2025年の終わりに：友人たちとの対話At the End of 2025: Conversations with Friends
As the year 2025 draws to its close, and as we have entered the latter half of this year, I have engaged in repeated dialogues with old friends regarding life. In doing so, I realized that a singular, strange commonality has surfaced. Perhaps this very same phenomenon is occurring quietly, yet with certainty, within you, or right beside you. If that is the case, this suggests not merely a trivial dissonance in the life of an individual, but the commencement of a massive movement involving all of humanity—a tectonic movement against which we can offer no resistance.
It began to swirl in earnest at the beginning of 2025, scouring our foothold. Because this deliberate yet decisive severance has progressed over the course of a year, by the end of 2026, a year from now, it will likely divide the world as a fissure obvious to anyone’s eyes. It is foreseen, then, that the tumultuous century will truly raise its curtain between 2027 and 2028, marking a significant turning point for the world. A turning point for the world is, inevitably, a turning point for us as individuals. And what I feel now, with visceral immediacy, is the "Crossroads of Evolution" as its foreshadowing. It may well be said that this is the period for final preparations and decisions.
When I listen to the stories of my friends, they speak in unison of a sense of wrongness: that the people with whom they have intimately shared time have, since the beginning of this year, rapidly lost the ability to breathe in unison with the times, beginning to dissociate as if being shaken off. Listening to the details of this spectacle, it bears a certain cruelty—as if we are being shown, with vivid clarity, the sight of them sinking into a realm where not only can they not keep up with the times, but where following becomes essentially impossible.
Relationships, which should have been the cornerstones of their lives, have transformed into fetters for their own feet as they attempt to move forward. It can be said that everyone is facing a grave choice in life: realizing this fact, and having to cast away such relationships. If I dare name it, it is "the shedding of human relations." And over the past year or so, through repeated dialogues with multiple friends—slowly conveying my own practices, thoughts, resolve, and how the times will transition from here—interestingly, they arrived at the choice to sever ties with those they once called "friends."
There is one clear motive for this. It is the grim fact that if one intends to live altruistically in the true sense—that is, to genuinely achieve something for the sake of another—one must stand further ahead than anyone else. In a state where one cannot advance oneself, where one stagnates or has fallen outside the category of evolution, it is utterly impossible to correspond to the changes of the times. Just as a drowning man cannot save another drowning man, it is impossible to truly salvage another person. That we could previously universalize this as "good" was only because it was a peaceful era, devoid of the urgency of such a crossroads of evolution. Values that pass in times of peace crumble fragilely in times of crisis.
My friends vary in their places of residence, their vocations, and their daily lives. Yet, every one of them is aware that their own life stands at a great crossroads, and they are attempting to possess a resilient will, a completely autonomous will, to proceed nevertheless. If they do not, they will be culled. The reality that one will become an existence equivalent to being "absent" is appearing with a clear contour in my surroundings alone. This is something I have felt keenly on my own dimension over these past few years, but I feel it has finally begun to manifest as form.
People who seemed to have momentum and to be singing the praises of their days until now have come to be clad in an obvious incongruity towards the latter half of this year. They appear unable to follow the massive current of the times, and indeed, appear to have lost the very faculty to keep pace. This is being thrust before us as a fatal severance, and I cannot forbid the sensation that the rift is deepening—a decisive dissociation from the velocity, thought, and mode of being on this side.
By nature, I do not prefer to flock and make noise with people; I wish to spend the greater part of the year in solitude, immersing myself in what I must accomplish. To speak continuously, I would be fine meeting no one. However, in leading a social life, the "ordering of relationships" is a harsh choice for sociable people. Yet, interestingly, those who made that decision towards the latter half of this year were the particularly sociable ones among my friends. That even such people sensed the anomaly and were compelled to choose solitude may be conclusive proof that the premises sustaining society, or the world itself, are collapsing.
