His life revolved around reading and writing and Martial Arts. That was all there was for him. He did develop several philosophies as well, and below we have some them.
Yoshida said: Scientists believe that - Rationality is at the centre of a man’s life.
Superconscious is intuition. Conscious reason is rationality (domain of the intellect). Subconscious instinct is the level that animals function at.
The intellect rejects intuition because it wants proof. Intellect gives to the learning process; the learning process turns into memory; memory goes into the subconscious.
Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am.” Because he said this, he is in the spiritual world without knowing it.
The game theory, originally from math, (Norbert Winner) is based on rationality. For instance two people play poker – one wins the pot and the other loses.
Consciousness for the average man starts when he wakes up until he falls asleep.
Playing the “master game”, which is reaching toward satori or nirvana, causes your body chemistry to change. It affects the pituitary gland and prepares it for producing the chemical that causes enlightenment. It produces just the right amount for your body.
To reach satori you must overcome the problems and sufferings of mankind: 1) life itself; 2) old age; 3) disease; and 4) death. The best way is to know your body. Because when you hit satori, all knowledge is in your body. To do this though you must first develop attention (or concentration).
To a man in satori, a normal day consists of a blink of the eye (if that). Maybe the man who wrote the Genesis part of the Bible had satori and saw the ‘days’ march by. So, the literal meaning is not seven normal days; each day might be 77 billion years. Supposedly one period, of which there are four, lasts 500 trillion years.
Picture a circle. Inside the circle is yourself or the ‘self’, while the perimeter or shell of the circle represents the intellect. The intellect sees the phenomenal world through the physical senses only. ‘Self’ is existence, not individual existence, but existence per se. The intellect is individual existence (ego). What does this individual existence do? It is interested in ‘I-ness’ or ‘mine-ness.’ For instance, if your wife or child dies, you are sad because of ‘mine-ness’ – they belong to you, there was attraction. If your enemy dies, it means nothing to you because there is no sense of ‘mine-ness’ involved. So in existence, pain does not exist. Neither does fear (of death or of anything) and anxiety for your physical well-being or life because the ‘self’ is not concerned with either ‘I-ness’ or ‘mine-ness’ in regard to your physical body. ‘Self’ is knowledge and bliss is satori.
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Once upon a time there was an old woman who was sewing when suddenly she dropped her needle. She got upset when she couldn’t find it and called her neighbors for help. When the neighbors came, they saw the old woman searching in her garden for the needle. They too searched the garden to no avail. Finally, one of her neighbors asked the woman where she was standing when she dropped the needle. She replied that she was in her bedroom at the time. The neighbor asked if that was so, why was she looking in her garden for the needle. The woman replied that her eyes were really bad so she had to look where it was light.
Moral – for the intellect everything has to be sensual and logical and reason must prevail. You must go beyond this to intuition. The light in the garden represents the intellect while the dark of the bedroom represents the ‘self’ or the intuitive process.
The average person looks for the ‘self’ in the phenomenal world of the senses, but you must go inside to find your ‘self.’ You get knowledge through direct experience or realization (intuition – satori) and not through books or schools. To know pain, you must feel it yourself. So for realization (satori) you must pay the price. You pay the biggest price of all through devotion, sacrifice and above all, not moving from the path that the teacher sets for you – even one inch. The teacher has been there and therefore knows the way, you must let him be your guide.
The first thing that you must do in order to become enlightened is to rid yourself on ‘mine-ness.’ A man of satori (or one very close to it) becomes neutral because he is able to rid himself of ‘mine-ness.’ People go through stages, instinct: reflective action based on memory pattern (animals); reason or logic (most men), intuition: direct realization (some men).
No matter what you do, you are thinking in language (because you need the intellect and senses to deal with the phenomenal world), except in intuitive perception direct experience, where there is no language and where you are in bliss.
There is an Indian (Hindu) word for existence – Sat. When you can dream in Sat (existence), all knowledge is available to you. (The Ajapa sect would try to maintain Sat breathing until the last possible moment of consciousness.) There are three stages you go through in your practice of Sat. 1) Knowledge prior to memories; 2) Vision and psychic phenomenon; and, 3) Sat dreaming is realizing existence per se.
Yoshida was a spy for the Japanese during WWII, as well as in Manchuria, and was trained in these ways.
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