do not dissuade them from leaving the sect, leading them to have friends only among the members of the sect.
On the other hand, there are also Pentecostal sects that can be somewhat "open", open to ecumenism in terms of cooperation with the Catholic Church and Protestant churches. In reality, however, religious fanaticism and the degree of enslavement of members may be no less than in closed sects. However, this "openness" may not be so selfless. Various Protestant Pentecostals see a great opportunity to promote their sect to Catholics through social religious events with the Catholic Church.
************************************
Side note: Lately, I have often come across Muslim "evangelical" videos. The aim of this video and YouTube channel is to promote Islam, fight against LGBT and for traditional values. Christians and Muslims can join hands. Their evangelization is in many ways even more sophisticated and well thought out than that of fanatical Christians.
I have also seen other videos where, in a one-minute video, non-religious people were depicted as violent abusers of children, and the practice of religion was portrayed as a source of family well-being.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/e6pBvvYKclk
Contemporary esotericism is also going in a rather bad direction . Esotericism is better than religion, but sometimes esotericism distances a person from the truth even more than when a person does not deal with spirituality at all. People with an esoteric view often perceive esotericism only as a certain form of faith, religion, often to an extreme degree denying rationality and rational thinking, sometimes quite resembling that Pentecostal Christian girl who claimed she went on a date with Jesus.
A proper spiritual system must actually work and actually help, not just have faith that it works.
Another problem of esotericists is pride and the awareness of a kind of false awakening.
The problem of esotericists is also a sick soul, a psyche full of complexes, and psychological imbalance. In other words, they are clogged with bad energies, they do not cleanse themselves, but they should do meditation techniques of energy cleansing.
Why is it important to engage with philosophy and spirituality?
Currently, philosophy is more of a subjective pseudoscience; philosophy should properly function as a science. It should follow the rule that you experimentally test whether something works and only follow it if it works.
Philosophy and spirituality are practically the same as psychology. The only problem is that psychology is the most backward science among all sciences and it is not a system that could effectively help a person in life.
A proper spiritual system also deals with the issues of fate, happiness, and success, which is probably the most important thing in a person's life, so that a person has a minimum of suffering in this world, but rational scientific disciplines do not provide an answer to this.
Meditation is a certain form of work with the spirit or the energy body of a person. (Both words essentially have the same meaning) It should be realized that the energy body is real. Therefore, it is worth dealing with it.
The word psychology is also derived from the word psyche, which means soul.
The energy body has a huge impact on mental health and well-being; its health is also important so that a person does not create unnecessary limitations, which is a common phenomenon in people.
Dealing with your spirit or soul is of great importance and meaning. The physical body will die and perish, but we will take the spirit with us, and it is eternal and immortal.
When we can take care of our body, which is good and right, how much more should we take care of our spirit. We wash ourselves, we dress ourselves, we pay attention to a healthy diet, we do sports, we are careful not to gain weight.
Religion and religious prayers are also a form of meditation technique. However, it is an activity where a person performs black magic on themselves. It is an activity where energy flows from a person to the religious egregore and to negative beings who draw energy from the egregore. As a person who was a strongly active Christian in the past, I know what I'm talking about.
Religion also tunes a person to bad energies and low vibrations.
Psychology is too backward a science to know that religion harms the human soul.
The problem also lies in the fact that with religion, a person is blinded and programmed not to understand their own religion. Christians or Muslims are best described by the fact that they have no idea what energies they are working with and how they flow through them.
They are connected by a kind of power cable to a very bad source of energy.
Religion leads a person to insensitivity, ignorance, and blindness.
Different approaches of the spiritual system to the physical world and the body
One approach is strictly ascetic. An approach known in Christianity, Islam, Gnosticism, and Yoga. Limiting sexuality, sexuality and the body perceived as something bad, and the philosophy of escaping this world and samsara.
The second approach is closer to me. Incarnation into this world is perceived as something we freely chose to go to a kind of spiritual gym to train for this difficult world.
Our task is to manage life on this planet with as little suffering as possible. This also has the meaning that we do not feed demonic entities.