We are a self-mystifying species.

In the past few years I have been privileged to witness enough self-mystification to fill lifetimes of self-deception. I have found that those who investigate spirituality are especially prone to indulge in self-mystification. New Age self-mystification is perhaps more apparent because it encompasses adherence to identities that do not easily blend into a society’s common mystifying patterns, but my recent experience has awakened me to the varied ways that all religions partake of self-mystification.

While philosophers and scientists must, if they are to fulfill their station, be determined to penetrate the unknown and remove the convenient mysteries upon which mystification is built, the religious consistently seek out mystification. And there are plenty of priests, theologians, and divinity students to supply the religiously minded with “mystery” material. “Chosen People” is a self-mystifying term. Believers who are convinced that they are going to heaven while unbelievers go to hell are self-mystifying. Cult and clique members usually engage in similar superiority-ridden self-mystification.

Religion is a lucrative business because it sells off of people’s natural inclination for self-mystification. In effect, people pay money if you tell them they are special. Is there any other bottom-line reason why The Passion made Gibson so much money?

People will also give you money if you obscure evidence that runs contrary to their self-mystification. Our tireless self-mystification reveals that we do not love truth, justice, peace, or freedom when we seek so many self-aggrandizing falsehoods to identify with, beliefs that only an unjust monster of a god would make true, world views that cause war and divisiveness, and ideologies that strip us of the freedom to think new thoughts.

Recently, I was commenting to a friend that never has there been a cult that mystified others. What group ever said that they would be going to hell while the rest of the world was going to heaven? So many are willing to shoulder the responsibility to condemn the majority of the human race to an eternal hell, all in the name of a comforting self-mystification.

But the observation that self-mystification always seems to exalt “us” above “others” does not seem to be incentive enough for people to question its validity. I have concluded that this is because self mystification is self-worship. Self-mystification is a misguided form of worshiping God by worshiping our own little selves. But since it is an outward projection of worship that glorifies sects, it narrows the sense of self and makes for exclusive individuals, thus creating more need for self-mystification to hide the self-deception.

When the English colonials discovered the Americas, they engaged in a self-mystification of epic proportions that mirrored an ancient one by considering themselves the Chosen of God and the native aboriginals the godless savages whose land was given to them by God. It became their divine destiny to take the Americas. But if they had asked themselves “How do we know we are who we think we are?” “How do we know the Bible means us when it is glorifying a people?” “How do we know our interpretation is valid?” and “How do we even know the Bible was written by God or those inspired by God?” they would have eventually come to the conclusion, assuming some honesty on their part, that they know these things only because they say so, meaning their opinions are self-reflective, i.e. based on their own sense of self. All of their beliefs are based on their own ontological authority, which is to say based on no authority. That which started as an infinite truth rooted in the knowledge of God’s will for the Americas turned out to be a finite myth rooted in a very divisive and exclusive self-knowledge. The power that proved their self-mystification was naught but the power of self-deception.

Overcoming self-mystification is not easy. In working with individuals, I have found that the best way to undermine the propensity might be to check it from a variety of angles. One method is to join a colloquium of seekers that come from varied backgrounds. Engaging in discussions with people who graft onto the same self-mystifying pattern will only affirm self-mystification and further blind the group to it. This is what churches and similar gatherings usually do. In fact, affirming self-deception as a group is one of their main purposes.

Another way to watch for self-mystification is to apply this equation to all of your ideas about yourself: knowledge = power. If we look at the lives of great human beings like Mother Teresa, Gandhi, and Dr. King, living the knowledge of a larger truth has always meant to have the power to sacrifice selfish ambitions, like the hope of flying to an eternal heaven after death while the rest of the world is whisked off to hell. Expansive self-knowledge seeks the happiness of all as the happiness of one’s own self; the destruction of feel-good myths that soothe the little ego afraid of a world of uncertainties; and the courage to be original, creative, self-reliant, and expose the greed, material competitiveness, and religiospiritual certainties based on hearsay.

Looking for certain knowledge in anything but power winds up being self-mystification, whether the field is science or spirituality. Everyone has self-knowledge to some degree and whatever power of self-control that comes with it. Spiritually speaking, our power, or lack thereof, is best pinpointed in the habits of living, where the thoughts go, where our eyes dart, how we think of others, what we eat and drink, and how eager we are to sit still, calm the whirl of thoughts, sacrifice unhealthy sense pleasures, and look within. By looking within, the penchant for mystification falls away in the realization that no mental myth clothing the little self could possibly compete with the knowledge of the larger one.

Bearing self-mystification in mind, I have a few closing questions: Why are there Judeo-Christian Bibles in hotel and motel night tables across America? Who reads them? Who decided that the allowing the “Gideons” to put them there was a good idea? Shouldn’t every hotel clerk come out and say, “Your room number is 205. Here’s your key. And your propaganda is already waiting for you”? Doesn’t it make sense for people to bring their own bibles when they travel if they need a dose of self-mystification on the road?

 

Sankara Saranam holds a BA in religion from Columbia University and an MA in Sanskrit and Classic Eastern Texts from St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Following extensive travels in India and the Middle East, he founded the Pranayama Institute, a nonprofit organization that offers no-cost instruction in hatha and raja yoga techniques.

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