One Million Subscribers – A Reflection

We have reached ONE MILLION subscribers!

It feels utterly surreal. I have spent a few days reflecting on this achievement, and searching for the right words to express my gratitude. But words alone feel insufficient. I’m deeply grateful from the bottom of my heart to each and every one of you. Thank you.

Nevertheless, I would like to share with you a brief overview of how Eternalised started, my journey and some of my reflections over the past five years.

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Before Eternalised, my channel was about personal finance and personal growth (I later reuploaded the videos in a separate channel). This was normal as I was studying Business Administration in university, and later started YouTube as a hobby. However, even before that I had made a channel concerned with the “weird, creepy, bizarre,” from lucid dreaming and unexplained human phenomena, to time travel and the future of human evolution.  I have always had a desire to share knowledge and ideas with others.

After graduating and completing my internships in 2020, I was offered a contract in a financial consulting company. But, due to personal circumstances of life, I had to cancel it, and I was left home with nothing to do (If you want further details, I wrote about this in 2022).

During this time I started growing weary of personal finance, and my focused shifted more towards personal growth. I remember having made several Reddit posts that got a lot of attention, and I was surprised to see that people found some value in what I said. This made me want to share more valuable content to help others. Another thing that shifted my focus is that I had been listening to Jordan Peterson, and he sparked my interest in philosophy and psychology, especially with his talks on Nietzsche and Jung. For this reason, I remain very grateful to him.

On May 2020, I published my first video Jordan Peterson VS Friedrich Nietzsche | Is God Dead? And I rebranded my channel to Eternalised. I remember how excited I was to get up from bed in the morning and work on researching, making the script and editing the video. But as time passed, that excitement waned. They say that when your passion becomes merely work, it dies. But that is to be expected. The goal is to combine serious work with play (the senex archetype with the puer aeternus archetype). The first year and a half was tough, barely any views were gained for the amount of work I put in, but I remained consistent with my uploads – even though I was burned out. My videos finally gathered some attention, and eventually I got monetised. And the rest is history. I did not expect my hobby to become my full-time job.

Looking back now I am glad that I took the opportunity presented to me, and went with my gut feeling. I couldn’t imagine where I would be now if I didn’t. Everything seems to have happened serendipitiously, in such a way to make fertile ground for the birth of Eternalised. It is as if it chose me, rather than I chose it. One can only imagine how the future will be, but not how things will actually work out. To paraphrase Kierkegaard, “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” The destination is not the goal, but the journey.

I would be lying if I said it was an easy and smooth journey. Working all these years, almost every day, and neglecting play, along with other personal issues, took its toll on my mental health, culminating only recently (Dec 2024). I was unable to pick up a book and read a single page. Psychosomatic symptoms would appear and I could not focus and had mental blockage. I was prevented from doing my work. And nothing is more painful to me than not being able to fulfill my duty. Of course, doctors would say it is normal and just due to stress. Which didn’t help much. I had a feeling that there was a psychological basis in this, part of a complex that was inhibiting my actions outwardly. It is as if something within me, which I had neglected, told me, “Alright, buddy. Enough is enough. I am going to put a stop to all of this.”

On one hand, I would feel the pangs of conscience when I took a break from my work. It felt undeserved, and a visceral uneasiness would overwhelm me, so much so that I would have to get back home and work. And as I progressed, the uneasiness would slowly dissipate. I imagine it as my personal daimon, who is amoral, it does not care about my feelings, but merely wants me to fulfill my duty or “soul-essence.” This is also probably due to a combination of high conscientiousness (achieving goals and completing tasks) and medium-high neuroticism (prone to melancholy, anxiety, stress).

