Explain like I'm 5: wtf is crowley trying to sayin Bereshith
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Well, gosh, he's saying a lot. At risk of losing 93% of it by simplification: He's basically exploring means of exploring suprarational thought, concluding that Qabalah is the most useful model and yoga the only functional methodology. It's a decent work of Gnana Yoga.
PS - I moved this from the Thelema forum to Mysticism half because (as Gnana Yoga) it counts as mysticism, and half because, as a 1902 essay, it can't be considered Thelemic.
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It sounds like you might be coming at it from the wrong (or, should I say, non-optimal) angle. As Jim mentioned, this was published in 1902 so one should read it in a pre-Thelemic context. Trying to figure out what Crowley the Thelemite thought about Advaita from an essay written before the Book of the Law started influencing his thought might be difficult. This is Crowley the Mystic, formerly Perdurabo the Magician, attempting to marry the East and the West by analyzing religious meditation through the lens of magical mathematics (i.e. Qabalah). This is also Crowley the Buddhist before he came to terms with his realization that Buddhism was too nihilistic in its "All is Sorrow".
So, as if you were 5 (and I'm going to assume a 5-year-old doesn't hold deep understanding of advaitist dogma):
All of the different religions in the world say different things and they all say that the other ones can't be right. If we try to figure out which one is actually right, we find out that none of them are. The only thing we actually find out is "true" is that all of existence is. Since religion doesn't really help us to explain this, we can use math instead and call this is: "Zero". There's a bunch of math that we can use to show how this "Zero" actually represents all of existence but, since you're 5, you're just going to have to trust me that, when you grow up, you'll learn how to make it all work. Since we already discovered that none of the religions are actually right, it doesn't matter which one you follow in order to discover this "Zero", as long as you first realize that none of these religions are actually right. I [Crowley] tend to think that the Buddhists have the best method of realizing this "Zero". I also see the value in Western Ceremonial Magic which overwhelms the senses with a whole slew of symbolic experiences that all point to the same thing... as long as you don't muck it up like every other magician (save myself and maybe two other people) tends to do.
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@Gnosomai Emauton said
"It sounds like you might be coming at it from the wrong (or, should I say, non-optimal) angle. As Jim mentioned, this was published in 1902 so one should read it in a pre-Thelemic context. Trying to figure out what Crowley the Thelemite thought about Advaita from an essay written before the Book of the Law started influencing his thought might be difficult. This is Crowley the Mystic, formerly Perdurabo the Magician, attempting to marry the East and the West by analyzing religious meditation through the lens of magical mathematics (i.e. Qabalah). This is also Crowley the Buddhist before he came to terms with his realization that Buddhism was too nihilistic in its "All is Sorrow".
So, as if you were 5 (and I'm going to assume a 5-year-old doesn't hold deep understanding of advaitist dogma):
All of the different religions in the world say different things and they all say that the other ones can't be right. If we try to figure out which one is actually right, we find out that none of them are. The only thing we actually find out is "true" is that all of existence is. Since religion doesn't really help us to explain this, we can use math instead and call this is: "Zero". There's a bunch of math that we can use to show how this "Zero" actually represents all of existence but, since you're 5, you're just going to have to trust me that, when you grow up, you'll learn how to make it all work. Since we already discovered that none of the religions are actually right, it doesn't matter which one you follow in order to discover this "Zero", as long as you first realize that none of these religions are actually right. I [Crowley] tend to think that the Buddhists have the best method of realizing this "Zero". I also see the value in Western Ceremonial Magic which overwhelms the senses with a whole slew of symbolic experiences that all point to the same thing... as long as you don't muck it up like every other magician (save myself and maybe two other people) tends to do."
Bravo