The Existential Ecstasy of Spiritual Solitude

Superman or Clark Kent?

What would Superman be without his Fortress of Solitude, far away from human civilization?

Surely, his unconditional love for mankind, his unwavering willingness to help, would diminish if he spent all his time as Clark Kent, an ordinary citizen with a 9-to-5 job. Constant face-to-face interactions with various human follies, conflicting opinions, and annoying tendencies would eventually lead him to lose himself in the pettiness of the vain human drama.

Without the ability to exist outside mankind’s illusory games, he would find himself choosing sides in meaningless conflicts, judging who is worthy of help and who deserves to suffer in their own “sin”.  He might try fighting on the barricades inside this illusion, choosing sides, only to create more opposition and chaos.

Before long, he might simply say “Fuck it,” and spend his evenings at home, drinking beer in front of the television.

Meanwhile, a Clark Kent who regularly retreats to his Fortress of Solitude learns that only at a detached distance, viewing the human game with all its illusory roles and battles from the outside, can true love and compassion for mankind grow.

This is what makes him Superman, after all. He detaches himself mentally, emotionally, and spiritually from this shadow world that people call reality.

Therefore, he sees beauty in all its brokenness, the original light that casts the shadows in the first place. And only by such detached love, free from all petty standpoints inside the illusion, can this world be healed.

The World is a Lie

Throughout the ages, mystics and truth seekers have sought isolation and solitude. This inclination, leaving the world of relative existence behind in order to discover absolute reality, can be found in almost all cultures and religious traditions.

Ancient shamans spent periods in isolation to become the spiritual guides for their tribes, rishis and sadhus of India sought seclusion in forests or mountains, and the Desert Fathers and Mothers of Christianity retreated into the wilderness to live as hermits.

Even today, in this vain culture of FOMO (fear of missing out), we find people who reject the common values of society, values that both create and rule “the world” of human interactions, while retreating to live lives of absolute solitude.

It is almost as if something deep inside of man knows: Living in “the world” is living a lie.

Not only do humans live in a constructed culture, unlike animals who live more exclusively in accordance with nature, but even nature is an illusion, since the experienced sensory world is nothing but our brains’ constructed perception of an intangible reality that our minds can never understand.

Therefore, the human experience, and in extension the common values of society, are all built upon illusions. These illusions can roughly be simplified into two categories: Those who stem from the illusion of the senses (Mother Nature), resulting in all the corporeal compulsions regarding lust, greed and material possessions, and those who stem from the mind (Father Culture), resulting in an endless obsession with labeling, status, pride, shame and positions in imagined human hierarchies.

Solitude or Loneliness?

These are illusory values that, once seen through on a deep enough level, are just as hard to play along with today as they were 2,000 years ago. Of course, on some level we all know they are vain and part of a gigantic construction, but it is as if we need to see it on a deep enough level – in mind, heart, and gut – to truly and finally detach from it on all levels.

The conclusion is therefore this: The only way to true reality is not only retreating from culture, but also from nature. We need to de-emphasize the input from both our senses and our mind. In other words: from both our archetypical Mother and our archetypical Father.

However, in this postmodern world, these rejections and retreats from “the world” often happen completely without any foundation within a defined religious or spiritual tradition. From the outside, from the perspective of this world’s illusory meaning, they may therefore seem like sad lives of truly missing out. And to be frank, sometimes the cause is nothing but depression, addiction and/or misanthropy.

But still, sometimes detaching from the empty meanings and vain pleasures of “the world” means a life of pure purpose and bliss – but a purpose and a bliss that can’t be defined in man-made concepts, as such purpose and bliss exist outside all man-made illusions. Behind what may seem like the prison walls of social anxiety, there are still lives lived in complete and ecstatic union with the totality of the cosmos.

Solitude from a Mystical Realist Perspective

From a mystical realist perspective, solitude does not necessarily mean physical isolation from people or human culture (although it sure as hell helps). Instead, mystical realist solitude means an inner detachment from the experienced world as a natural phenomenon of causation, viewing it as an effect of consciousness rather than as a cause.

It means separating your sense of self from the relative existence of both matter and mind. It involves such a deep plunge into the absolute reality of yourself, free from external natural distractions and human cultural constructions, that you eventually become the world.

It leads to the following conclusion:

Whoever feels lonely or bored when alone is still addicted to illusion.

Be passersby.

– Gospel of Thomas, saying 42

Psyche is Cosmos

Just as most ancient cultures seemed to have intuited, with modern civilization being an anomaly that has most things backwards, the world of space and time is not outside of you.

It is inside of you.

Obviously, it appears to be outside of your small, relative body-mind-ego – the persona/character that is playing this game of life, the dreamer dreaming the dream, acting as an avatar in this simulation of space and time. But it resides inside the big, absolute you – your ever-present consciousness, which is able to hold and be aware of the entire cosmos. Through time, it scans space bit by bit, but outside of time, it contains the all, regardless of where you currently have put your conscious attention.