On the other hand, I continued to endure unpleasant states of mind by distracting myself with work, focusing on tasks to feel a sense of accomplishment, even if I were miserable and burned-out most of the time. This doesn’t help, as my temperament is already inclined to melancholy. This is one of the reasons why I consider Kierkegaard, who often spoke of melancholy, as my favourite philosopher. Another reason is that it was through reading Kierkegaard that I was convinced of the value of religion, despite being a fervent Nietzschean. In The Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard writes about the irony of selfhood: one can never truly become oneself without God, for without Him, one lacks something eternally firm. Paradoxically, true selfhood is only possible by standing transparently before God, whose higher self alone can overwhelm and complete our fragmented self.

I was faced with a contradiction. It seemed that no matter what I did: work or not, I would feel uneasy. As Jungian analyst James Hollis said in an interview:

Suffering is often caused by a clash of opposites. Should I help my family and honour them or grow and live my journey? The answer is, both. That is the difficulty. The hard thing in life is not to choose between right or wrong, but to choose between two things that seem equally right and true, both are costly. That’s a real life issue.

I was then reminded of my anima, the contrasexual soul-image or archetype of life within me. When I was feeling especially lifeless and during my dark night of the soul, I had an encounter with her dark side in my first active imagination session in 2022. She was angry and hostile towards me, and said:

“I sit here and guard you. I tend you in my garden. You are one of my flowers. You are a flower that I value, but you disgust me, you are rotten, decaying, I want you out of my garden. I will have you uprooted.”

I appeared as a rotten flower because I had been neglecting to exercise and take care of my body and health. Therefore, whenever I exercise and take care of my body, I imagine her happy as flowers bloom in her garden. She is happy and I am happy, and I feel alive, or animated.

I decided to share these active imagination sessions in a recently published eBook: A Brief Introduction to Active Imagination, and how this technique, which Jung considered the most powerful tool to access the unconscious, has helped me to find the images which were concealed in my emotions.

At first, I was hesitant to share these personal experiences, but if there is discomfort – I believe you should look into it, for there lies the shadow guarding the gold. What you most need is found where you wish to look. Hence the alchemical maxim, in sterquiliniis invenitur (in filth, it will be found). Most importantly, I thought it might help other people going through similar difficulties.

Starting on Jan 1, 2025. I seriously focused on physical exercise, lifting weights and doing calisthenics 5 to 6 times per week and walking at least ten thousand steps per day, to compensate for my psychological issues. I find it helpful to write down what I have done on a notebook calendar. The difficult part is to start. Later as it becomes a habit, you just go with the flow. As Lao Tzu wrote, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” This has helped me alleviate the psychosomatic symptoms, though they still reappear from time to time, in less intensity. Now I have to learn to take more rest days, as the goal is sustainability. At times, I feel miserable, but I am also more alive than ever – more in tune with myself, others, and the world.

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from any illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome than one cannot walk away from it… If anyone denies that health resides in motion, then I walk away from all morbid objections. Thus, if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.

Søren Kierkegaard, Letters and Documents. Letter 150 to his sister-in-law Henriette Kierkegaard (1847)

A sedentary life is the real sin against the Holy Spirit. Only those thoughts that come by walking have any value.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

Thanks to a friend, I stopped watching porn half a year ago, which was something I struggled for 10+ years. I also find value in celibacy (as I am currently single). Lust is always there, of course, but its effects on you can be lessened. It is like taming a wild beast. Or, as my friend told me, it is like a hydra. You shouldn’t try to fight it, for every time you cut off one of its heads, another one reappears. Rather, you should inspect it and study it. Eventually, it becomes bored and goes back to its cave to sleep. I realised how much of the porn industry is a war on the human mind. No wonder it is free, and why anyone can access it in a few seconds. The less we are in control of ourselves, the easier it is to control us. It is part of the ongoing spiritual warfare, whose effects are felt, even if it may be too subtle to notice its patterns. It is diabolic par excellence. The term devil derives from the Greek diábolos (“the one who divides”). This division not only occurs externally, but internally too. See the Psychology of the Devil for the characteristics of the diabolic: temptation, deception, division, diversion, addiction, obsession, oppression, loss of meaning, and finally, suicide. Knowing the demonic pattern is already half the battle. I also recommend the movie Nefarious (2023), which I think is the best depiction of how the diabolic operates in reality.

