Charlatans everywhere.

I am on the brink of killing myself, of retiring from the reincarnation world, of... of something. I hardly can stand it anymore. Even when people often tell me I am a very patient person, I often feel I am losing it all, my patience, I mean, and also my sanity. It is already quite hard to deal with newbies, but when it is the people with some experience, or those who supposedly should know something, who get in my nerves, because they clearly show they have no idea of what they are talking about... I just can do one thing: laugh or die. It is sad, as not long ago my opinion of them was much better. But this happens to me quite frequently too. I learn so much and so quick that I soon surpass them, I need new horizons to reach, and while I evolve and advance, you see how they stand behind, still thinking, still confused, and clinging to the beliefs they have constructed for themselves, and even more curiously, plainly ignoring the facts that contradict those beliefs.

One of the first things I learnt when I started out in this path, is that the risk of believing you know it all is there. It is not a coincidence that so many spiritual gurus proliferate and get rich thanks to the ignorance and innocence of the followers. Most people don’t trust themselves and they are always seeking answers outside. And then you have all those who do trust, but think knowledge comes from a 15 week course with one of those gurus who don’t even have experience of their own but think they can give lessons about it. These people who think they become experts just because they followed a guru for some time or worked closely with him, are so blinded that it is hard to reason with them. And if the guru calls himself “scientist” instead, the effect is even stronger, as for most rational people, Science is the new religion and all scientists are their new gods. But, when you have real knowledge, you only need a few minutes to talk with some of them, to realize they have nothing to teach.  

  This is the scenario I have to witness every day of my life:

• People with very little experience building beliefs with no basis that end up becoming another religion.
• People confused by their own experiences, who don’t know how to interpret them, but are always quick to jump to conclusions and spread myths like “time is simultaneous”, one that really annoys me, because there are FACTS that contradict this hypothesis.
• People that are easily dazzled by what the so-called “experts” say, experts that the only thing they have done is reading other people’s works and write boring papers to be read by other “experts”. They aren’t in touch with real experiencers (of if they have the chance, they easily miss it by telling them it is likely their memories are rubbish), but they love to give lectures and talk with complicated words, probably to give the impression they know something.
• People who started with good intentions but ended up yielding to the admiration of the rest of people who look for answers outside of themselves and are famous for writing more and more books that all say the same.
• People who are the only ones who can talk about reincarnation with some authority, but stay behind (willingly) and are just ignored, even despised, bu those who love to judge from the outside.

I am different because I am an experiencer AND I am also a scientist, with a wide knowledge of parapsychology. No, I am not talking of watching one or two TV shows about ghosts hunters. I talk of being in touch and learning from journalists who have been researching subjects related to parapsychology all their lives, some of them quite skeptical, others with direct experience with instrumental transcommunication, and also serious sensitive people who really know what extrasensorial perception is.

The saddest part of all this is this is how internet works today. Anyone could say I am just another of these charlatans, but only I know that is not the truth. I have lost count of all the books, magazines, articles and personal testimonies I have read along my life, not only about paranormal subjects, but also about scientific ones, thanks to my profession. One might think that is not important, but it is. I often say I know nothing, only to realize minutes later that, despite the fact I know nothing, I know quite more than the so-called researchers that give courses about reincarnation and brag about their theory to explain reincarnation, as if they are doing something the rest of us haven’t done already. 

So, it is fun, in a way, to be witness of how the blind lead the blind, day after day. How misconceptions spread like viruses even among those communities that supposedly are “serious and scientific”, where retrocognition is mistaken for past life memories, and there are people saying “U-huh” to other people who clearly don’t have enough experience and mental control to tell the difference. It is fun to see people talking about OBE’s when they haven’t ever attempted to astral travel consciously. It is fun seeing people wondering about how you can tell someone is lying about their past life memories when they don’t even know how they feel. It is fun... though it still kills me inside.

But I guess there is nothing I can do about it. If I talk, I only get exaggerated reactions, sometimes because people don’t like their beliefs to be challenged, other times because they think you are like them, someone who has just “an opinion” or talks from one casual reading on the internet. And so they fight and never listen. They don’t value your work because undoubtedly they think they are much better than you, because you don’t offer courses for 300 bucks or because no one interviews you in prime time. Or they even think they can criticize what you have written, without even reading it. That is the funniest thing of them all. I am starting to feel more and more like Jaqen H’ghar: it is better to be NO ONE and keep my sanity than to engage in arguments I know I can't win. 

"The faces are for no one. You are still someone. And for someone, the faces are as good as poison".

No wonder secret societies have existed through all human history. It is hard to keep quiet, be humble and just let everyone belief what they want, even when you know they are wrong. There are certain things that best remain unspoken and occult for non-acolytes. Who wants to waste so much time trying to explain? Who wants to be witness of so much stupidity and nonsensical claims? Who wants to see how the masses are absorbed by the apparent wisdom of ignorant but clever masters? Has anything changed? Is something ever going to change? I doubt it.