Based on that premise, I was vaguely pondering this morning what exactly is happening, and today I will proceed from the perspective of our human structure of consciousness. There are various theories, but viewing it broadly, I perceive that a "Law of 8 to 92" exists in consciousness. 8% refers to the conscious mind—the domain where we think about things with our heads and generally recognize the world. To break it down a bit further, it is serial processing, directing attention to one piece of information at a time. On the other hand, the remaining 92% is the subconscious. This is a domain we do not ordinarily perceive, yet it is like a vast, boundless ocean. This is akin to parallel processing, handling an enormous amount of information simultaneously. In contrast to the conscious mind, which is merely the 8% tip of the iceberg, beneath the surface lies a realm capable of connecting directly with past memories, intuition, the source of creation, and cosmic wisdom. And I perceive that memory is not of the past, but is also "memory of the future."
Above all, our ancestors were once able to traverse freely back and forth with this dark, rich ocean. Perhaps among the readers, there are those who have experienced traversing these future memories and past memories longitudinally and latitudinally. This may be through meditation, religious experiences, or psychedelic experiences; but at the very least, our ancestors strained their ears to the darkness of the night, deciphered the seasons from the scent of the wind, found revelations in dreams, and while magnificently mixing the conscious and subconscious, were able to continue renewing themselves. This self-renewal is self-transfiguration. In other words, the logic of the 8% and the ocean of the 92% circulated constantly, like breathing.
Actually, regarding the Jomon people (who existed from approximately 13,000 years ago to 2,300 years ago), the oldest ancestors for the Japanese, I have conducted independent investigations across Japan from various perspectives based on archaeology and history. What I feel there is the trace that they lived while clearly connecting with a world we cannot perceive. This includes everything tangible and intangible, such as the earthenware, clay figures (dogu), and rituals they produced. It assumes that they entered forms beyond human imagination—or in modern terms, altered states of consciousness in a psychedelic context—expanded their perception, and engaged in expression within infinite perception. Even without such rituals, I strongly feel they would have used telepathy-like resonance, unmediated by words, on a daily basis.
If I say this now, it will be judged as groundless nonsense. However, for me, having deeply observed the existence of the Jomon people, I cannot help but feel so. And where I differ greatly is that I have observed the Jomon people from a spiritual vantage point; my perspective differs from that of the general archaeologist. If I dare say, I have conducted investigations with a unique method that could be called "Spiritual Archaeology." In archaeology, artifacts are discovered from the earth in broken forms, but in spiritual archaeology, they are discovered in a completely pure, formless state, and moreover, they are accessible. In short, I take the method of standing in the places they lived, conversing with them, and thereby being taught history directly by them. Therefore, my recognition of the Jomon people is entirely different from that advocated by scholars who look only at the general dimension of the conscious mind. I will not speak too much of this as it will still be mistaken for spiritualism, but I assert that historical inquiry from such a perspective is possible. Then, it should become visible that the Jomon people are communicating with the future. Because for them, the future is me. This is proof that for the Jomon people, there was no past, present, or future.
To begin with, the Jomon people were in an environment physically isolated from the outside world for over ten thousand years after the Japanese archipelago was closed off by the sea. Even if there was contact with maritime tribes in that era, basically, they maintained relationships with various tribes within the archipelago surrounded by the sea. And as you will understand if you visit, Japan is a country of mountains. Therefore, many people lived in the mountains. Since the coastal flatlands of current Japan are urbanized, we inevitably cannot imagine the ancient appearance, but as a way of thinking, it suffices to base it on the fact that most current coastal cities were the ancient sea, and the population of the Jomon period was incomparably smaller than today. Despite this, within such a vast Japanese archipelago, they possessed a mysteriously shared culture, traffic, and active exchange. This was, for me, the most inexplicable and fascinating point.
And I realized. They were clearly using, in abundance, some ability that we have become unable to use, or have allowed to atrophy. This is not limited to the Jomon people; it must be a quality that your ancestors also possessed in common. However, the modern era has specialized in creating the illusion that the "8" in this Law of 8 to 92 is "100," and has severed all circulation. Here, the phenomenon of the subconscious being buried occurs, surfacing comprehensively as mental illness in modern people. Destruction of nature is, in fact, an inevitable event born from ignoring the subconscious by turning this 8 into 100. Therefore, if one is to truly raise a resistance movement against environmental problems, it is actually essential for the people complicit in the movement to master the use of the subconscious.