On January I started going to a psychologist (Jungian, of course!) for the first time, which I had neglected because of fear of being vulnerable or asking for help. In the sixth stage of The Hero’s Journey: Tests, Allies, and Enemies, a common barrier is the fear of asking for help, for being seen as less than capable or for possibly being rejected. Ironically, vulnerability becomes a key skill in resiliency, rather than a sign of weakness. The weekly 1-hour sessions with my analyst revolve around the interpretation of one of my recent dreams. This may seem like little. However, the less, the better – as the sessions become more focused and one delves into the deeper parts of oneself. It allows for depth in self-knowledge, rather than mere breadth and superficiality.

Moreover, no matter how much I may know about psychological concepts, they ultimately matter very little if not put into practice.

In psychology one has not really understood something until one has lived it. Just having a term for something means nothing. It needs to touch the heart or affect one’s life. A word has to get under our skin, sink in deep, so that it becomes part of us, that we live in it. Only when this is the case, when it is about more than words, does one know what the heart says and what the spirit thinks… only then is one faced with the problem of a conscious individuation process – a very difficult and often painful task.

Carl Jung, Reflections on the Life and Dreams of C.G. Jung

Highs and lows are part of life. Many times I’ve been so frustrated that I thought to quit and leave it all, for some peace of mind. YouTube’s system is not sustainable. Every new video is expected to do better than the previous one. But that is not realistic. And YouTube shows you in the analytics when your video performs badly, and that demotivates you, because your livelihood depends on it. Every upload is unexpected. But, no matter how difficult it is, I know it is what is most meaningful to me, even if it causes suffering. For, as Carl Jung says,

Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate [or authentic] suffering.

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol. 11: Psychology and Religion, §129

And as Viktor Frankl says,

In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning such as the meaning of a sacrifice.

Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

Your meaning of life, of course, must be ethical and not directed to hurting others.

What really keeps me going, however, and what I cherish most are the comments from people around the world saying that my videos helped them in their difficult times, or at least helped them to understand themselves better, or that they have finally found like-minded individuals and do not feel so alone in their journey. We have to support each other, perhaps more than ever.

When I think about what is most meaningful in life, an image comes up, which I first learned about from one of Bishop Robert Barron’s Sunday Sermons: Have You Found Joy? This image is of the Rota Fortuna (or Wheel of Fortune) shown in medieval manuscripts. There is a king who lives on the rim of the wheel. On the top of the wheel, he is reigning and the kingdom prospers, then the wheel moves clockwise and you see how his crown falls, “I have reigned”, at the bottom is the dark night of the soul, “I have lost my kingdom”, and finally, he climbs back up to retake his throne, “I shall reign”. This represents, for me, all that is temporal (money, pleasure, fame, power, etc), or as the book of Ecclesiastes puts it:

I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

Ecclesiastes 1:14

When you realise that you have been focusing on chasing after the wind, or that you have been numbing yourself with pleasure and it no longer fulfills you, you come face to face with the void of your inner being and there is no eternal core to anchor you in reality. What are you going to do when you got nothing? You become spiritually dead, but have to keep waking up, earning income for food, clothes, and paying the bills. You drag along like a lifeless zombie in your already difficult Sisyphean existence, an outward manifestation of never having known yourself.

The biggest danger, that of losing oneself, can pass off in the world as quietly as if it were nothing: every other loss, an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. is bound to be noticed.

Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death

And:

Anthropologists have long known that when a tribe of people lose their feeling that their way of life is worthwhile, they may stop reproducing, or in large numbers simply lie down and die beside streams full of fish: food is not the primary nourishment of man.

Ernest Becker, The Birth and Death of Meaning

Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death suggests that death is what we most fear in life, and thus we spend our whole lives repressing it. We construct “immortality projects” to avoid confronting our mortality. There is some truth to this, but it is not representative of all of humanity. What about those who commit suicide? Some people do not deny death, but prefer it over life. Spiritual death is worse than physical death.

