Tag Archives: conspiracy theory

The Distortion of Education

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By George A. Boyd ©2023

Q: I’m concerned about the attempts to control education that conservative governors and legislators have been advocating and enacting recently. What is going on here?

A: It is important to understand the levels of education. These fall into three categories:

  • Miseducation
  • Intellectual education
  • Existential and spiritual education

Miseducation includes:

  1. Training in criminal and terrorist skills, such as how to perform acts of violence, extortion, fraud, and intimidation; learning to hate others.
  2. Education that indoctrinates in political or religious beliefs based on deliberate attempts to misinform and control those students’ beliefs, values, and behavior.

Intellectual education comprises:

  1. Education that trains students to remember key concepts and prove thy have learned them through testing (rote learning).
  2. Education that trains students to utilize the problem solving abilities of the intellect, and applies these skills in the areas of mathematics, writing, and speaking; and through the modeling and manipulation of symbolic and abstract ideas (deductive, analogical, inductive, and dialectical reasoning).

Existential and spiritual education consists of:

  1. Education that trains student to reflect upon the meaning of ideas and their implications; to perform critical thinking and introspection; and to evaluate the outcome of choices.
  2. Education that trains students to study the levels of the levels of their mind, to activate the Self, and the immortal principles of consciousness—attentional principle, spirit, and ensouling entity—to work on the issues of life, to enhance achievement of personal goals and dreams, and actualize their spiritual potentials.
  3. Education that trains students to develop their abilities in their Superconscious mind and to understand arcane and esoteric knowledge; this aims to promote spiritual wisdom and discernment through meditation upon archetypes layered on track through the Continuum of Consciousness.

Terrorist and White Supremacy groups, for example, adopt educational strategy one. They turn those who receive this type of miseducation into warriors and criminals, and emissaries of hatred and intolerance. They attempt to control others through violence and intimidation.

Dissemination of misinformation and propaganda to shape values, beliefs, and behavior is characteristic of educational strategy two. The governors and legislators you cite advance this educational strategy.

You learn strategies three and four during your academic education. You learn to remember facts and to use intellectual problem solving strategies to answer questions and solve problems. This prepares you for adult functioning and enables you to carry out the tasks of your career. It trains you in the skills of learning, so you can continue your education to acquire new knowledge and skills throughout your lifetime.

Strategy five dawns when you can reflect upon your life, and identify what are your genuine values and what you want to achieve in your life. Psychotherapy and coaching catalyze your ability to get in touch with your authentic Self, and to make congruent and life-affirming choices for your life.

We teach you strategy six in Mudrashram®. You learn to study the levels of the personal and transpersonal zones of the mind, and recognize the landmarks upon the Continuum of Consciousness. You learn to awaken and function as the three immortal principles—the attentional principle, the spirit, and your ensouling entity. This enables you to work on your personal issues. It also helps you awaken, transform, and actualize your spiritual potentials. [We teach you how to do this in our intermediate mediation classes, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program.]

Those who study metaphysics and Mystery School teachings utilize educational strategy seven. They use different methods to uncover and understand mythic, symbolic, and archetypal ideas, and to tease out correspondences, inter-relationships, and hidden truths.

Those who have been misled and indoctrinated through exposure to strategy-two miseducation can activate their internal strategy five to carry out deep processing to evaluate the impact of misinformation on their values, beliefs, and behavior. Miseducation disseminates distorted information, which aims to make students obedient and unquestioning.

Though insight, inventory, and critical thinking, you can uproot these mental programs that condition you to follow a political or religious agenda—and to reflect upon meaning, and empower yourself to think and make decisions independently.

If those who promulgate these programs of indoctrination into half-truths—and sometimes, outright lies—could instead train students to think for themselves, we might see fewer people caught up into the fever dreams of conspiracy theories and delusion. They would also be less susceptible to the influence of demagogues, cult leaders, and authoritarian leaders, who demand implicit obedience and continually manipulate their beliefs, emotions, and behavior.

How Not to Be a Crackpot

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By George A. Boyd ©2023

Q: Why are there so many crazy, crackpot ideas that people believe in?

A: People believe in crackpot ideas—conspiracy theories and strange notions of pseudo-science, religion, and politics—because they are unable to verify what they believe. They will tell you they believe these things “on faith,” or because it is written in their scripture, or some person they regard as an authority has said it, or they got it as a revelation in an altered state of consciousness.

