New Philosophy of Life
Written by Okada Jikan Mokichi, 1950

People of today, especially intellectuals, condemn and despise superstitions. That is a problem. I think that they reconsider it. Here we need to make clear why superstition occurs. When we look at present human living, our world is full of things that don’t make sense. People try to do this or that. They are sure that it will be like this or that. However, they often have unexpected results. Everyone would have such an experience. Assuming that, the way of thinking that things go as expected is wrong, isn’t it? Things don’t go by theory because the theory itself is wrong after all. We should realize this fact. Humans become unhappy because everything doesn’t go by theory. If so, it is obvious that they will become happy when doing things according to theory.

In this sense, it is important to switch the way of thinking so far or change the mind to create theory. We should start from here. In the world, most of them fail to do so. It means the theories which general people affirm are wrong. Consequently, the opposite of those theories must be true. This is the paradox that I always talk about. I focus on facts rather than theories so that I seldom fail. For example, our remedy called Johrei marvellously cures diseases even though it is not logical. On the other hand, medicine is logical but it can hardly heal them. I often hear that.

Let me give you another example. When a person graduates from school and gets into the real world, they will see that reality is completely different from the theories that they have learned at school. That is caused by education, which gives the importance of theories than realities. This tendency is particularly strong in Japan. It decreases nowadays due to the influence of American education. Japanese education has become very practical. However, students are far from being aware of realities. Let me give you familiar examples. They learn science at school but can fix none of the electric faults after graduation. Women don’t know how to make pickles with salted rice bran even after graduating from a girl’s school. It is because they just learn theoretical but not practical things at school. In this way, people are caught up in theory but ignore reality. This attitude proves that they fall into the superstition of theory. This cannot be denied.

Translated by N.H.