Goetic "Demons"
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@Froclown said
"yes an all that suchness and emptiness are found in the reason, that is in the information of the mind.
but where is the mind? all thoughts and experiences are information in the mind, the mind itself is just the sum of the information.
Where is the mind? where is the suchness the emptiness?
Lo and behold it is in the physical brain!"
Such is your experience.
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yes, such is my experience.
and why do I experience at all?
What is it that I experience, and what are tho causes of these experiences?
And just what am I?
If the answer to all of those questions is not Physical substances with properties which interact with eachother mechanistically in space-time, what then perchance is the answer?
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@Froclown said
"yes, such is my experience.
and why do I experience at all?
What is it that I experience, and what are tho causes of these experiences?
And just what am I?
If the answer to all of those questions is not Physical substances with properties which interact with eachother mechanistically in space-time, what then perchance is the answer?"
The answer is the 'constant' which is not really much of a 'constant' at all, not physical (but is, expressively) and is not measurable by our instruments (directly). The constant is nothing which is not a literal nothing but a No-Thing described as sunyata, bodhicitta and 'suchness.' Read "The Law Is For All" to get a better assessment of Crowley's cosmology featuring Nuit, Hadit and... well, you know... (or do you? No, I guess not, eh?)
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Yes that is a great cosmology, of how impressions arise in our minds.
The neutral state in the mind is nothing, that is lock of perception.
That is in any particular dimension we can detect. All perception is between 2 opposite poles in our perception.
We feel HOT or COLD to some degree, but if the temperature does not push our sensory limit in the direction of HOT or COLD, we feel no temperature. If we feel hot and cold in equal measure, the cancel out to no sensation of heat also.
Ever possible property that we can perceive exists in thin dualistic way. Because that is how the nervous system detects the world. It has thresholds, if heat is greater than the thresh hold we feel hotness, if less than the thresh hold for cold we feel cold. If right in the threshold we have no awareness of hot or cold.
Same with pleasure-pain, movement in direction, Big or small, oder good or bad. Sweet or sour, etc.
These are limits of the human physiology. No actual object has flavor, color, scent, etc. Those are elements of the mind. But the actual object exists with the physical properties to effect the equilibrium of the sense organs.
At the natural rest state all the senses are neutral, no awareness of anything. The instant they are effected by another physical substance, that 0 state is disturbed and the whole universe of sensory awareness springs forth.
but to derive that the world outside your awareness dissolves into a state of non-being, just because that is the limit of your sensory system is solipsism.
This is to claim that oneself is the only Star, the only Hadit, and all non-stars and all other stars are part of ones psyche.
This is to confuse Hadit with Nuit, It is to say Nuit is projected from Hadit. As if your own Khu is the collective Khu of everyone, which you then falsely assume can be usurped by Hadit. (The very formula of the black brotherhood)
Further it is an insult to the other stars who have existence in their own right outside of your Khu, treated as if they are mere components of your solipsist reality, created by you to be used by you in any way you see fit.
Contrary to what you may believe, Crowley does not advocate solipsism, but the view that natural phenomena exist that are outside of our sensory perception, and a means by which these natural (physical phenomena) can be detected and worked with on a sensory level.
Also that new ways of understanding and relating to normally available sensory data can reveal hidden ways of using natural phenomena.
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@Froclown said
"Did I say there is no "unknown" factor(s).
I said that all factors are physical factors, because there simply is not anything that is not physical."
I'm sorry to add to the criticism of your statements, Froclown. I think you have a good point which I've thought of a lot. During a few of the latest posts in this thread I find the above and similar statements from you, though, and to me it seems meaningful to answer the Zen koan "how does a hand that claps sound?", and I apologize for possibly being cryptic, so let me elaborate:
My answer to that koan is that neither of the hands (physical objects) makes a sound in themselves, because the phenomenon of the sound is a product of the combination of two hands making it. Physical factors are coagulated from possibly non-physical factors, and the factor of perceiving physical factors is also a combination of factor A and B, but neither A nor B. The combination, being a transcendental factor as it is perceived, is thusly not something that can be determined with certainty as an A or a B.To claim that an unknown factor exists, is not the same as to claim that because it is unknown (at this time) that it must be spiritual, ghosts, Gods, ill defined energies/powers, etc."