Verification is part of the discriminative aspect of the mind. When these inner “crap detectors” are working, they are going to deconstruct or correct these crazy notions. When these inner sentinels of the mind are sleeping or disengaged, people will drift into full crackpot mode.

What are these nodes of discernment in the mind?

  1. Sense perception – This constructs your “world picture”—what you see in your environment around you. Under normal conditions, this aspect of discernment will give you an accurate perception of what is in the space around your body and where your body is in relation to the objects around you. For example, you will recognize the stove and the dining room table in your house or apartment, and notice how far your body is from them.
  2. Reason – This is your reality-testing mechanism. It detects the truth or falsity of statements based on evidence. When people enter and remain in altered states of consciousness, this aspect of the mind shuts down, and people become susceptible to believing anything that is suggested to them. When reason is not operating, people are walking around in a hypnotic trance.
  3. Intellect – This is the part of your mind that can solve problems and model problems. To find out if something is true, you perform a test to see if the hypothesis you generate is likely correct, based on a statistical criterion you set. If your statistical test shows that something is likely true 95% out of 100%, you can deduce that it is probably true in most cases—while you can’t be entirely certain that you have proved your hypothesis, it looks like it is likely true. This is the method science uses to arrive at understanding of the world.
  4. Temple of Science – This is the collective repository of all of the tests and studies that have been done on any particular topic. When enough tests lend credence to a theory, scientific consensus accepts this as a current paradigm. For example, thousands of tests and observations have been done to verify the theory of evolution is likely correct.
  5. Illumined mind – When the Soul takes the Fourth Planetary Initiation, it fully awakens its Buddhic vehicle of consciousness. Through the heart and throat centers of this form, the Soul can detect the content of each nodal point the Soul has opened and of each Nadamic tone the spirit has purified. This generates discernment for the Way of the Soul and the Path of the spirit. Those that complete the Fourth Planetary Initiation affirm, “I am the Way and the Path.” This forms the foundation of spiritual discernment for the Planetary and Subtle bands of the Continuum.
  6. Interpenetrating Awareness – When a disciple awakens the Mahatma form on the Bridge Path, activating the medulla center of this form yields the highest discriminative awareness for all levels of the Continuum below this station on the Path. It gives instant knowledge for whatever information the disciple asks—this is like a powerful spiritual search engine that can access information about whatever spiritual topic the disciple wants to know.
  7. The Wisdom Mind of Satchitananda – In the heart center of the form of the ensouling entity of the seventh Transcendental Path, which we call Satchitananda, there is an intuitive switchboard that directly and objectively perceives the content of the mind for multiple parameters. These parameters are:
    • Knowledge of the element of earth
    • Knowledge of the element of water
    • Knowledge of the element of fire
    • Knowledge of the element of air
    • Knowledge of the element of Aether or space
    • Knowledge of the Experiential Mind, the field of memory for sense impressions and life events
    • Knowledge of Reason, the analytical and discriminative faculty
    • Knowledge of Ego (Ahamkar), the identification with the body, reason and life experiences
    • Knowledge of the Will, the principle of choice and arbiter of action
    • Knowledge of the Self: the field of the Knower, the instruments of Knowledge, and the Known
    • Knowledge of the Mythic Nucleus of Wisdom of the Subtle Realm
    • Knowledge of the Creative Nucleus of Power, the Soul of the Planetary Realm
    • Knowledge of the Omniscient Nucleus, the Monad of the Transplanetary Realm
    • Knowledge of the Compassionate Nucleus, the Astral Soul of the Cosmic Sphere
    • Knowledge of Omnipresent Nucleus, the Supracosmic Soul of the Supracosmic Sphere
    • Knowledge of the Omnipotent Nucleus, the Soul of the Bridge Path
    • Knowledge of the Path of the Violet Ray of Creation, T1
    • Knowledge of the Path of the Rose-Saffron Ray of Creation, T2
    • Knowledge of the Path of the Emerald Green Ray of Creation, T3
    • Knowledge of the Path of the Golden Yellow Ray of Creation, T4
    • Knowledge of the Path of the Royal Blue Ray of Creation, T5
    • Knowledge of the Path of the Rainbow Ray of Creation, T6
    • Knowledge of the Eternal Path of the Primal White Light Ray of Creation, T7
    • Knowledge of the Essence of Satchitananda

Nodes one through four comprise our personal and societal aspects of discernment; spiritual discernment arises from nodes five through seven. In the Subtle Realm—particularly the Lower Astral Plane—and the Psychic Realm, and the First and Second Planetary Initiations, sojourners through these realms do not have a touchstone to verify their experiences.

