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Who used to live - as I did - in a Communist dictatorship knows the movies of “our brotherland” Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (a.k.a. North-Korea). These movies are characterized by much wailing, crying and heroic suffering. It is a special kind of art in this land, brought to perfection, it is Bollywood without the colors and no dancing.
Now I understand why. If you run a dictatorship than do it like North Korea. On first look you would think it is a mistake. Because when you ask too much, give decrees that are too much, than people will feel inner repulsion and denial for this. And North Korea is a country of very totalitarian form. But!! They ask their people to suffer and waile and cry like the heroes in their movies. And now the reaction is - right - denial and repulsion. So the North Korean that is obediant will wail for the loss of their leader. And the freedom-loving North Korean will deny himself bitterness, crying and suffering. Because it was prescripted. Wow. Best of two worlds for the dictatorship.

It is a perfect perfidity, a genius invented this! Macchiavelli is astonished, he didn’t think on this!

Spirituality - a word that is so often used in a way I would never mean, but I have no better word for it, so I’ll use it as a placeholder.

I am no Atheist, no Agnostic and neither a Believer. Maybe I can give room for God, but I don’t think he needs me and I deny myself to needing him.

I detest the saying: I believe that there is SOMETHING. It is so cheap for me, who I used to believe in God, it would be treason to him, or my former me who took so much solace in faith.

C.G. Jung said that the lack of faith of our times is as wrong as the blind faith in a God. I agree. C.G.Jung said that there is this spiritual feeling of something that is in ourselves, in our souls, not outside, in heaven or hell. I agree with this, too.

Spirituality is for most people the echo of faith. I don’t see it like this. It is the other way round: Faith in a God is the echo of the innate feeling of “spirituality”.

Some people need the big one, the clear one, the black/white one. That is faith, that is the believing in God(s). Why not.

But the real honest ones who try to go deeper have to deny it. Because the root is in us. It is something numinose and clear at once. And God(s) is just the peak of the iceberg.

But are you allowed to know this? Are you far enough in your way to learn about it? I will silence my knowledge. Although it is not knowledge, not a trusted truth. It is only …there is no word for it. (I hate the word “feel”)

One can sometimes only go to Truth by learning what it isn’t. By taking only representations  of it. And maybe it is far more than something we call “Truth”.

Raymond Smullyan was a revelation for me. As mathematician, especially as logician. His puzzles about knights (always tell the truth) and knaves (always lie) and about Cretans (always lie, too) made me understand a philosophical truth: if you want to know something deeply true, you better ask indirectly.

For example:

You come to the town of knights and knaves and you meet one guy. If you want to know if he is a knight you can’t ask him if he is one or ask him if he tells the truth (because it is the defining attribute and interchangeable with the question about his knighthood). Better you ask him some petty question, like: is the sky blue? Then you’ll know your primal answer.

Now if you want an information from him that is not related to his knighthood, you can ask him two questions: first the one to find out if he lies, the second you ask about what you have to know.

There are far more complicated tasks Smullyan takes to you with his knights and knaves. For example you want to know if the part of the city you entered is one inhabited with knights or with knaves (different quarters). You can’t ask directly, you will be deceived or it is simply not reliable. But you can ask: Are you living here? And on “yes” (either in truth or as lie) reveals to you that it is the quarter of knives. On “no” of course it is the knaves’ quarter.

So far to Smullyan’s puzzles. But it is a deeper wisdom in it. People are not so compulsary in their behavior as our knights and knaves. But they have socially or psychologically inscribed mechanisms that forbid them - so it seems - to tell you the truth about themselves, when asked directly. You have to ask a different kind of question, something that is indirectly connected to the information you want to have. Never ask: “Do you love me?” The answer will be in most cases “Yes” or “No” for different causes than the relation to the truth: be it of respect, fear of being misunderstood, because they hate these questions etc. But ask for example: “Can I call you at night, when I’m sad?” Maybe this will be more reliable for your underlying question, if the person loves you.

And now look at facebook or on this or that forum, where questions are posed. Don’t give a damn of WHAT the people answer, but look about it, HOW they do. And you will know different things: their education, their ideology, their wounded souls.

Wisdom will occur to you if you find the right Smullyanic question to find out Truth.