No, but the possibility still exists, and your statement indicates that you're in the Know<tm>. As soon as we begin to make claims to something of absoluteness we digress from the objectivity of the Present Moment of things simply being the way they are into things being aligned along a specific order of being, which, in being a definition, excludes everything it distinguishes itself from by coming into existence as a definition, and thusly by logical reasoning can't be True.
@Froclown said
"Just because the early Greeks could not understand lightning, that was not grounds to conclude Zeus a large bearded man, wielded thunder bolts which are a kind of weapon forged by cyclopes in the depths of the earth, thus lightning indicates Zeus is angry or at war.
That makes a good allegory, great for literature class or art works. But its not what is really going on, it is not science."
Huh? That sounds to me like you're merely explaining away theology with semantics. If we have two concepts which correlate to each other in a specific way, then it doesn't matter if we call them "God & the Devil" or "1 & -1". I totally disagree with seeing science as The Teaching instead of just another teaching.
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Physical = pertaining to "things" which exist and how they interact with one another.
thing = that which has some set of manifest properties and lacks other properties, A thing can not be said to both have and lack the same property. Some properties are actually the lack of another. Dark is without light, Cold is without hot. etc. These are relative to some other thing as having more or less (heat) that the hand determines hot or cold, in a thing. Anyway a Thing is limited by its properties.
Exists - to be, that which has properties that potentially interact with other properties. the quality of being a thing.
Not exist - to have no properties or potential interaction with other properties, the quality of not being a thing.
Ok, so a spirit is a thing, this we know by virtue that a word exists to describe it, it has limits and properties which define what it is. And it interacts with other things via its properties and its nature.
Thus a spirit to a thing that exists and interacts with other things, thus it is the proper subject of physics.
If you propose that a spirit is not a physical thing, Then either it is not a thing at all (does not exist) or it is a thing that does not interact with other things in anyway. (in which case we would have to notion of it)
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@Froclown said
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If you propose that a spirit is not a physical thing, Then either it is not a thing at all (does not exist) or it is a thing that does not interact with other things in anyway. (in which case we would have to notion of it)"In other words... if you cannot see it (measure it, touch it etc.) it doesn't exist.
In my opinion you are being blinded by this.
Science in itself cannot explain much because it is just one part of the equation. Even scientists know that if they only rely on pure facts, they would be stuck. You need something completely revolutionary... intuition.
Albert Einstein, Sign hanging in Einstein's office at Princeton
Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.Albert Einstein
Imagination is more important than knowledge. -
Intuition - the combining of disjointed particulars into continuous wholes, via filling in the gaps with educated guesses. A gestalt process where perception is shifted to higher order, seeing the forest rather than the trees.
Thus a spirit is an intuited whole, they mind projects a synergistic property to discrete events.
A forest is really just a bunch of trees, (and other organisms) but we intuit something beyond the facts, in order to make sense of the complex dynamics involved.
Calling forth spirits exploits this intuition process.
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@Froclown said
"Ok, so a spirit is a thing, this we know by virtue that a word exists to describe it, it has limits and properties which define what it is. And it interacts with other things via its properties and its nature.
Thus a spirit to a thing that exists and interacts with other things, thus it is the proper subject of physics."
Or! Or, or, or! The proper subject of philosophy, or the proper study of theology, or whatnotity or whateverity or whathaveyouity. Then you can shuffle a whole deck of cards around and eternity is at your feet.
To me, like I said in the post above, it doesn't matter if we call something electrical discharge through neurons in the parietal lobe, projected as object X in the frontal lobe, which executes signal substance A and B, because of their affinity with striated signalling taking place in the basal ganglia, closest to motor skills and thusly in turn bla bla bla" or "a vision of the Christ, radiating blue and golden 'pon my very burnin' brow", because they can both give rise to the exact same operation with me as a psychologically perceived entity.