Much is constructed from the gossamer threads of belief and the tendrils of faith, and reliance on the veracity of sources from whom they learn these beliefs. Until they are able to subject these beliefs to the bright light of discernment, they will cling to these beliefs despite any verification they are true. Consequently, they gently drift into the intoxicating world of the crackpot.

The Boyd Crackpot Scale

We can characterize seven different levels of drift into crackpot mind:

  1. The individual is mostly sane, but harbors odd ideas about one to three topics.
  2. The individual continues to maintain relative sanity, but has odd ideas for four to ten topics
  3. The individual begins to shift from a rational stance to conviction about his or her beliefs, which cannot be verified; more than ten odd ideas make up his or her constellation of irrational beliefs. Those initially exposed to religious or political ideas may move into this posture. Here the conviction is not complete—the individual may be persuadable at this level to come back to reality, and may have some openness to examining his or her beliefs.
  4. The individual begins to rationalize and defend his or her irrational beliefs, and rejects evidence to the contrary; at this level, an individual has become immersed in a conspiracy theory or a system of pseudo-science, political, or religious beliefs. At this level, the individual will likely push back on any attempts to dissuade him or her of the fallacy of his or her beliefs—and he or she is “locked in” to the conspiracy theory at this stage.
  5. The individual begins to believe he or she is under attack or is persecuted for holding his or her beliefs. At this level, he or she begins to adopt paranoid ideation. Those for whom suspicion and mistrust begin to pervade their view of the world may develop a paranoid personality disorder.
  6. The individual’s beliefs start to condition his or her behavior, and he or she begins to act strangely in most situations. At this level, the individual may enter into schizotypal personality disorder.
  7. The individual’s beliefs become bizarre and delusional. He or she may hear voices that tell him or her weird things; he or she may hold beliefs that are totally irrational. At this stage, the individual has migrated into paranoid schizophrenia.

Your beloved, eccentric uncle or aunt—substitute whatever relative, friend, or co-worker that is in your life that demonstrates eccentricity—who has some odd ideas, is likely operating at level one or two.

People begin to drift away from reality at level three and four. These are the people in your life that are caught up in conspiracy theories, or have come to believe in the odd notions of pseudo-science, or have been convinced to believe in a religious or political ideology. Also, people that become involved in religious cults, or hate and terrorist groups operate at these levels.

At levels five through seven, the eccentric person in your life has begun to exhibit mental illness. These individuals need professional help—unfortunately, many of them are beyond the reach of even the most skillful interventions of mental health professionals. They will remain in the upper crackpot worlds, oblivious to rationality and reality, and will abide in these states until death liberates them from this continual hypnotic trance—or until their inner illumination ignites, to dispel the lies and delusions they have come to believe.

You can avoid becoming a crackpot through subjecting your beliefs to your personal and spiritual discernment faculties, and by not simply believing in ideas that you cannot verify. Start with the foundation of what you can verify:

  • Listen to the voice of wisdom within you.
  • Apply the criteria for discerning truth.
  • Hold any ideas you cannot verify as unproven hypothesis.
  • Analyze the reasoning that underlies claims and conjectures. If it is flawed, reject it.
  • Exercise critical thinking. Do not accept ideas without fully vetting them.
  • When your Illumined Mind begins to operate, allow it to reveal what is actually there in the inner worlds and not what imagination and magical thinking constructs.
  • Verify your intuitive impressions through examining them with the direct perception of your attentional principle.

If you will develop wisdom and discernment, you will steer clear of the pitfalls of crackpot mind.

How Christians Get Caught Up in Conspiracy Theories

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By George A. Boyd ©2023

Q: How do conspiracy theories influence Christians, which warp the core tenets of their faith?

