The Natural Mind does not need "Meaning"

Wilhelm Reich's "Ether, God & Devil"

The search for the purposeful meaning of life stems from the armoring of the human organism, which blots out the living function and replaces it with rigid formulas of life. Unarmored life does not look for a meaning or purpose for its existence, for the simple reason that it functions spontaneously, meaningfully, and purposefully…

Ether, God & Devil - Wilhelm Reich

It is common these days in the West to hear people talk of the “meaning crisis” in our society. For many, there’s this sense that our lives somehow used to have meaning and that now they no longer do. We are just going through the motions and doing what we can to feel good about ourselves and to try to keep some dopamine flowing.

I have been on my own slow withdrawal from dopamine over the last years, bit-by-bit replacing the thinking and sensory behaviours to which I had become addicted with simply feeling my body more.

For me, it has been a gradual journey that has proceeded naturally from the daily Bioenergetic and Reichian exercises I’ve been doing. Slowly the blocks come out, meaning I have more feeling in my body, especially in my lower back and belly. As this proceeds, so my need to “do things” to create dopamine, or to feel good about myself, reduces.

It feels radical and new for me. Yet, at the same time, Wilhelm Reich was writing clearly about this process back in the 1940s.

The armored, mechanistically rigid person thinks mechanistically, produces mechanistic tools, and forms a mechanistic conception of nature.

The armored person who feels his orgonotic body excitations in spite of his biological rigidity, but does not understand them, is mystic man. He is interested not in “material” but in “spiritual” things. He forms a mystical, supernatural idea about nature.

Reich here explains that the “mystical person” is no different from the simply “mechanical person.” Both are fundamentally rigid and machine-like. He or she feels the life energy that courses through them, but simply uses it to understand themselves as a “mystical” person, as opposed to surrendering to it and going beyond the need for a fixed self-image.

The mechanical person and the mystical person are thus in an unhealthy relationship. The first needing the second in order to have a sense that they might be able to escape the “trap” that they somewhere sense that they’ve fallen into. The second needing the first to constantly boost their ego, through being perceived by others as a “mystic.”

If you are struggling with the meaning crisis, nihilism, low energy or depression, it can be useful to understand this dynamic and its origins. It is not our fault that we find ourselves in this state. It is simply the consequence of using our mind in the way that we have learned to.

We have been brought up in a culture where how we functioned was of paramount importance. Who we actually were was not much valued. And we have, on some level, simply gone along with that, learning to work around the underlying issues we felt, as opposed to truly investigating them. But it is never to late to start.

The Machinic Egregore

Understanding that our self-adaptation towards functionality, utility and efficiency has come to us from the culture we were brought up in can lead us to interpret our world in different ways.

When I was in my late thirties, and starting to become aware just how much conditioning I had been subject to since my birth, my first instinctual reaction was to blame my culture. I felt as though I had been brought up in a factory farm, for humans! I got massively into conspiracy theories because they allowed me to project the sense of inner rage that I felt, for how I had been treated, onto perceived rich or elite groups in my culture. I felt that I had been exploited for others’ gain or to maintain their position of power.

Now in my sixties, I see things a little differently. What I think happens is that, when a big enough chunk of the population subscribe to a certain type of mindset - in this case that of choosing work and social functionality over self-awareness - a type of “group mind” or egregore forms. This egregore acts as though it has agency, driving its agenda forwards, using those who are hosting the mindset as either its agents or its slaves.

The “machine mind,” or machinic, egregore that developed progressively since the Protestant Reformation in Europe has now accumulated huge power. Especially in the West but, in truth, over much of the globe. It has driven us forwards towards its goals of commodification, commercialisation, utility and efficiency. Every material phenomena with human utility is reduced to a simple commodity and offered for sale in exchange for money, gained by working for the same system.

It has afforded high status to those who have shown themselves most willing to forward its agenda - granting them political power or commercial success. It has denigrated or incarcerated anyone who dares to try and oppose it. For most, it has simply taken them over, enslaved them to its agenda.

All this has happened not because this machinic egregore has agency or awareness. It is not an actual creature, or even alive. It is simply that by becoming embedded into the brains of hundreds of millions of humans, and rewiring their brains to get pleasure from specific behaviours that forward its agenda, it appears as through it has the actual drive to achieve its ends itself.

In many ways, and considering our humble origins as primates, one might say that we have benefitted from the deal also. We have lives that are less filled with physical violence than our remote ancestors. We have better housing and healthcare and can look forward to more years. Industrial capitalism and the machinic egregore are by no means total negatives.

But what I think it is vitally important to understand is that, currently, we are absolutely not in control of our destiny. Even our most powerful industrialists or politicians are not in control. It is simply that the world is being run by people who are both mentally aligned with forwarding the egregore’s agenda and capable of doing so.