When examining the worldviews of older cultures, we often see things like astrology and the geocentric model of the universe as nothing but dated superstition and simply wrong ideas. A fairer way of viewing the ideas of many traditional societies is to avoid applying our modern, materialist worldview to their understandings. For example, medieval European cosmology was not trying to describe how the world functioned as a large materialist-mechanistic system, containing biological entities with minds somehow randomly thrown into the mix. Instead, medieval people were trying to explain how the cosmos functioned as a large whole, with consciousness and matter as one grand hierarchy of being – psyche and cosmos as one.

What to modern minds may appear as superstitious ideas about hell, heaven, purgatory, angels, demons, and celestial spheres is more accurately understood as a depiction of how the different planes of existence, including the material world, emanate as a manifestation of psyche (the activity of consciousness/spirit, and of pure being/God itself).

Since psyche and cosmos were seen as identical (not splitting before the time of Descartes), it is obvious that things in the cosmos, such as planets, should influence the psyche, since they are part of it. And since the cosmos, as it is experienced, is an external manifestation of psyche, whose center of consciousness resides within any individual, it is clear that the center of creation is not just Earth, but the “I” walking this Earth, regardless of which trajectories actual objects follow in actual space.

This means that at the deepest metaphysical levels, the medieval mind did not view itself as a separate individual looking out at the world. It saw the "I" as the totality of it all, experiencing itself via the single fragmentary units of individuals that are not actually separate, but just fractals within fractals of the same exact “thing.”

This is also the Mystical Realist view. Go deep enough in your own soul, all the way down to pure, primordial consciousness, and you’ll find that we’re all one and the same.

Personality is a Mask

Still, within this world of space and time, of matter and mind, we experience ourselves as individual units of consciousness, with minds and bodies separated in space and time. At birth, consciousness is given a body to wear, like a spacesuit designed to explore space. Through time, it develops a personality and a sense of being a separate individual. Give it just a few years, and it confuses itself into believing it is this body and this personality.

If we, from pure spirit, had suddenly popped into grown bodies, we might have remembered who we truly are. However, during the first seven years, our brains are mostly in delta and theta states – highly suggestive and hypnotic states that take in data without questioning. Like an actor cast onto the stage to play a certain role, we forget that we are on a stage actually playing a role. By the age of eight, we are our bodies and our personalities.

It is my belief that this almost never happens to animals, except maybe to some higher primates and domesticated pets. Most animals exist in a perpetual state of what is often called “oceanic consciousness,” a sensation of eternally being one with the external world as a whole. When viewing the monstrous cruelty (from a human perspective) of the lion calmly eating away at the gazelle still kicking and screaming, this may bring some comfort.

However, the above-mentioned analogy of a play is even more fitting than it may seem at first glance. The Latin word “persona” originally and literally meant a mask worn during a play. It is etymologically derived from the word “personare,” which means “to sound through”, referring to ancient theater masks designed to amplify voices. This is not an accident. Our personalities are literally just masks we have become accustomed to wearing, eventually forgetting they are not our true selves. But somewhere behind those masks, the true self can still sound through.

Body and Personality in a Materialist World

Still, in a materialist world devoid of any depth and knowledge of spiritual matters, personality is celebrated as the core of who someone really is. A person picking their mate based on physical beauty is called shallow, while a person choosing their mate based on personality is called deep. This is regardless of the fact that a person’s physical beauty is mostly grown from within and, therefore, is a material emanation of the immaterial soul (however pale and distorted the result may be). Meanwhile, personality mostly comes from the outside, from interactions within the world of human illusory constructions.

In the end, both personality and physical appearance are obviously shallow aspects of a being’s true depth. Still, among the two, physical appearance is actually the more accurate reflection of someone’s depth. While physical appearance is grown from within and then visible on the surface, personality is an internal state that is mostly a result of external circumstances and events. Of course, the two may slightly influence each other, just as physical appearance obviously bears traces of external influences, and personality does contain small traces of the true inner being.

It is symptomatic that the minds of today’s youth, raised on an endless stream of shallow digital smut, seem to be occupied by restless identity-seeking, a kind of perpetual cosplay with personality and physical appearance.

The fact that this identity searching often concerns sexual identity is symptomatic of this search being a combination of the two forces of illusion that make up this world of surface appearances – Mother Nature/senses and Father Culture/mind. The phenomena of sexuality is related to senses/matter, while identity is related to culture/mind.

This World Belongs to the Devil

The scriptures of most traditional religions repeatedly convey the message that the ruler of this world is an entity of deception, illusion, and lies. We find Satan in the Abrahamic religions, Maya in Hinduism and Buddhism, and so on. The Bible is a perfect example:

We know that we originate with God, but the whole world is lying in the power of the wicked one.

