The Awakening

In the treatise “The Delusion,” we established that a person can spend their entire life surrounded by false ideas about reality without experiencing the slightest discomfort. What is more, many of these ideas are so deeply bound up with their habits, beliefs, and social standing that trying to let them go can be far more unpleasant than the delusion itself.

And yet, sometimes something unusual happens.

A person begins to notice contradictions.

At first, they may be quite trivial. Some statement turns out to be false, a widely accepted norm proves unjustified, or a respected authority turns out to be an ordinary person who makes mistakes. Usually, discoveries like these lead to nothing of consequence. A person corrects one particular belief and then goes on living exactly as before.

But sometimes the contradictions become too numerous.

They discover that many of their beliefs were never the product of their own reflection. That their political views took shape long before they began to understand politics. That many moral norms they considered natural and self-evident are products of a particular culture and historical circumstances. That their desires, fears, and even ideas about their own well-being depend to a considerable extent on the society around them.

And then a question arises — one we consider among the most dangerous to any stable order:

Why, exactly, should everything be this way?

The question seems entirely harmless. Children ask it, as do philosophers, scientists, and people who simply dislike the explanation they have been given. Yet if pursued consistently enough, it can undermine practically any system of ideas whose existence rests solely on habit.

Why must we obey a particular authority? Why should we pursue these particular goals? Why are some forms of behavior considered virtuous and others shameful? Why is society organized this way? Why should we accept rules devised by people who died long before we were born?

Often, there are perfectly reasonable answers to these questions. But sometimes it turns out that there are no answers, or that the answers fall far short of the certainty with which the rule was first proclaimed.

This is where Awakening begins.

Still, we should not imagine it as a sudden revelation after which a person sees the true structure of the Universe. We know of no reliable way to turn an ordinary person, in a matter of moments, into a being with exhaustive knowledge of everything that exists. If such a method is ever discovered, we will certainly consider putting it to use.

Until then, we will have to make do with a longer and more unpleasant process.

Awakening begins with losing trust in one’s worldview. Not necessarily in every one of its tenets at once, but in the very way it was formed. For the first time, a person realizes that they have been living their life within a particular system of ideas whose existence they had never even noticed before.

They still do not know which of their beliefs to keep and which to discard. They do not know what conclusions they will reach in the future. But now they know something far more important: their former picture of the world was not the only one possible.

This discovery can be quite unpleasant.

After all, most people do not build their own worldview from scratch. They receive it more or less ready-made — from their parents, teachers, friends, the state, the media, and the culture around them. Gradually, individual beliefs join together to form a more or less coherent system in which it is comfortable to live.

Destroying such a system takes more than intellectual effort. Sometimes it means having to admit that a substantial part of one’s life was built on false assumptions.

A person may discover that for years they defended ideas they now consider false. That they harmed others while sincerely believing they were doing the right thing. That they pursued goals they had never actually chosen for themselves. That they looked down on people with whom they had, in fact, far more in common than with those they considered like-minded.

Some discoveries are so unpleasant that a person would rather turn away from them.

And we understand perfectly well why.

It is much easier to keep living in a familiar world than to acknowledge the need to reconsider one’s place in it. Especially if that place comes with certain advantages. One can hardly expect much enthusiasm from someone asked to give up beliefs that make them feel good, worthy, and right.

That is why many people stop right here.

They see a contradiction but choose not to notice it. They acknowledge a problem but declare it insignificant. They accept certain conclusions but refuse to apply them to their own lives.

In this way, a person can understand that their actions have certain consequences and still go on acting as though those consequences did not exist.

One can know about the environmental harm caused by animal agriculture and give no thought to where one’s own meal came from. One can condemn exploitation while defending any economic system one depends on. One can proclaim freedom of thought and demand punishment for those who think differently. One can consider oneself a rational person and yet refuse to consider evidence that contradicts one’s favorite ideology.

And in every one of these cases, a person may sincerely see nothing contradictory in their own behavior.

The mind has a remarkable ability to find explanations for practically anything we do. We can justify our own inaction, turn convenience into a principle, habit into a virtue, and unwillingness to change into a sign of good sense.

That is why knowledge alone is not enough.

We have met people capable of discussing philosophy, science, social organization, and human psychology for hours, yet utterly incapable of applying their own reasoning to themselves. They readily spotted errors in other people’s arguments, but the moment the same method was turned on their own beliefs, all their former enthusiasm for critical thinking vanished without a trace.

It is especially amusing to watch people who have spent a great deal of time studying the delusions of others begin to think themselves free of their own.

We do not consider this Awakening.

