The Right-Hand Path

Last Updated: 21 Nov 2015

According to Wikipedia:

'Right-Hand Path belief systems generally share the following properties:

Belief in a higher power, such as a deity.
Obedience to the will of a higher power.
The belief that there is an absolute definition of good and evil that applies to everyone.
Esoteric belief in a supernatural mechanism like Karma, divine retribution, or the Threefold Law, which entails the assessment of moral decisions made in one's lifetime.
The ultimate goal of merging the individual consciousness into a greater or cosmic whole.'

The Right-Hand Path (RHP) is often defined as being a belief system or religion where a spiritual goal, state of mind (enlightenment), merging with the 'God-source', or the afterlife (as a prize for good spirtual behaviour whilst alive) is the ultimate goal. In general, one can view the Right-Hand Path as a set of guidelines for behaviour and spiritual management to set up optimal conditions for the next life (be it Heaven, reinunification with God or Reincarnation). The Right-Hand Path is often held to be that where a spiritual or supernatural force is necessary to embrace or worship to attain happiness or enlightenment. The mainstream religions are often classified as Right-Hand Paths, for example, Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, although clearly some aspects of Gnosticism are somewhat a Right Handed Path (in terms of the goal of Gnosticism to rejoin with God and escape the physical world and cyclic rebirth). Those that follow a stereotypical Right-Hand Path successfully could be said to be humble, relaxed, almost 'high', and feeling fulfilled on a deep level. Whilst the goal of mainstream religions may be to 'extinguish' the self, and to experience the spiritual realm whilst alive and after death of the physical body, clearly this is not attained by the vast majority of adherents in their lifetimes, but is an ideal of perfection that they wish to try to achieve to enrich their lives. Most adherents clearly still retain some sense of self, be it to interact with the material world and modern society and to survive and provide for themselves and their dependents. And to have fun. And to procreate! Many Christians are interested in bettering themSELVES with new skills or maturity in sport, business or on a personal level. An examination of the history of personal development and its spiritual and religious origins and significance is examined on the The Secret review page.

Critics of the Right-Hand Path argue it is too dogmatic, restrictive, removing one's personal sense of responsibility for oneself and one's actions; brainwashes people; making people feel obliged to be a certain way through guilt; obligation and fear; and destroys freedom, individuality and individual decision making; dumbs down people's ability to think and act rationally, and tends to confuse the mind; reduces people's analytical skills and ability to be objective; that one tends to interpret current events, interpersonal issues and many other things in religious terms, and perhaps fail to effectively understand the psychological processes or cause and effect involved in absolute terms; encourages or allows narcissism where one believes one is personally protected and provided for by God as one is virtuous etc. - delusions of grandeur; tendency towards traditional notions of socio-sexual roles and homophobia or however justified views of homosexuality not being something to merely accept ; clinging onto traditional institutions such as opposite sex marriage to the exclusion of non-traditional forms; oversimplifying the world around them; stunting intellectual growth in certain areas (although not all) - because of the need to incorporate religion and a set of unproven mythical beliefs, however modified (progressively) to best fit; giving up on life - lacking the confience to attempt to deal with one's life's challenges or issues oneself and adopting a withdrawal/fallback position and 'reboot' to a more childlike and innocent emotional state; easily offended and with unrealistic expectations of the outside world; conditional love rather than unconditional love (in the case of Christianity although this equally applies to the LHP); tendency towards widely differing treatment of others depending on foreknowledge or assumption of same religious disposition or not; lack of self knowledge/underdeveloped personality; lack of real world unity and fraternity amongst fellow Christians, which many only ever find disappointing; encourages adherents to need to convert others to propagate their religion like a virus (esp. Christianity or Islam) to eliminate diversity and potential 'threatening thinking or alternatives' which might challenge them by their mere presence; intolerance of other religions and philosophies; that the 'God' of the Right-Hand Path is a judgemental, cruel, overly demanding, childish and murderous one; utopian thinking; excessive reliance of the conforming of others to one's values to feel good inside; that one tends to fulfil some desperately needed emotional needs but either ignoring others or creating new imbalances and issues, through repression of part of the psyche (a sacrifice) which one can somehow try to keep a lid on indefinitely. These examples may reflect unsuccessful attempts to follow a Right-Hand Path although perhaps not and clearly it depends on the individual experience and implementation of related philosophy and beliefs.

The notion of cleanliness being close to Godliness is an amusing one for many. Many of the cruelist and most evil people on the planet have been very clean and well scrubbed up! And Jesus himself probably walked around in dirty clothes. Obsessive cleanliness is a product of 'civilisation' and particularly, modern hyper-consumerism. To suppress or deny part of one's mind and to try to be 'clean' could be argued to be as far from 'godliness' as it is possible to be! The definition of the 'good side' or 'love side' contains its own failing or flaw, in a Jungian sense. It is like trying to have separate a plant from the soil, or a finger from the hand. Of course, one cannot blame religions of 'light' for the abuses of monarchies, armies and churches in their persecution and suppression of 'primordial tradition' or 'natural religions' as they saw an ugliness or 'darkness' there that they wished to stamp out with decidedly 'ungodly' means. However, unfortunately, the two are often lumped together, and people blame the teachings of Jesus for example for the Crusades which had nothing whatsoever to do with Christ or Christianity, which were the opposite of the actual teachings they claimed to be fighting for or representing. Perhaps this is the irony of these religions. Or perhaps not.

