Are we are all hypnotised?

 Perhaps we are all hypnotised? Self hypnotised? And, perhaps meditation is the way out of this trance, if viewed properly with true compassion. Taking anything seriously only deepens the trance.

Ignorance of the true qualities of our being created the karma that drove us into human bodies. Actually, that was good karma: other beings are self-hypnotised into being animals – we’ve all been there, done that, forgotten! Actually, thinking about it and looking at the state of the world, animals treat each other better than some humans!

Hypnosis* is believing something to be other than what it actually is. It is said that we live in an illusory dream, so what’s the difference? The difference is that in the maintenance of this hypnotic state, we can see what is going on: it is not like a vague dream at all.

Our whole lifestyle – everything in which we engage – enhances the hypnotic effect, and spiritual practices are no different. We must always be aware, and not locked in.

I’m reminded of a story about a large group of people travelling for generations in a space ship, to a distant galaxy they had been told about. They ritually maintained the ship, but gradually forgot where they were going. In fact, the ship became their entire world, and nothing else existed. Every day, they’d religiously oil the parts, and worship a picture of a tree. They had totally forgotten that they were going anywhere, and found themselves creating fears and making up new rules.

This brings us to understanding the mechanical mind and spontaneous mind. In the mechanical mind, we do this and this, because we have been told to do this and this. We have been programmed. To understand this, read Aldus Huxley’s “Brave New World”. It’s about a society that, from cradle to grave, is indoctrinated through the media and drugs to love its servitude – programming.

In spontaneous mind there are no boundaries. It’s a sort of joyous, sad place, full of loving compassion…and a little challenging! We liberate ourselves by being aware, looking into that awareness and finding pure knowing. Once that is known, the nature of everything is known, and we are no long in the trance of not-knowing. This doesn’t mean we are enlightened yet: there is still the laundry to clean!

Be aware of ‘being’ caught up in dogma and losing compassion.
On Dharma forums, you’ll see them arguing,
losing sight of warmth and compassion
for the desire to be right.

Just like the space travellers,
worshipping the tree
and not knowing what a tree is.

Liberating enlightenment is the most natural state of all.
The natural outcome of this liberation is compassion.

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* Encyclopedia Britannica is “a special psychological state with certain physiological attributes, resembling sleep only superficially and marked by a functioning of the individual at a level of awareness other than the ordinary conscious state.” One theory suggests that hypnosis is a mental state, while another theory links hypnosis to imaginative role-enactment.

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