Clown World Chronicles: Spirituality In Clown World

As a society declines, usually the first thing that disappears is spirituality. Once a society loses touch with God, and starts adopting superstitious religion in place of genuine spiritual tradition, it’s only a matter of time until they lose everything else. Spirituality is the cornerstone that we’re missing in Clown World, and the lack of it causes many of our problems.

The elementary problem is what can be described as the Clown World Fork: either worship Jesus as God, or not believe in God. This is the fundamental spiritual dilemma facing the denizens of Clown World. Because the spiritual foundations of the West are rotten with Christianity, the spiritually inclined have great difficulty finding an alternative to Jesus-worship.

Those who are born into Christianity have the option of worshipping Rabbi Yeshua ben Yosef in place of God, thereby opening themselves up to a lifetime of doubt and confusion. All of them who have a spiritual sense will intuit that they are worshipping an idol, and this will lead them into misery and despair, and usually away from the religion.

Those who are not born into Christianity, or who reject it, have the option of becoming atheists. Such people tend to be big fans of Richard Dawkins (who, while a genius evolutionary biologist, is no theologian). This atheism brings with it the belief that consciousness is extinguished upon the death of the brain, and consequently also leads to misery and despair.

Worshipping God as God is not permitted. Understanding that the material world is an illusion and that consciousness survives the death of the physical body is right out. Any such genuine spirituality is dismissed – or worse. This has led to an immense dissatisfaction among the more open-minded people. Anyone with an innate spiritual sense is all but guaranteed to suffer from the Clown World Fork.

Most cruel of all, there is no easy way for these people to get solace. Back in the day, spiritual misfits were able to find others of their kind in secret societies, or were at least able to disconnect from the world in monasteries, but today they are simply flung into the void – if they’re lucky. They might also get directly persecuted by a psychiatric system that is almost entirely staffed by hard-core materialists.

In Clown World, all talk of genuine spirituality is considered mental illness. Not only has science proven that God doesn’t exist, but psychiatric science has advanced to the point where we know that anyone who believes in God is mentally ill. Anyone who speaks of direct knowledge of God is considered to be on the verge of losing their mind completely.

In the opinion of the mental health system, anyone speaking of God is psychotic and therefore a danger to themselves and others. They probably need to be medicated until they come back into their bodies again and realise that there is no God. At this point, they will once again feel the yawning existential despair that marks normality.

This approach is why entheogens such as LSD and psilocybin, the latter of which has been used for millennia to reconnect with God, are considered to be psychotogenics rather than spiritual sacraments. It’s true that consuming these sacraments can be a bad idea for the wrong sort of person, but for a person who is properly prepared, an infinitude of spiritual insight can be gained.

Being properly prepared is a matter of doing the correct spiritual work, which in practice means a lot of meditation and wrestling with one’s shadow. But spirituality in Clown World seldom recognises either as avenues to spiritual wisdom. In fact, the remnants of Abrahamism tend to dismiss meditation as an avenue to demonic possession. Sitting still and peaceful with a headful of propaganda and advertising jingles is not easy, and in Clown World there are few with the requisite capacity for delaying gratification.

In Clown World, spirituality has degraded to such a point that all discussion about life after death is terrifying. So terrifying that it’s traumatic to raise the subject. If a person starts talking about taking a psychedelic and having an ego death experience, they are liable to trigger panic attacks among their listeners.

It’s common for people in Clown World to have never devoted any real time or thought to the question of their demise, inevitable though it be. Most people go from work to television to bed then back to work, with very little time devoted to contemplation. The few groups that are contemplative are dogma-bound.

Despite this, the need for spirituality is as great as ever. The yearning for answers still expresses itself, in several ways.

We may have killed the Christian God in the late 19th Century, but superstitious behaviours remain. Christianity has been reborn as social justice warrior culture. Instead of flagellating ourselves, we degrade ourselves with struggle sessions. Instead of having original sin because of our lust, we have original sin because of our racism. Instead of fighting heathenry, we fight white supremacy.

Things are so desperate that some are even turning to Islam as a solution to Clown World’s degeneracy problems. This desperation is encapsulated in the phrases “Islam is right about women” and “Islam is right about homosexuals”.

The suffering caused by the fear of death and by nihilism is immense. It’s the primary reason why we live in such a shabby and plastic world. Clown World spirituality leaves no-one fulfilled, and does more to mislead than it does to assuage anyone’s torment. The first sign of Clown World ending will be the introduction of a new spiritual tradition.

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This article is an excerpt from Clown World Chronicles, a book about the insanity of life in the post-Industrial West. This is being compiled by Vince McLeod for an expected release in the middle of 2020.

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If you enjoyed reading this essay, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2019 from Amazon for Kindle or Amazon for CreateSpace (for international readers), or TradeMe (for Kiwis). A compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2018 and the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 are also available.

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