Understanding that we are not in control of our destiny, whilst naturally scary, is I think vitally important. For we could be in control. But currently, unless we take action, we will remain enslaved to an egregoric force that simply wants to pursue its goals, humanity regardless.

Those goals maybe offered us something valuable for a while. There may have been a sweet-spot, a win-win, for a period of time. But this sweet-spot is now over and we may soon become aware of what we’re really looking at here.

No one is Running Britain Anymore

I’m back in the UK for Christmas. I come back about three times a year, each time for a week or so. As I walk down the Western Road in Brighton, I’m struck by the sense that I’ve suddenly been transported onto the set of a zombie movie. People shuffle and their eyes look mostly dead. Others rigidly try to move quickly to make it to wherever they’re going, their eyes filled with anger and fear. Many stare at their phone as they walk. Very few seem to be simply present with anything going on.

I mean, back in Turkey where I live, it is hardly that people are especially healthy. They smoke, they eat too much. They know it. But they are more relaxed and visibly happier as people. I don’t feel them on the street in the way these Brits are.

Meeting up with friends, I hear the same story over and over again. Electric and other services going through the roof. A cost-of-living crisis. Pensions inadequate to support people who’ve worked their lives for the system. A government that visibly couldn’t care less whilst millions suffer. No one seems much convinced that anything will change if a new party comes to power.

But why?

Because the egregore is advancing in power. The tech that runs modern social media platforms, such as Facebook or Youtube, allows algorithms to “lean into” the motivational substructure of the human brain, A/B testing us to see which specific stimuli get us to behave a certain way. Prior to around 2005, this process proceeded at an incredibly slow rate. The tech and the platforms weren’t there to allow the egregore to hack into our brains at anywhere near the speed that it now can. By leaning into our brain in this manner, it learns how to get us to best collude with advancing its agenda - commodification, efficiency, control.

It has not been especially easy. Because we are humans and have certain human values that don’t easily fit with the agenda of the machinic egregore. But, over time, it learns just the right buttons to press to get either our consent or to blunt any strategies of resistance that we might have developed.

The egregore is now so developed that it can override our natural humanity and get us to go along with flat-out inhuman strategies. When people get in the way of its algorithm for correct functioning, or risk slowing up its mission to get to total efficiency, then those people become a problem. Our politicians and corporate leaders, who got to power because they best fitted in with advancing the egregore’s agenda, now have the tools to enact sweeping, inhuman change without themselves having to get their hands dirty. They have learned the scripts that they can recite to justify mass unemployment, collapsed healthcare, an epidemic of homelessness and a cost-of-living crisis.

No one is running Britain anymore. The machinic egregore has adequately hacked the Western human’s motivational system and anyone in significant power can easily get us to do that which forwards its agenda, regardless of how that will end up for us.

It’s important to understand that this egregore is not itself conscious. It does not have agency. It is not bad. It is simply that we have developed and subscribed to this mindset as a people and now its goals remain embedded in our minds and our political systems. It is just a program running in the human psyche. It continues moving forwards rather like a bicycle does, even when you stop pedalling. We are not committed to the egregore. We have signed no contract. We can change the deal. It is not alive. It cannot fight back. All that keeps it in place are the sheer numbers of people who have spent their lives living in this way.

The difficulty that a culture has in changing its relationship to its egregore is exactly the same as that which we, as individuals, have when trying to change our own lives. There is resistance to change, because the old way is what we know. And, because we have been running this mechanistic mindset for so long, it has become written into our bodies - into our muscle system and fascia. Our bodies carry it around. That is why the work of undoing, or escape from this egregore, has to have a physical component for it to succeed. We must get the holding patterns and dead zones out of our bodies so that we can be free once more.

Those who shake off the influence of the egregore begin to live their lives in a freer way, showing others that it can be done, that they are not trapped. That, actually, the prison door has always been unlocked. If enough people get out, the egregore loses power.

This is work that we can do. If this piece resonates with you, get involved in the work of undoing. It actually doesn’t need to cost you a penny. Whilst I have paid-for courses, you don’t need to give me any money to create change. I am at least partly freed of the egregore and can support you to achieve the same. Much of the tech that we have created, through our time and our ancestors’ time in the egregore, can still be used even when we are seeking to escape. The tech itself is not the problem. There’s no need to go off-grid.

Check my YouTube channel for cornerstone Bioenergetics postures like the Bow & Arch or for Belly-breathing workouts like this one. Take an inner commitment to clear out the traces that the egregore has left in your body and mind.

Don’t become a machine. Don’t become a mystic. Become real. And live.

Thank you for reading.

Download Wilhelm Reich’s Ether, God and Devil here.