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In this chapter, I would like to continue to keep the story up in the same way as it was started in the previous chapters, but now we are going to discuss one very sophisticated issue, which is not spoken at all in modern teachings and mysticism. It is an issue of viewpoints, or worldviews. So what does this mean? A worldview is a view on the world, such a global understanding of the world order, it is precisely the global understanding, not private, and it is not about how some single events take place. It is about the global world order. And I would like to devote this chapter to a story about what worldviews mean and the understanding of world order viewpoints.

As usual, I split this concept a bit. We have three main types of worldviews: pre-rational, rational, and supra-rational. Exactly the same grading is offered by Ken Wilber. – He is a very interesting modern mystic who puts forward such a distinction of worldviews. He studies and practices mysticism. We will nevertheless split them into several more subparts to make it clearer what is at stake. The teaching that I present to you in this chapter is the teaching on worldviews. Their distinction is very important, since it is very easy to confuse the levels and mix up the pre-rational worldview with the supra-rational one.

The supra-rational is a mystical and spiritual worldview that surpasses the rational explanation of the world that science investigates. Mystical science is engaged in a supra-rational worldview. It is only a supra-rational worldview that provides answers to such global questions, that are just beginning to arise before leading scientists now, when they reach a certain progress in the study of consciousness and they have already come to the conclusion that all of this is rational. Some people even joke that they will prove God and his existence sooner than the mystics who got bogged down in the pre-rational viewpoints. So, I would like you to understand this issue quite clearly and to be very correct with it, because today we are often faced with one problem: when the pre-rational is taken for the over-rational. Some believe that mysticism and spirituality are some kind of «swims» in the imagination, fictions, that these are some kind of mythical stories, magical «siddhis» and so on. But in fact, this is a road in a completely different direction, and rational thinking, a rational worldview serves as the Rubicon in this matter. This is, in fact, a scientific worldview, and, thus, science is closer to mysticism than all this mythical religious husk. You should understand that I mention religion here in the framework of some fairy-tale dogmas only. Returning to the issue, it is oddly enough, but in the modern world we can rarely find a very clear understanding of worldviews, so I would like to acquaint you with a brief summary of this issue.

We are going to make an overview of worldviews: there are several worldviews within the framework of rational views, within the framework of mystical views and within the framework of pre-rational views. I will try to discuss this issue as briefly and as simple as possible in this chapter, even though this issue is very, very global. In fact, it is not even mystical at all, but it is rather an information and philosophical issue, although the mystical worldview levels are comprehended by practice, they are not dreams, there exists some experience behind them. So let’s start.

The first type of pre-rational outlook or worldview is a magical worldview, it, like the mythical, refers to a child’s worldview, it is immature. When a child does not have any idea of how the world works, about interconnections, about causes and effects, but he wants to explain how everything works here. As an individual, the child places himself at the center of the world. There is some healthy grain in this assumption, since each point of this world can be called its center, due to the fact that it does not have a clearly defined border. But this idea is also fed by egocentrism, namely by an unconditional belief that I am the main one, I am the best, I am in the center, and everything revolves around me and, in general, I am the steersman of this world, the world revolves around me, I have my free will, my choice, I can decide to do something, and everything around me must obey me.

This magical, childish worldview is very well nourished by the ego structure, by this false sense of authorship. However, any developed mind, evaluating such a system of views, comes to very serious contradictions, noticing that this seeming control, in fact ends, as they joke, at the length of your hand. You cannot control the weather, nature, any social phenomena, or other people. You do not control your body, you cannot predict any diseases and, therefore, this worldview «I am in control», «I am a steersman» collides with contradictions. In addition, the will of another person is another global contradiction. It opposes «my» will, and these collisions begin at the level of a magical worldview. «What can I do if I want to do something, but he doesn’t? How can I force him to do what I want? After all, I am the creator, I am the driver, and my will must be «carried out.» But his will is completely different, and therefore a clash on the basis of this magical worldview is inevitable. I am not going to dwell on this issue for a long time, I can just add that this childish worldview, which arises within the framework of egocentrism, is doomed to failure. You cling to it, you continue to promote it, but a mythical worldview comes to replace it.

You must create some other center of will or choice in the mythical worldview. This center of power carries this will out in relation to all living beings, for example, it can be God. For a child, it starts like this: at first it seems to him that he is ruling the world, then he thinks that the world is ruled by his mother, but when his mother is not able to fulfill his whims, he realizes that she is also not omnipotent. Then a certain mythical God appears who rules the world, and you should deal with him, and you should please him as he seems to control all people, while you personally either have a limited will, or you share it somehow with God, you have some kind of contract, some balance of interests. The mythical worldview presupposes some kind of outside force that controls this world, and we should be on good terms with it. So we start to flirt with it, we try to please it, our internal dialogues begin not only with people, but also with some higher power. – This higher power is the level of the mythical worldview.