Someone who has learned the right answers has not necessarily learned to ask the right questions. They may know a great many scientific facts, hold progressive political views, reject superstition, and even consider themselves a skeptic. But if all of this is merely another set of unshakable truths for them, they have simply traded one system of dogma for another.

Outwardly, they may differ greatly from those around them, but in essence they are still doing what they did before: defending their familiar world against unpleasant discoveries.

Awakening requires something else.

It requires the ability to turn against oneself the same tools of criticism one applies to others. The ability to acknowledge not only a particular error, but one’s own vested interest in preserving it. The ability to abandon a belief even when it brings pleasure, earns social approval, or serves as the basis for a sense of superiority.

This last ability is far rarer than people tend to think.

People like to consider themselves independent. They like exposing other people’s prejudices, laughing at other people’s foolishness, and setting themselves apart from the ignorant majority. But genuine independence begins not with contempt for other people’s chains, but with discovering one’s own.

Perhaps this is where one of the lines lies between ordinary curiosity and what we call Awakening.

However, it would be wrong to reduce it to doubt alone.

One can doubt forever. One can find ambiguity in every assertion, demand further proof for every piece of evidence, question every foundation, and keep the process going for as long as time and patience allow.

We must admit, we find this prospect rather appealing.

But someone who only doubts and never dares to act remains just as dependent on circumstances as before. They can spend their whole life searching for ultimate grounds for their actions without ever doing anything of consequence.

Awakening therefore entails not only the destruction of former ideas, but also the ability to create new ones.

We do not demand absolute certainty. We are satisfied with grounds that withstand serious scrutiny. We do not expect definitive knowledge, but consider it necessary to make use of the knowledge we have. We do not believe a person must hold any particular views merely because they are widespread, but neither do we see any virtue in rejecting the conventional simply for the sake of rejecting it.

Someone who has awakened does not necessarily have to reject the entire world around them.

They must stop accepting it without examination.

Gradually, one’s relationship with reality itself changes. Things that once seemed natural begin to reveal their own history. Social norms turn out to be human conventions. Political institutions prove to be the result of competing interests and particular historical circumstances. Economic relations emerge as changeable ways of organizing production and distribution. Even ideas about human nature lose their former immunity from question.

The world no longer appears complete.

And this has enormous significance.

As long as a person considers the existing order the only one possible, they can only adapt to it. But once they acknowledge that reality around them could be organized differently, the possibility of conscious choice emerges.

One can change one’s habits. One can abandon imposed goals. One can investigate the causes of social problems and look for ways to solve them. One can create new forms of relationships, associations, and institutions without treating existing ones as sacred merely because they exist.

In other words, for the first time, a person begins to see their life not only as a series of circumstances to which they must react, but as something they can influence.

This is the first practical fruit of Awakening.

But why are some people able to follow this path while others stop as soon as they encounter the first difficulties?

Of course, education, personal experience, intellectual ability, and social conditions all matter. It would be absurd to think that someone with no access to knowledge, or forced to struggle constantly to survive, is in the same position as someone with time, resources, and the freedom to pursue their inquiries.

Yet there are also differences that are much harder to explain solely by external circumstances.

Some people show a remarkable attachment to their own beliefs even when they have every opportunity to reconsider them. Others, by contrast, are able to abandon the ideas dearest to them when they find sufficiently compelling reasons to do so.

Some experience intellectual defeat as personal humiliation. Others see it as an opportunity to learn something.

Some need to be right. Others need to find out who is right.

We consider this last difference particularly significant.

Over the many years our community has existed, we have had the opportunity to observe many people interested in unconventional views, philosophy, politics, and science. Some joined us out of curiosity, others because they sympathized with particular ideas, and still others probably just found our company entertaining enough.

Most of them disappeared sooner or later.

Sometimes it was for perfectly ordinary reasons of life. Sometimes people discovered that our views did not align with their own and preferred to seek out another community. But it also happened that someone who had been happy to discuss free thought and independent judgment suddenly discovered that what was expected of them was not merely to criticize other people’s beliefs, but also to be willing to question their own.

That did not suit everyone.

Gradually, among the constantly changing multitude of people, a few began to stand out — people for whom this way of thinking was not a passing interest, but part of their very character.

They did not need constant reminders to justify their claims. They did not consider changing their minds a sign of weakness. They were not particularly concerned with how pleasant or socially acceptable a conclusion might be if the available evidence genuinely led to it.

This does not mean they always arrived at the same conclusions. On the contrary, disagreements sometimes arose between them that might have seemed utterly irreconcilable to an outside observer. But disagreement in itself did not destroy their unity, because there was something more important than agreement on individual questions.

A shared way of seeking answers.

In this way, what later came to be regarded as a distinct community within the community gradually took shape.