A: To understand this, it’s important to review the 49 steps of the Christian believer from the birth of faith to the attainment of sainthood:

Level One – Faith [Activation of the cord of faith, which connects the ego with the Divine]

  1. Belief in God and Jesus [the awakening of faith]
  2. Praying to God and Jesus [invocation]
  3. Engaging in dialog with God and Jesus [praying and receiving a response to prayer as personal guidance and direction]
  4. Asking for God’s help in times of crisis or great personal suffering or adversity [supplication]
  5. Receiving God’s comfort and peace via the Holy Spirit in response to the prayer of supplication
  6. Receiving a gift of the Holy Spirit in response to prayer or as a spontaneous act of Grace
  7. Demonstrating or using the gift of the Holy Spirit with believers in your congregation; Pentecostal and Charismatic sects appear to operate at this level

Level Two – Spiritual Warrior [Construction of the citadel of belief and identification as a Christian believer]

  1. Listening to sermons and learning about the Christian faith
  2. Studying the Bible, committing scriptures to memory
  3. Witnessing and proselytizing to other to convert them to the Christian faith
  4. Aligning with clergy-sanctioned political and social causes and advocating for them
  5. Becoming obsessed with religious and political agendas; at this level you are especially susceptible to believe in conspiracy theories
  6. Giving tithes and donations to support your Church’s mission; you might also be led to financially support the agendas of political and religious groups that align with the political and social causes for which you have advocated
  7. Teaching or preaching to others what you have learned from scriptural study and the theological training you have had; this is the standard preparation for ministry based on theological study [Theology is one of the disciplines found in the Temple of Science; some schools of Theology also expose the minister-in-training to the principles of Philosophy.]

Level Three – Quest for power, money, and love [Activation of the Universal Mind]

  1. Claiming the promises of scriptures via faith and affirmation
  2. Giving donations and tithes with the aim to activate the Divine Law of Prosperity
  3. Demonstrating Divine Prosperity through purchasing expensive cars, homes, clothing, or jewelry
  4. Giving charity; donating to causes you deem worthy out of your financial surplus
  5. Treating the Universal Mind directly using affirmations to manifest your desires; Science of Mind practitioners and ministers operate at this level
  6. Working with the matrix of subconscious beliefs that hinder manifestation of your desires—many life, relationship, and business coaches operate at this level to move you to the next step in your life, your romantic satisfaction, or to enhance your career and finances
  7. Experience of union with the Universal Mind; activation of the inner genius of the Master Mind

Level Four – Revelation and Visionary Experience [Psychic Realm Awakening]

  1. Visions of utopian or doomsday scenarios; apocalyptic visions of the end of the world and the second coming of Christ
  2. Immersion in interpreting the meaning of scriptures, symbols, archetypes, and myths; this is the level of hermeneutics; those who engage in translating scriptures and religious texts from their original languages also operate at this level
  3. Channeling angels and spirits verbally to give prophecy and revelation
  4. Communion with angels and guides in trance states and receiving teaching and revelations from them
  5. Channeling communications from angels and spirits through spontaneous writing [automatic writing]
  6. Beholding visions of spirits; perceiving angels and demons in the aura of others
  7. Exorcising or casting out demons that you perceive in the aura of others through prayer or ritual; those who conduct exorcisms operate at this level

Level Five – The Dawning of Wisdom [opening to the Wisdom Plane]

  1. Reception of practical guidance to live righteously
  2. Working on changing bad habits and reforming character
  3. Working with addictions and recovering from compulsive patterns of behavior—many 12-step groups operate at this level
  4. Mentoring and guiding others to improve their character, recover from addictions, and cope with the challenges of life; pastoral counselors and addiction counselors operate from this level
  5. Doing forgiveness work and reuniting with the unconditional love of the Soul—A Course in Miracles operates at this level
  6. Gaining understanding of what motivates you and others; connecting with your Soul’s inner wisdom
  7. Communion with the Light of Wisdom and listening to the still, small voice in the silence; the spiritual communion of the Quakers taps this level

Level Six – Born Again – Living the Gospel and having direct communion with the Holy Spirit

  1. Experience of direct attentional union with the Moon Soul or Christ Child nucleus of identity; feeling born again as a child of God
  2. Direct communion with the Holy Spirit as it dwells in the inner altar at the heart of the Moon Soul or Christ Child
  3. Experience of the Divine Will as direction and guidance conveyed directly to the attentional principle
  4. Reception of the genuine calling of spiritual vocation to serve the Church as a minister, teacher, prophet, healer, or evangelist; this is the level at which you experience authentic spiritual vocation
  5. Experience of ministering the Holy Spirit as your attentional principle; this is the attunement of spiritual ministry
  6. Experience of the robes of righteousness—guiding your human life through wisdom and the moral will; this level also opens the Revelatory Mind or Mind of Christ, which brings new insights into the scriptures
  7. Experience of the heart of gold, the golden nugget of love and virtue at the core of the Moon Soul or Christ Child