It is replaced by a rational worldview and it means that the fairy tale ends. The child goes to school, where they begin to teach him what we call cause-and-effect relationships. They begin to explain to him that each effect has its cause, and each reason, in turn, is also generated by some effect.

At first, it has a clearly expressed linearity, in a way, that you can always find some reason in everything and every action is generated by some reason – you should look closely, and then you will definitely find this very cause-and-effect relationship.

This is a rational worldview, of the first level – when we strongly believe in causes and effects and carry out some kind of functioning in the mode of these cause-and-effect relationships. We try to figure out them out in order to avoid mistakes, to calculate what exactly leads or does not lead to this or that consequences, to build some logical chains. And this is how we function this way, but at some point we begin to notice that cause-and-effect relationships fail. Of course, if you throw an object a hundred thousand times and then it falls on the ground a hundred thousand times afterwards then certain regularities could be derived from this simple fact. They are not laws, they are regularities, because they work within a certain «dimension», within a limited space-time continuum where this particular law functions. This is how the whole science works, all its discoveries, all science laws – are essentially regularities, because there is not any single law that could function in any «dimension» on the same level of objectivity since it is always tied to some certain conditional boundaries. You know what boundaries mean, because only within a certain limited continuum measurements can be taken, neglecting the influence of other forces. This neglect of some factors is always present in any scientific event, which is called an «experiment.» There are always some limiting factors that are taken into consideration, and there are some that are not admitted, and there is always some conditional boundary of the experiment, where the rest of the factors can be neglected. This is how certain regularities are derived that confirm the cause-and-effect relationship. This is a rational level and we become rational people when we rely on it, our thinking develops, we calculate various connections and observe that many of them take place in a certain space-time continuum.

The next type of rational worldview is the awareness that the number of mutual impacts is infinite. In fact, it is a postulate that «everything affects everything», this also includes «string theory», and so a person begins to expand his narrow boundaries a little and realize that the world of mutual impacts is infinite. It is impossible to calculate all the factors; we can only talk about the dominant influence of one of them. For example, we do not consider the influence of all planets on the Earth, but we feel the strong influence of the Sun and the Moon, but it is clear that all other planets and stars also affect the Earth, the Earth also affects them, and all this is – one huge cosmic system and there is not a single star that would not be influenced by all the others. Mutual impacts or interferences are innumerable and endless and «everything affects everything». This scientific understanding has already been an approach to the border of the mystical worldview.

Therefore, we can say that science is closer to mysticism than myths, fairy tales, epics and other stories that we often take as mysticism and spirituality. In fact, this is a childish worldview. As a result, many scientists like Einstein and other scientific luminaries, for example, Niels Bohr, met and conversed with mystics: they wrote about their conversations with Jiddu Krishnamurti. In this way you can understand the desire of psychologist Carl Jung to meet with Ramana Maharshi and so on. All the leading scientific minds sooner or later realize the manifested conditionality of the discipline being studied and they wanted to come in touch with a truly genuine mystical model.

Next, we are going to consider a couple of such models. The first model is the simultaneity of the whole creation. It is a very common non-duality worldview, which says that creation happened simultaneously, at once and only its recognition is a linear process. That which is created at once and simultaneously is only perceived and described by us linearly. It means that there is a gap between the whole creation and its perception. Our perception is discrete, partial, limited, the description is linear, but creation itself is one-time, simultaneous, all-embracing and total. It is a very deep mystical view that means going beyond the linear time. I think I will soon write the chapter «The seven kinds of time», where we will dwell into the concept of «time» and how we consider it in our Free Away teaching in more detail, but today our topic is the topic of worldviews.

Furthermore, there exists such a world view named – Maya-vada, which is considered to be a deep mystical view. According to it, the world seems to us as a kind of illusion that has arisen against the background of something stable, eternal, real, and hence there has appeared this world view of the illusory nature of the creation. If in the first mystical view, we have a view of a one-time simultaneous creation, and it is not questioned, then in the second mystical view everything, the whole world is just manifested and it is illusory, but this illusory is related to a certain reality.

And the final the most powerful view of mysticism is uncreatedness, which asserts that there was no creation at all. It is impossible to explain this, because this is the top of the views of the mystical school. In India it is called Ajata-vada, where vada means a viewpoint or worldview. Ramana Maharshi singled it out as the highest view of non-creation. In fact, it correlates with the knowledge of the Fruit of mystical teachings, and those who recognized the Fruit, those who are in a natural state, can claim that this worldview is correct, although, of course, it is only descriptions. So, we have gone through all the basic worldviews: supra-rational, rational and pre-rational.