– 1 John 5:19

In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

– 2 Corinthians 4:4

I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming. He has no claim on me.

– John 14:30

Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out.

– John:31

But what does it mean that this world is ruled by the devil? Simply that it is a lie. Remember how Jesus refers to Satan as “the father of lies”:

You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

– John 8:44

Even our word “devil” is etymologically derived from the Greek word “diabolos,” which originally meant “to divide”, “to throw something through something”, or “to separate.” Through the illusions of our senses and the constructions of our minds, the original unity of pure consciousness is divided into seemingly separate entities and phenomena in this world of shadows.

But this separation is a lie, just as the totality of this world is, as “the world” is just the sum of these illusory parts.

How the Devil Lies

It is first and foremost a lie regarding the feminine aspect and emanations of the soul – the maternal, material, and sensory aspect. This is the experience of space itself and our bodies in it. It is Maya, the Hindu/Buddhist goddess of illusion, whose name etymologically relates to both “matter” and “mother”. You can compare this sensory world to a virtual reality helmet that your consciousness puts on at birth. This means that nothing you can experience through your senses can ever be real or satisfactory in the long run. It can only temporarily soothe, excite, and distract your ego, the avatar sent into this world. It can never satisfy your soul.

It is also a lie regarding the emanations of the masculine, paternal aspect of the soul – the mental and conceptual aspects. Time, connections, and associations. Cause and effect. You can compare it to a program that is booted in your biological computer at birth and then refined and trained throughout your life in this illusory world of the senses. This means that nothing you can learn, study, think, or conceptualize will ever be real. Therefore, it can never satisfy your soul, which exists outside both space and time, and to which cause and effect make no real sense. Trying to conceptually understand and describe the world can only temporarily seduce and distract the mind of the avatar. It is basically nothing but porn for the intellect, and can be just as destructive if overindulged in.

When we walk this world believing in its lies, confusing our separate persona masks for our true selves, and the sensory world of matter for reality, we are basically worshippers of the devil. This includes even the majority of so called christians. Obviously, a life worshipping illusion is inevitably a life that will lead consciousness to hell, as there will never be any lasting satisfaction in what is not even real.

This is without any external God’s wrath and judgment. Basically, we condemn ourselves to misery and death when we fail to see the reality of our predicament, and therefore put our trust in lies.

Mystical Realism, Neti-neti, Via Negativa and Apophatic Theology

Therefore, practicing mystical realism in this relative existence, detaching your experience of reality and sense of self from both sensory input and conceptual filtration, will bring you closer to absolute reality and your true self. In other words, it involves detaching yourself spiritually from both the paternal illusions of the mind, the maternal illusions of the senses, and all the resulting manifestations they bring forth.

How do we do this while still existing in this illusory world?

From the perspective of a conceptual mind, that is nonstop interpreting nature via sensory input, it can only be done through negation. Since the mind can never conceptualize what true reality is, nor can we experience it via the senses, the only way to somewhat grasp and reach absolute reality is to negate the absolute reality of each arising phenomenon and thought (while obviously still acknowledging their relevance within relative existence). This is the process called “neti-neti” (literally “not this, not this”) within Hinduism, and what is referred to as apophatic theology, or Via Negativa, within Christianity.

This is the lens through which one should read one of Christ’s most controversial and seemingly brutal statements, found in Luke 14:26:

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters – yes, even his own life – he cannot be my disciple.”

Obviously, he is not telling us to hate the essence of literal family members, as he is simultaneously instructing us to love even our enemies. Instead, he is telling us to detach from the illusory aspects of this world, including personalities, and to instead seek pure reality, in which our illusory separations melt into unity, where our enemies are just as much ourselves as even our own lives.

Reality is Bliss

In this way, detached from identification with both bodily senses and the ideas of the mind, you eventually find an emptiness and a meaninglessness that paradoxically are not negatives. They only seem to be negatives from the perspective of the mind, and of the false and small you, living in the upside-down world of relative existence’s space and time.

To the real you, in absolute reality, they are positives.

The emptiness you find outside of the sensory world is simultaneously and paradoxically full, just as the meaninglessness you find outside of the mind is the only meaning that will ever make full sense.

This, of course, will forever be unattainable to the one identifying himself with his body and mind, since the senses and the mind are forever trapped in relative existence (in fact, they are relative existence), unable to see the absolute reality of our true self, where no desperate cycles of conclusion and confusion, pain and pleasure, exist.

Instead, true being itself is pure bliss.

It is the spiritual solitude that again lets you see everything as one, eventually leading to lasting moments of pure existential ecstasy.

But take a “human” being seriously for just one second, even if it’s your own personality, and it all comes crumbling down to hell again.