The Loosh Farm hypothesis: Don’t go into the light

Why do bad things happen to good people? Why is there so much suffering in this world? These are questions I’ve pondered for a long time. An all-powerful benevolent God is not compatible with these observations. If God were all-powerful and truly loving, God would teach you whatever lessons you have to learn without suffering.

Any sort of entity that claims to be both all-powerful and truly good must be lying. This is of course the old gnostic theory about the deity found in the old testament. Such a cruel and vengeful tribal God can’t possibly be the origin of all existence. Such an entity must per definition be an imposter. Whether or not this old testament deity really exists is a matter we can discuss later.

We can also discount materialist interpretations of our world, for the simply fact that we can experience raw qualia, pure feelings. How is matter, which operates under deterministic laws, supposed to feel something? It makes as much sense to say that a mathematical equation is feeling pain. No, we’re trapped in matter, but do not originate from it.

I say trapped, because there are plenty of situations where we yearn to transcend matter, as in aging and car accidents. We’re inevitably forced to stumble upon the conclusion that we’re spiritual entities, trapped in matter. So how did we become trapped in matter? And why does being trapped in matter have to come with suffering?

Well, this brings us to the loosh farm hypothesis. Robert Monroe was an American businessman who came up with the suggestion that as human beings, we are trapped in material reality, by entities that feed off our negative emotions, which he referred to as loosh. Later on he changed his views and suggested that the most powerful form of loosh is love.

But I think this is the only explanation that is truly useful for understanding the mystery of suffering. Something inevitably gave rise to our universe. Whatever gave rise to our universe seems to have had no interest in preventing human suffering, as history is an endless series of mass rapes, dead infants and genocides. Human suffering is a central part of the design of our reality, though it didn’t have to be.

This in turn implies that the suffering serves a purpose to whatever created this reality. It’s theoretically possible that at least some of the suffering is māyā, trickery, suffering that appears real but isn’t. Maybe you never truly suffered yourself and your friends who suffered childhood traumas are just NPCs and the pigs in the factory farms feel nothing either, you can always consider the possibility.

But I don’t consider this plausible. If anything, I get the impression that our world is designed in the manner it is, to generate maximal amounts of suffering. We’re all designed to eat each other, to rape each other, to murder each other, as men we have faces that are designed to take punches. And by now we have reached the point where most animal biomass, most living animals by weight, are stuck in dark concentration camps, to serve as food for human beings.

If happiness were the goal, this is a failed planet. So, assuming there is order, assuming there is design, we can either conclude that suffering is fake, which rapidly brings us towards solipsism, or we can conclude that generating large amounts and diverse forms of suffering is an important part of the design.

Now incidentally, this is compatible with what I remember from my Salvia Divinorum trips. I remember these frightening jester-type entities, along with some kind of machine in a circus tent, that you enter to experience our present reality. These are all things you observe in the realm of thought, you don’t really see them in the physical external world, your mind turns inwards.

Now the big question I’m left with is: To what degree do we consent to being incarnated here, in this realm full of suffering? I see three possibilities: Either we signed a deal, we were tricked, or we are trapped.

In defense of the deal hypothesis, there is the fact that plenty of people seem to live pretty happy lives. I imagine being Gwenn Stefani or some other famous American celebrity must be relatively quite pleasant, your life consists of singing, dancing and being worshipped by your fans. If you gave such a person a button they could press to end their lives, they wouldn’t.

Maybe you signed up for five hundred lives in Sudan or Gaza, in exchange for getting to live one life as Gwenn Stefani. Maybe you’re warned in advance what a particular incarnation will entail and you’re then thrown into it, having loosh extracted from your mind, until eventually the circus ride is over and you get to experience the life you always dreamed of.

It’s also possible that they trick you. For a video suggesting this, you can find this guy. I don’t really agree with everything he says, he thinks there are reptilians in the core of our Earth, but the general idea that we’re tricked into consenting to incarnate by being fooled by these entities to enter the light tunnel upon death makes sense.

Consider what near death experiences consist of. People claim to see their families, others claim to see Jesus, yet others see a Buddha, all telling them to enter the light. Doesn’t that sound like a scam to you? Something dresses up as Jesus in your mind, tells you, hey, enter that tunnel of light bro, then the next thing that happens is you’re pulled out of a vagina and get to experience yet another ride on the carousel, this time born in a refugee camp in Darfur.

I’m personally leaning towards the deal hypothesis, based on what I experienced on Salvia Divinorum. These jester-type entities are enjoying your suffering and seem indifferent to its effect on you, they seem to think of it as rather trivial, like it’s not really that big of a deal. This implies to me that there are kind of “guardrails”, that life won’t truly become as horrifying as you imagine it could become.

Finally, there’s the trap hypothesis. To me that seems very much in line with Buddhism. It’s possible that you’re forced to continually reincarnate and your only way out is through a complicated process of enlightenment that takes forever to achieve. Note by the way that Buddhism does suggest you should enter the light. The Tibetan Book of the Dead explicitly refers to two different lights you see upon death, with your ability to recognize these lights as the true light allowing you to escape reincarnation, with most people proving utterly incapable of recognizing the true light.

I think this is ultimately the most important question to ponder: Should you enter the light? At the bare minimum, some hesitance seems justified.