So, once more, as I once wrote in this blog: you just can sit down and watch the madness reign. That is my condemnation. 

Beliefs and facts.

I have been having a small disagreement (not even serious discussion) with someone on the internet about astral projection. I was trying to make her see astral projection must not be mistaken for mental projection (also known as remote viewing) or other type of psychic phenomena, which for her all belonged to the same bag, little more than “deep altered states of consciousness” such as meditation. She was intended to claim our disagreement was just due to semantics, and I insisted it is more than that. There is a difference, because I KNOW it, I have experienced it, and I have been doing it, along with lots of research, for two years now. You are welcome to believe in anything you want, you can doubt until you have your own experience, but please, keep an open mind and don’t throw my experiences to the bin just because I use the word “astral”, because you prefer to believe in scientists who suddenly had eye-opener experiences rather than in an “average” person like me (who funnily enough happens to be a scientist too), or because you just can’t understand those experiences and can’t bring yourself to believe in such “lunatic claims”. Reality is much wider than your beliefs or what your eyes can see. Eventually it looks like we were only having a misunderstanding and she didn’t want any help, which is fine with me, but in the meanwhile some feelings turned up.

I often feel so frustrated. It’s like talking to kids. It’s like witnessing those stares of disbelief when you are explaining a dog’s owner that their beloved pet has some “little bugs” (also known as mites) inside his ears, and that’s what’s making him shaking his head or making a bloody mess of his skin with his paws. That stare of disbelief becomes one of bewilderment when you take them to the microscope and invite them to take a look to the sample you took with a cotton swab. I think I have rarely felt such a pleasure in my clinical practice.

With astral projection is just the same. Only when you have experienced it you can begin to KNOW there is something real about it. You can doubt about it and have thousands of interpretations about what kind of phenomenon is. You can choose whatever names you want and try to classify your experiences in a thousand phases like Robert Monroe did. But you just can’t doubt it is REAL. Astral projection is not a fantasy, or “a very real dream”, or the delusion of someone who wants to believe in them. Astral projection is literally that: an OUT OF THE BODY EXPERIENCE. You are in a different body moving in a different dimension. A non-physical reality? Another plane? Those are all different names to explain the same reality. And that reality is a fact. But it seems certain people just don’t want to listen when a fact contradicts their beliefs, and they seem to think you just “believe” in them and you are trying to convince them of something, when you are just trying to explain to them a reality as real as the sun being a star or a disease being transmitted by water due to other type of “little bugs” living in it. It is just one step more from ignorance to actual knowledge. But some just want to go on blind. Others experience it spontaneously or learn to control it thanks to my advice... and then I feel the same pleasure when I see they have finally discovered another small part of the Truth.

Well, yesterday night I meditated a while before going to sleep and concentrating for another of my “delusional journeys” in the astral realm. I got asleep. But before that I started to get flashes from a past life. Flashes that are not new but were very important in that almost forgotten past life. My mother was being raped on a wooden table by a wild and strong man, while I was cowering in a corner gripping a knife in my hand, unable to move to save her. I was only a kid of maybe six, seven years old. I was hearing the screams of my mother, and I was willing to stab that damned knife in his back or his foot to stop him. I am not sure whether I eventually did it. If I did, it is likely I was pushed back or slapped and then I crouched, and I stayed there paralyzed, until he left and my mother and I could hold each other again, both trembling and weeping. That moment marked the rest of my life. Even my family knew it, but they always said I was too young and small to do anything to protect her. That wasn’t comforting to me, and I kept blaming myself for not being able to prevent that from happening. That feeling of frustration was always with me and determined a lot of the things I did afterwards. I grew up to be a really strong man, but I never was strong enough to protect my family. Sometimes you just can’t change things. And that same feeling of frustration is the one that haunts me when I feel there is nothing I can do or say to change the course of nature. I guess human beings are also part of that “nature”. I just can't change people's mindset, I just can't make stupidity disappear from the Earth, that same stupidity that makes people kill others just because they believe in different gods.

And that kills me.

You can give crutches to the lame, but you forget maybe they don’t want to walk faster. You can try to take the blindfold off their eyes, but you forget maybe they are happy in the darkness. You want to make this world a better place to live, but you forget this world doesn’t need to be changed, maybe. It is a place for fools, it is a place to kill and burn, it is a place for confusion and suffering. You only can sit down and watch the madness reign.  

The Simple Truth.

I’ve been reflecting for weeks now about this concept of “The Truth”, so I was glad to find these two quotes in a place I frequent:

“The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.”

Winston Churchill

“An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.”

