Buddha’s struggle with demon Mara a picnic compared to the reality
Modern man has to rediscover the path to enlightenment and to find some grounded reality where the tradition is misleading. Guatama, let’s face it, was a royal son and the spirit world seeing his coming role no doubt gave him an easy fake demon to defeat. What is the reality? It is not one where we can easily or safely reify the ‘demonic’ even as we encounter its reality, acting in a frightening manner in the unconscious.
Cognitive psychology can mislead us here. It is not reality either, beside the illusory storm of the demonic. This is not the land of Freud, et al. But beliefs in such things will backfire. So we have no grounded reality sense. The lore of occultism is toxic rubbish.
And the obstacles for modern man are complicated by the huge field open to the mind as information, where those on the path to enlightenment in antiquity were able to live in isolated meditation fields, relatively unknown and anonymous (even to demons, should they exist).
The obstacles to me are stunning and seem insuperable:
Loss of anonymity in general
Shark sufis prowlling for victims
Strange ‘vampire’ mysteries out to drain every manifestation of high-level conscious energy.
Not one, but two (Jewish) black magicians practicing their Aleister Crowley (such people are starting to get better at what they do), supposed to have been old friends This realm of modern ‘magick’ is turning into a dangerous farce. Be wary of it.
The malevolence and anathema of Christians wishing damnation and eternal torture on those who don’t conform…That effect is waning, but still generates a kind of noise to the meditator.
Ghosts of dead gurus taking the form of other gurus to involve consciousness in collisions of phantoms.
Mysterious spirits taking the form of known gurus or sages, and issuing delusive communications (mostly nutjob hallucination here, except for the exceptions)
The environment of Mahayana where the atmosphere of ‘boddhissatwas’ conspires against serious asprirants…
Hallucinations of mindforms? Make sure you don’t just spout buddhist cliches here.
The list goes on. What the ancient traditions called the manifestation of demons is a mythology that can confuses us now. But the reality is almost worse: we don’t know exactly what it is that is trying to invade the unconsious, or whether it has in fact done so.
Buddhism, of course, has many resources here, but they don’t help much.
This is really dreadful, but there is one thing worse: not being on a path and being unaware of the reality. I think that moving away from the myth of Gautama is a useful step. Forget him. You have to discover the whole thing all over again.
It is a harsh truth, on the way there is no guru, noone to help, nothing.
If you are still anonymous, be glad. But if that is done for, look on the bright side; you are getting the advanced course.
We need to find a new way to do these things in the atmostphere of Total Demonic Noise. It is all trivial, of course, to the awakened, and with a little luck to those on the way. But the trite tale of Gautama can confuse. The demonic hurricane is keeping most of us completely at a loss in imaginary paths.
As this post makes obvious the current person is beset with a stunningly large field of these confusions, thanks to the Internet. But maybe it is better that way, by a curious irony.
We need to get some people on the other side. The current situation is producing a huge field of casualties. We need some kind of SOS field. This is harsh stuff, laugh it off, but at the same time, be sure you are ready to begin.
New Man, New Age, New Socialism 