Level Seven – Holiness [embodying love and virtue through ascension of the Moon Soul or Christ Child]

  1. Experience of the Jet of Divine Spirit upon the Mountain of God; entering the Presence of the Form of God that expresses in human life and history
  2. Entering the gates of death while alive; doing life review in the Presence of the Great Judge and the Lords of Karma
  3. Beholding the strata of Hell; witnessing the behavior of others that led them to perdition
  4. Beholding the strata of Purgatory; working off core life issues and developing heart wisdom
  5. Beholding the strata of Heaven
  6. Beholding the worlds of the angels
  7. Assumption into the form of the Saint; embodying the ability to directly send the Holy Spirit to the Moon Soul or Christ Child in others

Below level five, believers are subject to the manipulation of those who seek to shape Christian’s beliefs through arousing their emotions. Some manipulate believers to enrich themselves; some do it to gain political power; some do it to use believers to fulfill their desires.

We see the ready adoption of conspiracy theories—and the mobilizing of believers to support repressive laws and policies that aim to subjugate those who believe differently—as a direct result of these influence attempts.

Until the Christian has advanced in his or her spiritual growth to level five, where wisdom can guide him or her, there is the ongoing risk that conspiracy theories can waylay the believer. Those who disseminate untruths, distortions of the facts, and warped interpretations of the scriptures are only too willing to influence those who follow them and listen to their perverted messages.

We note that at steps 11 and 12 on the ladder of Christian growth, the believer is especially vulnerable to the influence of those who promote conspiracy theories. Without discernment and wisdom, and the ability to use critical thinking, moreover, believers are highly susceptible to these attempts at covert influence and outright manipulation.

Those who have political agendas, who seek to enrich themselves, and who suffer from narcissistic and megalomaniac delusions are only too happy to shape the beliefs, values, and behavior of the Christian believer. One must tread the perilous journey of faith with vigilance and caution, as the Path is strewn with dangers and pitfalls that can ambush the believer on the inner passage to holiness and assumption into sainthood.

The Gentle Meandering Away from Truth

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By George A. Boyd ©2023

In conspiracy theories, there is a detachment from consensual reality and absorption in deeper strata of belief and perception. These deeper levels of mental processing are subject to distortion and delusional belief.

The challenge for those attempting to navigate the illusions of the collective mind to determine reality and truth encounter seven major mental postures. These are:

  1. Recognition of objects in the environment and correctly labeling them, measuring them, and verifying their existence; this establishes facts and consensual reality.
  2. Speculation about causation and motivation using deduction and inference; researchers, journalists, investigators, and psychologists tap this level.
  3. Believing in things other people have told you or communicated to you without verifying the information you have received is correct; this is the first level subject to the distortion of conspiracy theories and others lying to you and exploiting you.
  4. Believing revelations and interpretations you receive from your own contemplation or that you receive from psychic readers or religious clergy; this level is subject to the distortion that comes from you overvaluing ideas or misinterpretation of the content you uncover or that is communicated to you; those who disseminate conspiracy theories often draw from these sources.
  5. Believing in signs, omens, and coincidences for guidance; the issue here is that you are not certain which of these presentations are genuinely guidance from your Soul and which are simply random signals; those that present distorted information from levels three and four with conviction and enthusiasm can readily persuade those who operate in this frame of inner guidance to adopt their beliefs.
  6. Receiving guidance from a spiritual entity other than your own Soul through channeling or automatic writing; the quality of this guidance you receive depends on whom you are channeling—you can receive very valuable and reliable information from this source, or you can obtain spurious and useless information. Some look for Gurus at this level to provide answers and show them how to realize their true nature.
  7. Gaining union with your Soul and having it reveal its true nature; this is union with your inner source of wisdom and discernment; this is the touchstone of inner truth and realization.

Not all of these postures of mental processing lead you down rabbit holes:

Postures one and seven form the bedrock of reality and truth. You can verify consensual reality through your senses and reason; you can gain conscious union with your Soul and tap into its direct intuitive stream.

Posture two, if performed with careful safeguards in place against bias can be a valuable tool to arrive at valid conclusions and correct inferences—without validation, however, these can lead astray well-meaning detectives, researchers, and clinicians.

The zone that generates delusion and the strange beliefs of conspiracy theories spans postures three to six.