Modern society has attempted to fill the processing capacity of your brain solely with superficial calculations and reactions. As a result, interestingly, it is pointed out from many quarters that the brain capacity of modern humans is shrinking compared to ancestors of tens of thousands of years ago. Above all, our human genes have changed only 0.5% since the ancient times of one hundred thousand years ago. In other words, despite being here after passing a turning point where brain capacity expanded extremely, it is now reversing and beginning to decrease. Humanity is, as a biological organism, clearly devolving.
Ironically, the fact that modern human brain capacity is shrinking is likely not unrelated to the fact that, amidst the flood of information, we are swallowed by the muddy torrent of information, cease to think for ourselves, and are deteriorating into entities that merely react. And the issue of consciousness, the 8 versus 92, will move to tear largely in two from here on. Because, despite the fact that every human holds the hidden power to circulate the 92% subconscious, there is the cruel fact that the humans who can use it are limited. That is the "Law of 99 to 1."
Until now, the "Law of 80 to 20 (Pareto Principle)"—that 20% of people create the majority of wealth and results—has been spoken of in the world. However, we are no longer in such a tepid ratio; we have entered the era of 99 to 1. That is to say, only 1% of the world's people choose to evolve. The remaining 99% of people will continue to remain in their current state—that is, the limits of current Homo sapiens—and devolve.
These 1% move forward. As Yuval Noah Harari proposed with Homo Deus, their consciousness breaks away from the state optimized solely for physical survival and shifts the helm toward the evolution of the spirit. Because that is the true survival strategy. In my view, in the Law of 99 to 1, the people who have evolved as the 1% can fully command the realm of the 92%—the realm of the subconscious—and realize a complete state within that circulation. Kukai, who once brought Esoteric Buddhism to Japan, expounded this concept as "Sokushinbutsu" (即身成仏, becoming a Buddha in this very body).
Kukai (774-835) was born and raised in an era that corresponded to the transfer of the capital from Nara, where the capital had existed since ancient times, to Heian-kyo (794-) in present-day Kyoto. This represented not merely a shift in the center of gravity of the capital, but an extremely unstable society where the existing system was completely transformed. And he was not a mere religious figure, but a person who brought into Japan the cutting-edge technology and concepts that existed in Tang China at the time. Incidentally, what he preached as Sokushinbutsu is not about becoming a mummy and dying. To perceive this mummy as Sokushinbutsu is a mistaken practice by people who could not understand Kukai after his death, practiced mainly by ascetics.
To synchronize with the truth of the universe and become a Buddha now, here, while possessing a physical body. That is the thought that this flesh and blood body received from father and mother is the very vessel to connect with and accept the vast ocean of the 92% subconscious. In short, he practiced synchronizing with the truth of the universe and becoming "Buddha = The truth of the universe itself" now, in this place. Therefore, Kukai was able to access "memory" that nullified the past-present-future, territorialize the wisdom of humanity longitudinally and latitudinally, and guide the people of the new era.
Kukai later preached Sokushinbutsu as the secret mystery of Esoteric Buddhism, but what he achieved was to sharpen physical sensations to the limit through "training" (Gyo), transcend the small framework of the ego, connect directly with the cosmic ocean of information, and assimilate it in this world. In modern terms, it is like downloading truth directly from the cloud (Akashic Records) located somewhere in the cosmos and assimilating it through one's own flesh. This implies that the medium is "I" myself. He was groundbreaking in that he stratified and established a system of somatic techniques for that purpose.