Is the love of the 'religions of light' a true love or a false love, like an enforced love? Or are those that resist it merely in denial and prefer their own self-loathing or self-oriented ways? Perhaps a little of both. However, those that try to enforce a religion onto others or stamp on that which they do not agree with are not embodying love and if they claim to be doing so in the name of 'love', then they need to look in the mirror. This is probably what is meant by 'false love'. Love of course has its place, even in those that follow the LHP or the individualistic, anti-religious path.

Is 'light' really an idolic image of real love, rather than actual love and light? It is important to try to recognise the difference. Is the idolic image of love just a way of ensnaring minds into fitting into a 'matrix' or slotting into a machine, to keep people in line? Is it merely a bright light to blind you from being able to see? Would a divine entity really about such things in the physical world, or would such an outcome only be of interest/benefit to actual physical beings, i.e. humans, to create? Or is a being of light really just a collective manifestation of the 'light' side of the human psyche, or rather the 'false light', which is created and exists because the 'polar opposite' has also been created or refined, and suppressed deep into the psyche, demonised and to become the 'enemy' of the light - or anything else that threatens one's sense of 'light' and 'wellbeing'? Like creating male and female from what was once just unity of matter? One could perhaps view this in a 'Icke' type sense as being anodes and cathodes of a big cosmic battery! Whilst an amusing concept, this is most likely not true! It is more like a source of conflict and war, the conscious mind and the shadow fighting each other endlessly. Perhaps on some level a sanitised consumerist environment will always have an element of division as it's basis is delusion and creating 'needs' and 'dreams' based on the ego - otherwise consumerism would not continue to exist.

If we are to view the ordered or indeed chaotic cosmos that our physical bodies have 'condensed into' or manifested within is the 'Demiurgic Essence' (or representation of the Gnostic anti-God Demiurge, the enslaver of the souls of humanity inside of a physical prison of reincarnation and physical existence). But indeed, as that 'Demiurgic' essence is a confining vessel, it is also very beautiful and mind blowing - and can be whatever you want it to be - so why not! This is the opposite viewpoint of the Gnostic cosmology, or the flip side of the coin, that there are two sides to every story, and one side of each story is always that of wonder and beauty.

Most people perceive 'evil' as the result of one will(power) intersecting another will(power). Will exists in different degrees and in different ways, and the denser, low will may force the higher, lighter, less restricted willpower of the Christs or Buddhas downward, killing the dreamlike ideals or the lighter will power may pull the lower, denser will power up to the higher level of vibration, so that it resonates with the higher. It depends which is the most 'grounded'. If the higher vibration is grounded however, it will always pull up the lower. It depends what you want to call 'higher' as sometimes it may be a complex mixture of higher and lower, positive and negative will.

Some minds may be so idealistic that they are not operating on the basis of freewill, but are living according to the will of others, and their beliefs and values, 'absorbing' the will of others. This leads to conformity, depression, resentment and in extreme circumstances of 'collective psychosis' war and genocide. Those who utilise this 'should' or idealist mindset are often those greedy for power, and to manipulate others for their own gain, either political figures, fat cats of business, military leaders or even malicious occultists. Ironically, at the top of the hierarchy is the mind which wishes to self-actualise in an free manner, at everyone else's expense, much like to perverted form of the LHP. Perhaps the manipulations are a projection of the shadow inside the psyche, a desire for a perverted form of order, based on pride, greed or self-denial.

It is easier for the mind to dehumanise its enemies that to accept that they are humans and with feelings and reasons for what they are doing. People who have made a set of choices, and chosen a certain path to get to where they are today. During times of war, leaders tend to demonise the enemy, telling stories of extreme barbarity, to motivate people to want to fight them. If they told their recruits that actually they rather liked their enemy and that they weren't that bad really, and that he actually socialised with the enemy's leader or parts of his extended family, it would not motivate soldiers to do their job! Such tactics were used during the Crusades, and they were used during WWII to motivate the Americans to fight the Japanese. This is often why atrocities occur during wartime. Soldiers are fed propaganda and the enemy is demonised to a huge extent, the soldiers are all hyped up and pumped up with adrenaline and when they encounter the 'enemy' on certain occasions they just want to kill everything that moves. The military use special terminology to describe lives, death and killing with words like 'collateral damage', 'personnel', 'target', 'eliminate' or 'neutralise' to describe quite horrific acts of violence, but dehumanising them makes them more reassuring and palatable. It makes it easier for soldiers to go on killing without worrying too much about what they are actually doing, although more and more people suffer from PTSD. When a serial killer is caught, he is always demonised by the media so the public want to see him die, and they are more concerned with killing him than they are with the actual victims' families. This is why I am personally interested in seeing TV programmes about combat, life inside prisons, profiling murderers and serial killers, and stories of survival and life or death situations, as it gives one a chance to explore the minds of those involved and analyse their motivations, pain and thoughts in an intelligent manner. It is easy to shut out the 'dark' as it is too horrifying and simply class it as what you are not, and lock it away in your 'shadow' - but which will inevitably come back and haunt you.