One of the systems focuses on an externalized description of the event, which denies Anatta and claims that "I" "see" "things" "because" "of" "something" "interacting" "with" "something" "else", which can all be fabricated lies and the thing that really happens is that my brain isn't a brain at all, but a puff of gas in the Oort cloud, having intermingled with other particles at such and such a time, and the next most likely medium for my present experience may be two thousand light years away inside the core of a star, so by reasoning of least energy resistance "I" am transferred there, where "I" "project" "myself" as a human being on planet Earth two seconds later, whereas in "reality" there has been a million years, and the "thing" that moved isn't anything at all, just the same set of circumstances popping up somewhere else, directed by non local means in the probabilistic quantum ocean.
Or! Nothing at all happens, or something else happens, and the combined circumstances give rise to the idea "I" (whatEVER that phallic letter may mean!) seemingly choose to perceive.Reality<tm> doesn't necessarily begin with "I think therefore I am". That's circular reasoning. A person can simply be aware, yet not choose to claim that the awareness is necessarily a thought of awareness. So we're talking a system of convenience, because it seems other entities communicate the same way we do, which could simply be due to ourselves having started to believe it to be so.
SO! If we were to keep the book closed before we dare assume that something we don't yet understand is still out there, then we instantly stop evolving, because that's what we're doing: trying to rationalize what's not presently rationalized. There is value in both assuming the impossible and the possible, the physical factor and the non-physical factor. By your own reasoning, you agree with this, because you admit that things are physical, and that we distinguish things only by comparing them to something they're not, and thusly, there are "things non-physical".
@Froclown said
"If you propose that a spirit is not a physical thing, Then either it is not a thing at all (does not exist) or it is a thing that does not interact with other things in anyway. (in which case we would have to notion of it)"
I propose the middle way instead. That a thing exists in several layers at once, both what we dualistically determine physical and monistically determine [ ]. There is a practical value in saying that something is an A, but there is also a practical value in not being able to say it. Reality probably have to be both rational and irrational simultaneously, or the two wouldn't exist from which to distinguish one another. Since we're seemingly not talking merely about what's most efficient, but The Truth, I disagree with your reasoning. If we were talking about the former alone, though, I'd wholeheartedly agree with you and Berkley and every other strict rationalist.
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@Froclown said
"Intuition - the combining of disjointed particulars into continuous wholes, via filling in the gaps with educated guesses. A gestalt process where perception is shifted to higher order, seeing the forest rather than the trees.
Thus a spirit is an intuited whole, they mind projects a synergistic property to discrete events.
A forest is really just a bunch of trees, (and other organisms) but we intuit something beyond the facts, in order to make sense of the complex dynamics involved.
Calling forth spirits exploits this intuition process."
Yes, exactly my opinion as well, though I put just as much value into the intuited part of that spectrum as in the concretized part, so that's where we differ.
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I do not devalue the intuited part, but we must realize that a forest is the trees. But our minds project patterns on sequences of events and thew label those patterns of events as things in themselves.
We tend to see faces in wood grain for example, but the FACE is really just two knots we take as eyes, a swirl we take for a nose etc. We only see the face because our brains evolved to look for faces. When we do an evocation we prime ourselves to look for certain patterns, the ritual sticks those ideas and patters in the mind, and them we produce a chaotic medium like smoke, and just as creepy faces come out of the wood work when we are afraid, so too does the intuition pull spirits out of smoke and mirrors that reflect the expectations we create with the ritual drama.
If the ritual effect is pronounced, the effect is greater than just visual illusions, full contact and communication can be manifest.
It a dim room with a mirror, people who are told they will see dead relatives do see them, they see idealized images of them. They even make peace with them and relieve themselves of guilt. Not the actual relative, but the spirit of the relative, the ideas the living hold about the relative.
