For some time now I've been in deep and probing study of serial killers and murders as a way to psychologically understand the depths of the "criminal" mind, or as I would call it "the extreme ignorant mind", in order to create a true prison character for my upcoming film project with the working title: Crime and Enlightenment. This probe into the dark recesses of the dismal abyss has made an impression that is not only indelible but quite ironic considering where it's come from, as well as considering the deep spiritual truth in which it represents. Who knew that these stories and these true people that are feared the most as the "monsters of society" would become my greatest teachers?
Before beginning this research I had not only had my reservations against such a terrifying inquiry, but I had also already come to some deep understandings about the mind and how it works as well as just what it is. My understandings were this: any judgments, any labels, any accusations from a person are merely projections from an insane mind. There is no mind that is sane. Your mind actually consists of the very accusations and judgments we make about others. The real me is the light within my being, which resides in the eternal now. The judgments, the accusations, the labels, they are what my mind has been conditioned to disown, and because it has been told that these things are "bad" and "forbidden", it is as Mr. Singh has said about his Master telling him to think about anything BUT a monkey, "All I could think about after that WAS a monkey." The mind has become all that society has told it not to become. This inward rebelliousness is the opposite of the spiritual surrender that all of us must learn if we are to even glimpse this true moment and reside where time does not.
So it is well know that all minds in society are innately insane. The constantly chatter-boxing mind with its fear, its inadequacies, its controlling and grasping nature, its worry, its continuous linear snatching of self-projection and the vitality and spontaneity that is the birth right of our TRUE selves, it is nuts and can do nothing but continue manifesting the illusion of past and future that helps it to avoid the now, which would be its egoic death if the now ever were to be discovered by the ACTUAL being. The being notices the flowers, and as Mr. Singh from Mumbay would say, "it investigates." The mind, however, misses this TRUE reality and can do nothing but PROJECT its own "reality", which is of course only an illusion.
We exist in a world full of hooks and strings. Everyone has a button to be pushed. And every button is a string hanging down like yarn from this scared and defensive mind. And we all have hooks. We all have within our minds the hooks that tug on the strings of other minds, while their hooks tug on the strings of our own minds. This is why an abuser gets together with the abused. This is why two people can fight or why two nations can go to war. Why do some people get pissed off at traffic, and others get pissed off at the words of the president? These are just the hooks that happen to fit these certain strings.
In my studies of serial killers, I came across many interesting things. I think it was a fellow named John Wayne Gayce that would dress up as a clown (he was terrified of clowns as a child) and kidnap younger men who looked or were gay. He would then torture them, kill them and mutilate them. But why? And how? HOw could a human being do this to another human being? How could this man stand there and look into the eyes of an innocent flesh and blood young person while they cried out for mercy, while they whimpered for release and compassion as they feared for their own lives and as they had knives plunged into their torsos mercilessly and savagely?
All of the serial killers had a few things in common. They all completely avoided learning the names of their victims. Most of them would also tape or gag the mouths of their victims so as to avoid witnessing a personality from them because, as they said, "it ruined the fantasy." What was "the fantasy"? John Wayne Gayce was terrified of clowns as a child. He was also dressed like a girl by his mother until he was seven years old and she beat him mercilessly when he cut off his feminine looking hair. His father would torture him and call him a "no good evil queer." And so Gayce entered the extremity of insanity and went in search of the proper screen for his projections, the proper hook for his strings. He found young men who looked weak and queer, everything his victimizing father taught him was to be banished from the planet mercilessly, everything he himself as victim had been accused of being by his victimizing father. He then dressed up as the object of his greatest terror, a clown, which represented the thing to be feared the most to himself, and he kidnapped and killed the men who he silenced as to avoid interrupting his projection with their actuality. He tried to kill that which his insane mind was conditioned to banish. And like Mr. Singh's monkey, his mind could do nothing of the sort, it became that which it was taught to fear and hate and judge, what it was told above all NOT to accept, not to think about.
After my studies of these serial killers, I found them to be my greatest teachers. Because they are the extreme and unavoidable examples of the insane mind that dwells within us all. All of these serial killers were completely unconscious of their own projections and the true reasons that they chose the victims that they chose. Each serial killer was interviewed countless times in order for scientists and criminal psychologists to learn and understand what makes them tick. Each was asked if the killing was satisfying. Though they all had had periods of fantasizing about killing for sometimes up to months and years, they all said that the actual killing was just as disappointing as when you go on a shopping spree and you purchase everything you've always wanted and you get home and you feel a let down. This is why they continued to kill and why they are called "serial killers." They kept assuming that eventually they could satisfy the fantasy with each kill. And they repeated again and again and again and again the same action, completely unconscious of what they were doing and why.
It took these extreme examples for me to see that these serial killers are merely representative of the insanity of every runaway mind that clings to its own idea of itself. To stop right now, to observe this mind without the judgments and labels that have led to its construction, to silently begin to pay attention, this is the awakening of the presence. This is the light of consciousness transmuting the dark unconscious corners of this false and destructive entity that has been and continues to be behind all wars, all fighting, all conflict, all psychological fear, all of the things in the world that we wish to change, all of the illusion that some of us have begun to notice. We must begin now to "be the change we wish to see in the world." We must begin NOW to become conscious and exemplify the way to peacefully be in the world. We are the peaceful revolution leaders! And we will show them the way by example.