I went into the inner death and saw that outer dying is better than inner death. And I decided to die outside and to live within. For that reason I turned away and sought the place of the inner life.

Carl Jung, The Red Book

When you go at war with yourself, you find peace, because you find yourself. The real competition is against your other self.

When I row competitively, it may look as though I am trying to beat the other rowers, but I am in fact engaged in a much more significant competition: the one against my other self. He didn’t want to learn to row. He didn’t want to do workouts, preferring instead to spend the predawn hours asleep in a warm bed… (“If you just quit rowing,” he would say in his most seductive voice, “all this pain would come to an end. Why not just quit? Think of how good it would feel!”). It is curious, but my competitors in a race are simultaneously my teammates in the much more important competition against my other self. By racing against each other, we are all simultaneously racing against ourselves, although not all of us are consciously aware of doing so. To race against each other, we must individually overcome ourselves – our fears, our laziness, our lack of self-discipline. And it is entirely possible for someone to lose the competition against the other rowers – indeed, to come in last – but in the process of doing so to have triumphed in the competition against his other self.

William B. Irvine, A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

As the Roman poet Juvenal wrote, as the first in a list of what is most desirable in life, “mens sana in corpore sano” (a healthy mind in a healthy body). Maintaining a healthy body is just as much a mental challenge as a physical one. It requires discipline over instant gratification, patience through slow progress, eating the right food, a balanced self-image, realistic expectations, avoiding overexertion and burnout, etc.

One must also, however, focus on the soul (your innermost being) and the spirit (your connection with God). These three parts of the human being – body, soul, and spirit – must be in balance, and they complement each other. But if you miss one, it it as if you miss 1/3 of yourself.

Prayer is important for me. I recommend that you make a space in your home for a prayer corner, a sacred place to be alone and contemplate. While praying, I sometimes feel “truly at home”, and an inner warmth that envelops my body. Other times, nothing happens. But I try to pray without a goal in mind, to be simply immersed in the prayer and in the moment.

Have you got a corner somewhere in your house where you perform the rites, as you can see in India? Even the very simple houses there have at least a curtained corner where the members of the household can perform the symbolic life, where they can make their new vows or their meditation. We don’t have it; we have no such corner.

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol. 11: Psychology and Religion

I often hear of people blaming God for not being there for them in times of distress and difficulty, and that is a major reason of becoming an atheist. I can relate as I have been an atheist-agnostic most of my life, only becoming a Christian in 2022. But if only we would shift from blaming God to asking Him for courage and strength to overcome our difficulties, unexpected things might occur. To suffer meaningfully allows the soul to grow.

The meaninglessness of suffering, not the suffering, was the curse that lay over mankind so far.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals

Apart from the temporal aspects of life discussed, there is something deeper, more stable, and more vital, within each of us. This is represented by the centre of the wheel. The centre is a symbol of the Self (or God-image). Our goal seems to be to unite our ego with this eternal centre, which the alchemists aptly represent with the philosophers’ stone (a stone is something solid, durable, resilient, immovable, etc.).

Religion helps to unite our fragmented selves with the God-image, which gives us a sense of totality. Buddhists deny the rim of the wheel in order to focus on the centre, similarly, Christians follow the maxim, “thy will be done”, surrendering or emptying one’s personal will to be filled with the divine will of God (kenosis). This allows for union with God (theosis). For me, Christianity is unique among religions insofar as it is God who descends and becomes man, to suffer for us, and offering us His hand, rather than us having to ascend to God and asking for His hand.

When you walk with God, you never walk alone.

Let nothing disturb you,
nothing shake you.
Everything passes,
God does not change.
Patience obtains everything.
Whoever has God lacks nothing.
Only God suffices.