We do not consider it necessary to describe its structure in detail in this treatise. Suffice it to say that behind the visible life of the Sect there is another degree of closeness, trust, and mutual understanding — one that has never been determined solely by how long someone has been involved or how many of the right words they have spoken.

One can spend years among us and still remain an outsider.

Or one can discover, one day, that people with whom one had practically nothing in common before understand them.

Perhaps that is why people in our community are so fond of talking about the chosen.

The word, of course, has a rather poor reputation. Over the millennia of human history, countless people have declared themselves chosen by the gods, fate, history, nature, or some other force that cannot be summoned to verify the claim.

We see no need to appeal to such explanations.

Being chosen may well be the result of entirely earthly circumstances. Not everyone becomes an outstanding mathematician, artist, or researcher. Not everyone can devote years to studying a difficult problem. Not everyone is willing to admit defeat in an argument they thought they had won.

And if there are people capable of preserving intellectual honesty, consistency, and independence of judgment to an extraordinary degree, why should we pretend these qualities are distributed perfectly equally among everyone?

We do not.

We know very well that people differ from one another. And we see no need to pretend that these differences do not matter.

Of course, intellectual superiority in one respect does not make a person superior in every other way. But it would be just as absurd to deny the existence of exceptional abilities simply because someone finds it unpleasant to admit that they are not distributed equally.

Especially when we are talking not about ancestry, wealth, or social status, but about qualities revealed in actual actions and reasoning.

In this sense, being chosen is not a gift one receives once and keeps forever.

It must be continually proven.

That is precisely why we pay such close attention to those who are able to advance further than the rest. Not everyone who becomes interested becomes a participant. Not every participant becomes an intimate. And certainly not every intimate can keep their place solely on the strength of past achievements.

We have no reason to think that once someone has reached a certain height, they are freed from the need to keep climbing.

What is more, we suspect there may be no final level at all.

The more deeply a person investigates reality, the more questions they discover. Every new explanation rests on other ideas, each of which may itself require justification. At times, this process resembles an endless series of reflections; at others, a fractal in which, as one zooms in, structures resembling those already seen appear again.

One can spend a lifetime gradually approaching the truth without ever being able to declare the journey complete.

But perhaps this is precisely what distinguishes Awakening from the ordinary acquisition of knowledge.

Knowledge can be acquired, memorized, and later forgotten. Awakening, by contrast, changes a person’s very relationship to knowledge. They are no longer satisfied with a ready-made answer merely because it is widely accepted, convenient, or comes from a respected authority.

They begin to seek for themselves.

In old religious teachings, this transition was often described as the soul’s liberation from the power of the material world. A person was supposed to discover their true origins, remember lost knowledge, and return to the state that preceded their captivity.

We prefer a somewhat different interpretation.

The soul, if we use that word, is freed not from matter, but from the ideas that limit its ability to understand and change the material world. It does not need to leave reality. On the contrary, it must draw as close to it as possible.

And if the Gnostics sought a way out of a world created by a false god, we seek a way out of a world created by human delusion.

This does not make our undertaking any less difficult.

A person must give up many comfortable beliefs, learn to endure uncertainty, and accept that even the ideas dearest to them may turn out to be wrong. They will have to confront their own limitations and discover that their former ideas about themselves were no more reliable than their ideas about the world around them.

But in return, they gain something we consider incomparably more valuable.

The ability to determine for themselves how they relate to reality.

Of course, Awakening alone is not enough for complete liberation. A person remains dependent on their own body, social circumstances, the knowledge available to them, and many other limitations. But now they can at least distinguish those that are truly necessary from those that exist only because they have grown accustomed to thinking of them as unavoidable.

This is where the possibility of consciously transforming one’s own life begins.

Finally, we must warn the reader about one thing.

Do not mistake an interest in our texts for evidence of your own Awakening. Do not think that agreeing with our views automatically makes you one of us. And do not assume that simply rejecting the society around you is enough to put you above it.

Such delusions are common enough.

We are not looking for people willing to accept every word we say without question. It is not difficult to find followers like that almost anywhere else. We are much more interested in those who can understand why we say what we do, verify our claims for themselves, and, if necessary, find a mistake in them.

But we are even more interested in those rare people who do not need to be told why this attitude matters.

We recognize them not by their declarations, symbols, or membership in any group.

We recognize them by the way they think.

And yet Awakening is only the beginning.

A person who has once seen that the old world is contingent must decide what to do with the freedom they have gained. They can continue on their path alone, return to their familiar life, or discover others who have passed through similar trials.

And then a possibility emerges — the one we call Initiation.

But that is for the next treatise.