Posture three is the most common entry point for those who embrace conspiracy theories: because they cannot or do not verify the information they receive, they unwittingly adopt false beliefs.

Posture four is often the source of many of the distorted beliefs that underpin conspiracy theories: someone has had a revelation… someone has attempted to read meaning into a cryptic scriptural passage or an arcane, symbolic manuscript… someone has interpreted an event in an ominous or apocalyptic way. Those that operate at this level still think, although their thinking process may be corrupted.

Posture five begins to operate when someone has set aside thinking and analysis, and instead embraces intuition as their source of truth. This is a highly experiential, serendipitous frame of mind that seeks to discover truth. Divinatory arts like tarot, angel cards, and I Ching tap into this intuitive matrix. This posture leads to a mindset that views the unitive nature of the universe, the connections between all things, and a sense that there is a deeper reality behind the observable physical universe. At this level, one “creates” through intention and visualization; events occur synchronistically.

Posture six typically dawns when someone seeks guidance from a wise and highly evolved spiritual being: this often takes the form of a search for a spiritual mentor or Guru. If someone selects an ethical, genuinely realized teacher for this stage of their aspirant journey, they can receive teachings that help them advance both in their personal life and their spiritual development.

Choosing wrongly can lead to involvement with spiritual cults and enslavement and abuse at the hands of authoritarian and paranoid spiritual leaders. Some alternately draw their information and inspiration from guides they encounter in the inner Planes; like flesh and blood Gurus, these sources can be legitimately helpful or they can lead people into greater delusion.

It is possible to avoid slipping into the traps of postures three to six:

In Mudrashram®, in our intermediate classes—the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program—we teach our students how to tune into posture seven to directly know and commune with their essential nature and skip over the pitfalls of postures three to six.

You can have greater success with posture two, if you learn critical thinking and obtain an education that emphasizes careful intellectual inquiry and analysis.

We encourage you to identify in what ways you operate in each of seven postures, and to progressively learn to uncover and eliminate the false beliefs you may have adopted in listening to the siren voices of the Astral and the misinformation coming from those who seek to exploit you and manipulate you for their own agendas.

The Seven Orders of Truth

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By George A. Boyd © 2022

Q: How do conspiracy theories distort the truth?

A: If you examine the seven orders of truth, you have a middle zone where distortion can come in. These seven orders of truth are:

  1. Reality – You know it is true, because you have verified it.
  2. Gut level feelings – You know something is true, because you have a feeling about it. This may or may not be eventually verified. If you have a personality disorder, marked anxiety syndromes, emotional dysregulation, or cognitive distortion, your gut level feelings may lead you astray, and tell you something is true, when it is not.
  3. Delusion – Something is not true, but you believe it is true. You may continue to hold these incorrect beliefs, in spite of evidence that it is not true.
  4. Deception – Something is not true, but someone disseminates this lie to gain control over you and other people.
  5. Faith – You tap into a higher truth, but you are not able to verify it. You may, as a result, come to believe spiritual ideas that are not true. People may misinterpret scriptures, symbols, prophecy, and revelations, and disseminate this false information to you.
  6. Realization – Your Soul becomes at one with the object of meditation. You know the truth of things, because you have realized them. You may not, however, be able to communicate these ineffable truths.
  7. Satsang – You realize a transcendent truth, and are able to communicate it to others. You communicate it through inspired discourse, teaching, or writing.

The second through the fifth orders are zones where distortion can enter. Delusion, order three, typically develops as a result of deception, where there is a willful attempt to communicate false information to you; and faith, where misinterpretation of spiritual ideas warps your values, beliefs, and perception.

Conspiracy theories tap into these orders of delusion, deception, and faith to weave a false narrative. These misguided beliefs remove you from consensual reality and drop you into an alternative reality; they shift you from reality testing and verification into fantasy.

If you are suffering from a condition that warps your intuitive grasp of reality in the second order of truth, many people get help from psychotherapy, which helps you sort out accurate feelings and intuitions from erroneous ones.

The remedy for the distortions of orders three through five is discernment. We discuss in greater detail how you develop discernment in our book, The Psychic Realm: Finding Safe Passage through the Worlds of Illusion.

The transcendent truths of orders six and seven is the province of mystics and spiritual sojourners; these experiences are uncommon. Those that enter this rarified realm often cannot put their experience into words; those that can communicate them become our spiritual teachers and guides. Those that reach these profound depths of truth do not merely believe, they know.