Some critics consider religion to be a meaningless construction because they believe that religious systems are not based on objective or rational foundations, but are the result of mythological delusions and attempts to control society. In their view, religion is a set of fabricated stories and illusions created to maintain order or comfort individuals in the face of a lack of understanding of their own essence and the surrounding reality.
Striving for truth often leads to conflict with generally accepted norms and traditional values because it requires abandoning familiar illusions and subjective notions that uphold the established social order. Society generally relies on collective dogmas and accepted ideas that create stability and identity. However, the search for objective truth forces one to forsake these convenient, yet often mistaken, perceptions. As a result, one finds oneself at odds with traditional values, as true knowledge has the power to dismantle established ideas of good, evil, and other fundamental concepts.
Hubris and false perceptions of one’s own worth steer the mind away from clarity precisely by causing it to accept illusions as truth and become enraptured by vanity, thereby stripping it of the ability to distinguish genuine spiritual vision from deception. One might say that when a person, indulging in the thought of their own superiority, begins to value truth not as an objective reality but as their own creation, the clear criterion for differentiating truth from delusion is lost. This, in turn, distorts spiritual vision, rendering it blind to divine truth.
Spiritual deception distorts the true vision of the soul and hinders clear thinking, primarily by introducing false, biased, and seductive ideas into the mind. When the intellect is "poisoned by prejudices, darkened by false thoughts and ideals," as stated in source 9_42.txt, it loses the ability to clearly and sharply distinguish truth from error and good from evil. This state of mind is compared to an eye that no longer clearly sees its path but instead wanders, unable to detect obstacles, leading to erroneous judgments and a mistaken perception of spiritual reality.
The deceiver acts in such a way that he intentionally clouds a person's mind and heart, depriving them of the ability to see and aspire to the highest true spiritual values. According to a quote from file 1192_5958.txt, "The deceiver darkens a person's mind and heart so that they do not contemplate the heavenly, do not desire the heavenly: he hides in darkness the beauty of the heavenly world." This means that by introducing darkness and delusion into consciousness, the deceiver deprives a person of the vibrant desire for heavenly principles, diverting their attention from spiritual reality and deep, true values.