Much of what people believe is ‘spiritual experience’ is just getting caught up in qualia. People do not understand the difference between spirit and soul; this is the first mistake.
At the beginning, there are referents that lead to ‘spiritual realizations,’ which are really just intuitions that’ve been tumbling around unconsciously for a while. But then people get lost in associations, leading to retrieval amnesia. These are psychical.
The same kinds of people Guenon speaks about that do Yoga as some form of physical or mental exercise confuse the psychic and spiritual dimensions and set themselves up to get hurt. It’s the same with people who want to delve into Jungian “Shadow Work” and psychedelics.
Many people searching for mystical experience are really sensation-seekers who mistake this for transcendent experience. Anything that can’t be categorized as ‘mundane’ is basically mystical to them. Guenon reiterates sentiments expressed by Evola about ego death in the psychedelic experience; ‘dissolution into cosmic consciousness’ is the opposite of transcendence. Dissociation is a great example of something treated as transcendent when it’s really a dissolution; these people strive to separate forms from material and don’t realize they are fragmenting their consciousness.
There exists a type of Jungian who likens a dissociative episode with a Hero’s journey. Mistakes her fragmentation of soul for a mystical experience, starts a podcast. “Maps the ineffable” and doesn’t realize the contradiction. “Shadow work meditation” is the natural byproduct of this silliness
The problem is a very specific type of "spiritual seeker" person, they always want to 'get into stuff,' but without connection to an actual higher goal. All they're doing is sensation-seeking and trying to escape pain; they only seek connection, even at the expense of truth, and only want exposure to things that make them feel good about themselves at the expense of anything higher. There's a whole internet exoteric space larping as esoteric for this. Which isn't as bad as listlessly going about life, but this becomes the epitome of experience for them & they mistake this for transcendental experience. Everything can become ineffable if you simply can't process it. And no, this isn't the entire definition. Tell me this: how is one to know if what one has encountered is truly ineffable and not just smoke and mirrors? Is an intellectually-endowed person really a magician, or just seemingly so in relation to the everyman? Is it hubris to believe you can “map out” the ineffable? Can one explain the Tao without going against it? This is all a surrogate activity; not a visionary one. The answer to these questions is always intuition. But these people mistake the feeling for the intuitive. It’s a comfort trap at the end of the day. Life is a series of constant suffering; the exoteric is tailored to mitigate but not embrace this. Many so-called, and especially self-anointed “visionaries” are charlatans trying to keep their patrons within this illusion for profit; whether this be monetary or attentional, it’s an energetic waste. The youth and half-naïve are their targets.
A: I think people need to find the Fire. https://www.alchemywebsite.com/pontan_1.html
A: They did set theory on the Tao https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3755092
Dead internet is much more than just bot activity; it's the reduction of the human down to energetic tokens to be used on an exchange. Even if you know you're talking to a person, there's fundamentally some kind of fragmentation that has happened to them; interactions don't feel organic because this goes contrary to their best interests; they have censored themselves so much for such low stakes they cease to speak and spend their lives shilling. Very sad