Mahatma Gandhi

There’s only One Truth, not multiple truths. I’ve become quite tired and I’m beginning to feel jaded about all this reincarnation/spiritual talk that says “We all are right, we have different experiences, but who knows who has the Truth, we all may as well have it”. I think this is just a diplomatic way to say all beliefs have the same value, everyone can say whatever and even if it sounds crazy, it will be alright, because it’s their experience, so who are we to judge, they have their own truth and we have to respect it.

And my opinion on this is: “No. Not all the experiences are the same. Not all beliefs are valid. There’s only One Truth. The rest are only different interpretations, all subjective, of that truth. And we, as human beings who are still confused and are seeking for answers, must dig deep in these experiences, to reach the Real Truth behind them, and discard the fantasy, the preconceptions and the myths that time and legends have woven around the Truth”.

When I say this, I feel I come across as some kind of intolerant and arrogant bastard who thinks he knows better than anyone else. Social norms, net-etiquette, or whatever, says you can’t argue with anyone or defend your opinions because “all experiences are valid and maybe none of us is right”. And I think: “That’s a lot of shit”. We all are looking for answers, and we all have experiences that can bring us closer to the Truth. We have to talk about them, compare them to what other people have described, find the points in common, and, always with a rational and objective thinking, start to reach some conclusions. What we can’t do is to think all black shadows are demons, assume they can’t be any other thing, only demons, and pretend we know everything and the rest of people are ignorant. We all have our own truth, what we think we experienced… but we can only get closer to the Truth listening to the other hundreds of experiences and see where we may be right in our interpretation, and where we may be wrong. And when I’m sure of something, it’s because I’ve seen it in the majority of cases and I assume there’s something true on it. Even then I can be wrong, but I have a lot more of elements to judge.

When I talk about how I think things are, I don’t talk only from my own experience, but also from information I’ve learned in many other sources, information I’ve analyzed and cleaned from those interpretations that distort the Truth behind it. Human beings have the habit of wanting to transform the Truth so that it’s more similar to their own beliefs. And they put different names to the same things, only adding to the confusion that reigns in spiritual places. Religions would be the most extreme example of this. And quite sad, because they show how bloody intolerant and cruel human beings can be with each other. We all know there’s something common to all religions, especially the monotheist ones, but most people keep being trapped in the dogmas and rituals, leaving everyone else out, perpetuating racism, sexism and all kind of hatred, instead of forgetting everything about it and stay with the One Truth behind all of them: that we all are spiritual beings in a path of human experience, where we have to learn to love and respect each other. Anything else is superficial and useless. But we still have a long way to break all this primitive concepts that hinder us so much in our paths. Religions are the cause of so much darkness and suffering in our world that I can’t explain why people haven’t already opened their eyes and forget about them once and for all. It makes me feel I’m still in a playground, surrounded by kids who only want someone to tell them what is wrong and what is right, so that they have not to worry, instead of assuming their responsibility and searching for the One Truth on their own. It’s over 2000 years now since Jesus said we have to look for it in the inside, in our hearts. But it seems no one listened to him…

No one knows the Absolute Truth, I’ll give you that. I’m afraid human beings can never achieve that knowledge, because our human senses deceive us. But we do have a lot of keys that help us see that Truth, and we must use them all. There’s no point in focusing in one aspect of our human nature and forget about the others, they’re all pieces of the same puzzle. If we focus only in one of those aspects, we’ll only have a partial truth. And I do think there are not too many people in the world who study all sides of it. Not even scientists, who should be way more open to all kind of spiritual experiences. I think that’s why I’m becoming so jaded. After all these years studying reincarnation, NDE’s, OBE’s, religions, esoteric teachings, and many paranormal phenomena (and now with my own experiences), I see it all so clearly in my head… I just don’t understand why other people can’t see it, and why they keep asking the same questions again and again. Of course, I’m far from knowing everything, and it’s hard to be completely specific about certain matters, but I’ve put two and two together in my mind and it’s like having these diagram of a crime scene on the wall, almost done, with only a few unsolved mysteries on it. And it’s so frustrating I can’t make other people see.

So… going back to the initial quotes, everyone is free to believe in the bunch of lies they choose to. Everyone can alter the Truth and tell us that’s what we must believe. Someone said that if a lie is repeated over and over again, it becomes the Truth. But I don’t agree with that. The Truth, hidden or not, is always there, whether you see it or not. When I’m pissed off, I sometimes use the sentence “Believe what you want”, and I know many people will think I’m that intolerant and arrogant bastard who thinks he knows better than anyone else. That’s not politically correct… but I’ve never been good in diplomacy anyway (at least in this life). And I just don’t care: the Truth is out there, for all those who are ready to embrace it. Like Jesus said: “Those who have ears, let them hear!”

And I add: 

“Not all slaves know what to do with their freedom, when it is given to them”.