Let nothing disturb you. Poem by St. Teresa of Ávila

To surrender to God is to fall back upon your soul, given by Him, and we must remember what this is. For within it lies our essence—the very reason we were born into this world. To surrender is not to rid yourself of responsibility, but to give you time to replenish your soul, and redirect you to what truly matters, like a lost ship finding its way back to shore.

According to Plato, life is a process of anamnesis (recollection or remembrance). Before birth, the soul existed in the realm of Forms, where it had direct knowledge of perfect, eternal truths. However, upon incarnation, the soul drinks from Lethe, the River of Forgetfulness, causing it to lose this knowledge. Thus, learning is not about acquiring new information, but about remembering what the soul once knew. Similarly, in Chinese mythology, before reincarnation, souls pass through the Pavilion of Forgetfulness, where an old woman, Meng Po, serves them a special tea. This tea causes instant and permanent amnesia, erasing all memory of past lives. Having been purged of all previous sins and knowledge, the soul is then reborn into a new body, its fate determined by the karma accumulated over its past lifetimes, and the cycle begins anew.

Empty your heart’s worries and let it be filled with God’s love. Know that everything will be taken care of, but that requires an act of surrender and sacrificing what you value (which is usually the temporal aspects). This provides relief from anxiety, suffering, meaninglessness and hopelessness. The Stoics called this apatheia (a– ‘without’ and pathos ‘suffering, passion’), a state of tranquility where one is not continually swept away by emotional fluctuations, but is content as one is, including one’s defects.

This may sound to some like a denial or escape from reality or the responsibilities of daily life, but it is actually an enhancement of reality. One still lives within the temporal realm, with the continual cycle of the outer circle, playing one’s role within the world’s stage, but that is not the primary thing. The primary thing is within you. You may lose everything: your job, your loved ones, your reputation, your health…, but nobody can take away the inner images within you.

You have to constantly remind yourself to be aligned to the centre, that gives you order in the midst of chaos, then you can experience ecstasy—you stand outside of yourself and are part of the eternal realm, without ceasing to be yourself and live in the temporal realm. Like Kierkegaard’s knight of faith, you must take a leap from finitude to infinity, and back again to finitude. Then you can delight in everything finite, even while knowing the bliss of infinity. Or as is written in the Emerald Tablet:

True it is, without falsehood, certain and most true. That which is below is like that which is above, and that which is above is like that which is below, to accomplish the miracle of one only thing… It ascends from the earth to the heaven, and descends again to the earth, and receives the power of the above and below. Thus you will have the glory of the whole world. Therefore all darkness will flee from you.

Hermes Trismegistus, Emerald Tablet

The meaning and purpose of life is unique to each one of us, and it seems to be the fulfillment of that eternal core within us, which since ancient times has been called the soul. But as Jung said,

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol. 12: Psychology and Alchemy

I sometimes I think about what would have been most meaningful in my life if I was on my deathbed. What would I want people to think about me at my funeral? Heidegger’s concept of Being-toward-Death pops up—it is too easy to get lost in the everyday, until we face death and start to think about who we truly were, ironically, for the first time we actually live for ourselves, without spending time thinking about the approval of other people on who we are. All of our social masks fall off and shatter, and we are faced with the reality of our being, who we truly are.

If you have remained true to yourself and focused on the valuable aspects of life, you remain at peace, if not, you have deep regret. In my case, I doubt that I would be thinking about my outer achievements. I resonate deeply with what Jung wrote:

Outward circumstances are no substitute for inner experience. Therefore my life has been singularly poor in outward happenings. I cannot tell much about them, for it would strike me as hollow and insubstantial. I can understand myself only in the light of inner happenings. It is these that make up the singularity of my life.

Carl Jung: Memories, Dreams, Reflections

My deepest regret would be not having loved others enough, not having spend enough time with people I value, and having caused people unnecessary suffering.

So, love others and try to harm people as little as possible. And also, equally important, learn to love yourself.

Take good care.

With love,
Eternalised

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