The effects of Evocation are of value psychologically, There is no evidence that spirits can whip up physical object from the ether at command. They may produce elements of synchronisity, self fulfilled prophesy, and other cognitive dissonance. But There has been not one shred of evidence that they have effects on the world other than via the mind of the magician.
Oh thats right we don't need evidence. Just because you can't see or touch the apples the spirit brings you, doesn't mean their are no apples. They are just spiritual apples, an apple essence that fills the room, not an oder or any measurable quality, just an appleness that isn't in your mind, no a real undetectable appleness.
Sure and the guy with the silly hat really does turn Wine into the blood of a dead jew, but in a non-physical way, that is not imaginary.
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@Malaclypse said
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Reality<tm> doesn't necessarily begin with "I think therefore I am". That's circular reasoning. A person can simply be aware, yet not choose to claim that the awareness is necessarily a thought of awareness."Matter o' fact, the spiritually awakened ones have consistently affirmed the opposite: "I think, therefore I am not."
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well if the "I" is an illusion then spirits are also illusions.
A spirit is the same order of entity of the "I" which is to say a projected identity upon a process.
A clock is also a spirit, the CLOCK is the spirit of the gears and springs.
Metal is the spirit of the atoms, just as Saint Nick is the spirit of Christmas.
Do you believe that the Christmas spirit really is a jolly man who gives toys to children with flying deer?
Or is that merely a representation a symbol of the actual events of Christmas time.
is there really a spirit of the times too, an actually being not just a looking at the culture of a period under a single term.
Maybe an invisible elf named Jack really does breath ice on the windows, Science has it all wrong, I mean condensation what boulder dash, truly invisible men made out of nothingness are far more believable.
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93,
Froclown wrote:
"well if the "I" is an illusion then spirits are also illusions."
A key element in magick is the magician's sense of conviction. To perform magick, he/she needs to have some energized enthusiasm: to <b>believe</b> in what is happening in the ritual. To go in with a sense of "I know this isn't real" is going to disrupt that, and counteract any benefits.
For the sake of reducing the tedium of this exchange, let's accept that everything in the universe is subject to the analyses of modern physics (though otherwise, I don't, and haven't for decades). If the focus is on the 'physical reality' of the process rather than the deliberate exploitation of the symbols in order to exploit their power over the psyche of the magician, and thus over his field of activity, what is there left to work with? All I can see is algebraic equations.
93 93/93,
EM
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@Froclown said
"well if the "I" is an illusion then spirits are also illusions.
A spirit is the same order of entity of the "I" which is to say a projected identity upon a process.
A clock is also a spirit, the CLOCK is the spirit of the gears and springs.
Metal is the spirit of the atoms, just as Saint Nick is the spirit of Christmas.
Do you believe that the Christmas spirit really is a jolly man who gives toys to children with flying deer?
Or is that merely a representation a symbol of the actual events of Christmas time.
is there really a spirit of the times too, an actually being not just a looking at the culture of a period under a single term.
Maybe an invisible elf named Jack really does breath ice on the windows, Science has it all wrong, I mean condensation what boulder dash, truly invisible men made out of nothingness are far more believable."
Now you're beginning to get it, maybe. Everything is illusion, so what's left? Only the Source from which all illusions spring forth, which makes anything at all, even a speck of dust, as remarkable as anything else. The fact that anything exists whatsoever is the miracle because it has no ground in anything.
A hologram, for example, is both real and not real. It is a real illusion made with physical substance, perceived with relative awareness, but it is a play of mind. Mind is the substance of all "things" in motion or at rest. In fact, there is no thing truly at rest, which again means there are no things at all. There is the movement of point-awareness; potentialities spring forth from the swirling void, rising up like a chain of friends to support each other in their mutual delusion.
You claim for certain that the ability to think arises only from energy stuffs in our physical stuffs (chemicals in the brain), but there is no proof of this whatsoever. In fact, philosophers have never solved this problem of "what is real". There is only proof that relative awareness of a perceived 'self' becomes disturbed when the physical aspect is also perceived to be disturbed (and, even then, this does not always hold true!).
