Step 2: The Strategy: Overload or Suppression

We can squash the ego in two ways – overload it so that it becomes exhausted or suppress it by stilling it to the point of almost no activity.  So the two approaches are thus  OVERLOAD and SUPPRESSION.

I have divided the activities that produce spiritual experiences into these two categories on the website.  The activities cover both deliberate actions and involuntary and accidental actions.

 What you will see from the list, is that by far the greatest number of spiritual experiences are caused by overload.  On a purely objective basis, overload thus appears to be the most successful strategy if we aim to get spiritual experience.  The artistic, poets, writers all appear to obtain more effects via this route than the route of suppression.

But they are also often tortured and ill from what happens, so we have to be extremely careful about saying the route of overload is the best strategy.  It certainly seems to be the ‘easiest’ route, but it may not be the ‘best’ route.

In both the figures of Buddha and Jesus we have examples of people who achieved an extraordinary quality of experience going the route of suppression.  Thus although neither Jesus or Buddha ever wrote a poem or composed a symphony, they healed and taught, and had a positive effect on millions of ordinary peoples’ lives.

So the approach is up to you.  Tortured poet [overload] who dies young, or quiet placid healer [suppression] who admittedly might die young like Jesus , but through no fault of his own.