Also, if the religious context is difficult, please recall the single bowl of tea in Sen no Rikyu's Tea Ceremony. The cup of tea served to the guest by the master's hand is, needless to say, not mere hydration. In a space stripped down to the limit, the master and guest confront each other. This "confrontation" is not a half-hearted one; it is a confrontation in earnest. The background from which the tea room was born derives from the era called the Warring States period (late 15th to late 16th century), where powerful warriors across the land confronted each other over hegemony. There, warriors, merchants, and even Portuguese missionaries bringing guns and the like lived on a stage of power struggles, living in extreme conditions where they did not know when they would die.
In such an unstable era with no time for peace of mind, Sen no Rikyu (1522-1591), a man who was himself a merchant yet stood out as a tea master, appeared. He drastically remodeled the design of the tea room, created a "space where hearts confront hearts at distance," and thereby attempted to measure the equilibrium of the world. The world for them at that time was a world writhing with warriors checking the unification of the nation like Oda Nobunaga (1543-1592) and Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537-1598), Portuguese missionaries as arms dealers selling Western technology like guns and telescopes to those warriors, and merchants who connected the two and would dedicate everything for money. I believe Rikyu held the conviction that balancing the world through his own tea in this newly designed tea room would eventually lead to world peace. While being most radical, I view this as the extreme of altruism, and I hold deep respect for Rikyu's spirit. Unfortunately, the countless people involved in the tea ceremony in current Japan do not understand this spirit of Rikyu at all, and it has become a relic of mere formalism, but the essence lay there.
In other words, the essence of the tea ceremony is not in manners or forms, but in the master welcoming the visited "alien guest." What is important is the point of the "alien guest." And that manner of welcoming is always a world of "slay or be slain." Naturally, this does not mean actually cutting each other with swords, but facing each other with hearts, staking life and death. That is precisely why, because the conventional tea room was a stage for business negotiations and it was common to entertain clients with famous Chinese vessels and paintings, Rikyu swept these away and embodied "Mu" (nothingness) to the limit through a thorough principle of subtraction. Later generations merely call this "Wabi-Sabi." In other words, Wabi-Sabi was nothing more than a superficial trend from the start, and is not the essence of Japanese culture.
The important thing is not Wabi-Sabi, but that the essence of the tea ceremony lay in facing a single individual. And there is no person who was as thorough on this point as Sen no Rikyu. This is Rikyu's essence, and capable warriors of the time like Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi also discerned this. My interest in Rikyu is partly related to the fact that he was born in Sakai, Osaka, where I was born and raised, but I perceive his spirit from such a vantage point. That is why at Shitsurae, too, I ask several times whether you can confront a single human being now, whether you can see a person. In fact, to see a person is not a gentle thing. Unlike the meaning of seeing a person in the world everyone has considered until now, it questions your resolve: can you do everything for the sake of just the one person who is important to you?
I mentioned 99 to 1 earlier, but in the current era, if there are 100 people involved, the very idea of saving the 99 (the many) becomes a risk for you. The era to come is a new stage where you focus your total resolve and labor on the 1—that is, seeing one person and being able to save one person. For that sake, you perform introspection to polish yourself daily, make preparations, possess the resolve to go ahead of the times immediately so as not to be left behind, and confront that person to build a relationship. Conversely speaking, the present is that we have been pulled back to the stage that is essentially human.
The discomfort you feel entering this year, or the intense pain you have felt since around November. This is the undeniable proof, above all else, that you stand at the Crossroads of Evolution.
Regarding the human consciousness structure, I said there is a Law of 8 to 92. However, the thick concrete of modern lifestyle blocks this door. You want to open it but it won't open; you want to dive but you can't dive. That conflict becomes friction heat, burning your nights and stealing your restful sleep. Many people seek strong stimuli or easy comfort to numb this pain. But we know. No matter how much knowledge we cram in, no matter how efficiently we manage time, this thirst cannot be quenched. Because the solution must not be sought only within the 8%. This is not to deny the conscious mind, but a mode of being where it is utilized under my own command in non-separation, without separating it from the subconscious.
How to escape the shrinking prison of the 8% and utilize the ocean of the 92%. We have come to the time for everyone to think about that. Please, ponder that question toward the coming year, and be diligent in preparations to spend 2026 with a calm heart. Tell no one; do it secretly.