A dream is just as real as waking life when we are in the dream. Waking life is actually a dream within a dream, not the "real deal" as you believe. Western tradition teaches us that we ground everything in Malkuth, enlightened or not. Eastern tradition teaches that the physical Buddha is the only Nirmanakaya; all else is maya. The difference is that the Buddha or realized magician has found the inner flame and intentionally created his physical surroundings by the light of that fire. This is the "stone of the wise" or "diamond vajra" which is Unbreakable Truth.
To approach it in reverse, as you are attempting to do, is not magick at all. It will never be magick at all. It is only delusion. Or advanced playing with delusion. And a good way to {shag} yourself up.
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@Froclown said
"I do not devalue the intuited part, but we must realize that a forest is the trees. But our minds project patterns on sequences of events and thew label those patterns of events as things in themselves."
Yes, I half agree with you here, but where we seem to differ is where you are adamant in calling the trees evidence in a necessarily higher degree than the forest. I'm of the opinion that they're both part of the whole relative mess, and some people find it easier to work with the forest whereas some others with the trees, though both parties should work as if neither was more true than another.
@Froclown said
"We tend to see faces in wood grain for example, but the FACE is really just two knots we take as eyes, a swirl we take for a nose etc. We only see the face because our brains evolved to look for faces."
Excellent example to show the difference in perspectives! You claim that we necessarily evolved into organisms that call themselves humans and see faces because they see themselves as having faces, whereas I make no claim at all. I neglect to do this - however deluded it may seem - in order to keep myself as objective as I can to the possibility of evolving beyond my present abilities, which I don't think I could with a bunch of reality chains holding me back. That works for me, but not for all.
So to me, the grains are as much "just two parts of the face" as the face is "just two knots we take as eyes", because I find it easiest to work with strictly relative factors; no I or U included whatsoever.@Froclown said
"But There has been not one shred of evidence that they have effects on the world other than via the mind of the magician."
But there is no evidence of anything to begin with. There are scientific observations, and there are religious observations.
@Froclown said
"Oh thats right we don't need evidence. Just because you can't see or touch the apples the spirit brings you, doesn't mean their are no apples. They are just spiritual apples, an apple essence that fills the room, not an oder or any measurable quality, just an appleness that isn't in your mind, no a real undetectable appleness."
No, that's not where I disagree with you. Success is thy proof, fair enough, but that's it. There is no apple and there is no I to taste it; it is a connection just as in the zen koan with the clapping hands. And in that perspective it's pointless to claim that the apple tastes better if I explain the phenomenon as "heavenly tasteful" or "activation of tactile nerve endings, corresponding to certain limbic functions", because the interconnection between A and B is what it is, and the explanation is something else, diverted from the experience through a Heisenbergian uncertainty tunnel. When it comes to magic it seems to me, the less we are able to explain about certain things the better the experience, so that's would be the value of not becoming over confident in our scientific explanations, but on the other hand, I wholeheartedly agree that we should endeavor to explain it afterwards so that others may be led to the same experiences, though only with the aim of religion.
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@Froclown said
"Maybe an invisible elf named Jack really does breath ice on the windows, Science has it all wrong, I mean condensation what boulder dash, truly invisible men made out of nothingness are far more believable."
Don't you see what you're doing here? You assume that everything must be concretized in the final sense into "an invisible elf named Jack" etc., and it seems we're actually talking about the same thing: that, yes! There is no "supernatural" because if it can be observed then it by definition interacts with nature.
Though you apparently conclude from that assumption that we have found The Truth and can define it, and I and seemingly most if not all others discussing in this thread (correct me if I'm wrong, of course) conclude that "we have a working theory until something better comes along", but at least I won't cash in and say that the truth about Jack the invisible elf is flesh and bone incarnated; that's just one way to judge it from one point of view, and seeing that one point of view as Reality is limiting in several ways for a magician.
I'm sorry if I repeat myself, but I try to pick out points where I find them and I finished the above post before I read this.