Now I will focus on the problem that is faced by seekers. Do not be offended if it will be a very painful revelation for some of you. It lies in the fact that magical and mythical thinking are very ancient and powerful, the consciousness is very strongly captured by them. These childish worldviews do not let us go that easily, especially if we have not played enough with it in the corresponding period of our growing up. It holds us back and, therefore, the rational thinking imposed on us, seems to us dry, rational and lifeless with its causal relationship, with the study of physics and chemistry, how everything works, how everything really exists, how and what follows each other, what is possible, what is not. Only a few go to rational thinking consciously, so most often we feel trapped in these rational frameworks, in these physical laws, in these causal relationships, and we want something «tasty», some kind of mystery, something unusual… And many seekers, let go of rational thinking and descend back to the pre-rational level and become esoteric. They imagine something here, some «siddhis», some miracles, and they just dive into this childish worldview, and this is quite usual. Their consciousness is not ready yet to come to a rational outlook, to a rational picture of the world, and therefore many confuse the pre-rational viewpoint with the supra-rational viewpoint. Many seekers often believe that they have already passed to the supra-rational, but in fact they have sunk deeply into the pre-rational, and begun telling each other fairy tales, start chasing some «siddhis» and miracles, begin telling stories that they have not seen themselves, but they have supposedly been seen by their friends, and all this is very well supported by our «imaginarium.» These stories are precisely its fuel.

Everything that is pre-rational is supported by the mind that is responsible for imagination and fantasies, and since it is a creative mind, it can invent a lot of things that are not supported in our physical reality, in our direct experience. This way now I’m connecting the types of worldviews with the four types of thinking that I have described in the first chapter.

The fact that it happens is not a big problem, because sooner or later you have to realize that you have come back to the pre-rational level and you still need to return to the rational level first, but this time you should return already with opened eyes and not like in childhood, when all your favorite toys have just been taken away. By the way the virtual world is pre-rational in all means, it is a fictional world however even if practically does not rely on any physical reality, so it is also a return to the pre-rational level, to games, to childhood, to aliens and other fantasies. It doesn’t matter if aliens exist or not. I just want you to figure it out: it doesn’t matter at all in this case. It is important that they do not exist in your direct experience, in the Moment of Now. Well, they could exist, but what happens when you imagine? You think that someone comes from Sirius, or someone is from another constellation, from past lives, from other planets – they all could exist… But now you are engaged in the imagination, in the fantasy, you are cut off from the present, from current direct experience. So, when you lose this support, it is very difficult for you to return to sobriety. You start what we call «hard glitching, hallucinating», and a lot of people sooner or later find themselves in some not very healthy mental states, and afterwards some people are helped in psychiatric clinics, in order to cope with them. When the power of these fantasies reaches a certain level and disrupts all defense mechanisms, you start to see in reality what you are imagining. This is called schizophrenia, since no one sees these images but you and this is the problem. Thus another person, other people who see the same objects with their own organs of perception, can be a tool for the testing of your sobriety.

Please do not be offended, but I must point it out to you, because this is the guarantee of your mental health, sobriety, the support at being in the Present Moment of Now. Why do you think monks sit and stare at the wall? Why do they cut off the mind? They are not sitting in fantasies, they are sitting and trying to concentrate on this Present Moment, on the moment of Now. Why are they counting breathing cycles? Why are they looking at their navel? Only because they should «anchor» in the Present Moment, in the moment of now and discard their fantasies, discard the «imaginarium», discard everything where the mentality can drag them: to other planets, to some miracles. I’m not against all these childish dreams, but it’s only a return to childhood and you know that! Therefore, when you come across things that are unverifiable by experience, it is just fantasy.

What is going to happen next? It is possible that we have been boiling in these pre-rational things for several years or decades, because even when we have been reading very deep texts of mystics, we have been still adapting them to our worldview, that’s the whole point. We cannot comprehend Ramana Maharshi, because we «stick» him into our pre-rational thinking. Everyone constantly asked him about some «siddhis», and he answered them thousands of times: «I am worried about the issue of suffering, if you are suffering right now, without any „siddhis“, could „siddhis“ turn out to be a source of additional suffering?» And in this issue he was absolutely right. The issue of healing from suffering, the issue of sobriety, the issue of clarity has nothing to do with these speculations, reflections and fantasies. Therefore, this discrediting of mysticism and spirituality has recently acquired a colossal, quite colossal scale precisely because of the diving of adepts into the pre-rational.

Still there are those who, having dismissed pre-rational, go out into the rational again and begin to find fault with all the mysticism. They begin to assert: «This all is all only fantasy, this is all fiction, I was there, it’s all terrible, just stay normal people.» And here I nearly agree with this position, but you should not pour out the child with water! The supra-rational exists, the mystical exists – this is a certain complete science, and it is open to you. As soon as you are getting sober, grown up – do not close this door for yourself, you will definitely go into a real mystical spiritual world, and this will not be the world of fairy tales. This will be the world of your direct mystical spiritual experiences.

Now, I would like to finish the transmission of the doctrine of worldviews. We have analyzed magical worldviews, mythical, rational worldviews, and finally supra-rational worldview, that is the spiritual vision of the world, confirmed by experience.