Goetic "Demons"
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This line of thought would get into karma, of cause and effect. This realm which we perceive, while on the face of it seems pretty definitive, is only the result of our karmic vision. There are numerous beings right now intersecting our daily experience which we typically don't see. If we condition our physical vehicles (the filter of relative experience) we grow "muscles," so to speak, and create a larger container with a wider-frequency filter, which then allows us to see these Matrix robots or whatever analogy you want to use. The physical realm is the product (effect) of our karmic vision (cause). And so, the physical is dependent on the spiritual moreso than the spiritual is dependent on the physical. A fully awakened being is not limited by any physical aspect whatsoever and will arise anywhere and in multiple places simultaneously which present the appropriate conditions. These conditions also are more spiritual than physical, as they are linked to causes and their manifestation is the effect. This is why there is a devotional aspect to all religious practices. We are creating the causes for a desired effect.
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You see the robot all the time, your arm is the robots arm, but the way seeing works is that the robot arm causes a change in the robot brain, producing the sensation of a flesh and bone arm.
You can not see things themselves, the act of seeing itself is one in which physical phenomena make impressions on the physical brain, and those impressions are what we are aware of.
Just as a foot leaves an impression in mud, the mud only knows mud, the foot imprint is all it knows, never the foot itself, however we must conclude that the print did not arise on its own, but is the result of an actual non-mud foot.
all this is allegory of course.
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Within the mystical system of Thelema, the Abyss is the great gulf or void between the phenomenal world of manifestation and its noumenal source.
"This doctrine is extremely difficult to explain; but it corresponds more or less to the gap in thought between the Real, which is ideal, and the Unreal, which is actual. In the Abyss all things exist, indeed, at least in posse, but are without any possible meaning; for they lack the substratum of spiritual Reality. They are appearances without Law. They are thus Insane Delusions. Now the Abyss being thus the great storehouse of Phenomena, it is the source of all impressions".—Little Essays Towards Truth, Aleister Crowley
The distinction between Noumena (thing in itself) and Phenomena (the appearance of a thing to the senses) must be studied in Kant's critique of pure reason.
Now a ritual consists of a set of sense impressions, phenomena, which have an effect on the the reason, and perception.
These phenomena when taken combined in certain ways, can seduce the mind to attribute an noumenal entity behind the disjointed phenomena. Just as a child may have empathy for a doll, its appearance being so like that of an infant that the girls instincts take over and believe tho "spirit" of a babe lies in the humanculus of plastic.
Even though the doll is not actually an infant, the girl develops her nurturative instincts, just the same. Thus, can we develop the logic or other capacity via the interaction with the Spirits of the Goetia, even though they are a phenomena distinct from their noumenal source.
children talk to imaginary friends, and those friends talk back, even if it is in the child's own voice. But the child learns in this way, and his mind develops as the imaginary friend of doll, acts as a medium of feed-back between two aspects of his mind.
And why should Magick be something more than an advanced version of this process? Must the spirit be really what it seems, does the child care if his friend is invisible, or her doll is made of rags?
Perhaps some things seem clear once the abyss has been crossed, that are not so easy to convey. Mayhaps it is beyond your grade to grok at this time?
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Has Jim ever responded to a single thing you've written? I haven't seen it yet. I also haven't seen anything beyond my capacity to comprehend. In fact, your ideas are simplistic and where I was about 4 or 5 years ago when I was trying to wrap my brain around Nothing. I was very persistent and annoying to every occultist online, so I understand where you're coming from.
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You think I do not understand where you are coming from. I know all those notions of immaterial things. I am tryings to show that there is a material basis for those things, that the REAL reality that is beyond our ability to know is material, there are actual things with definitions, limits, and properties that interact.
Its not some propertyless void on ghostly light or void, even though that is the limit of the mind there is something beyond that, the REAL world, that is mind independent.
That is the Kether of the mind is the Malkuth of the REAL world. Beyond the limit of Ain sof, which is limitless for us looking out, in the real world. We can't access it, but the impressions, the solid forms we encounter as well as the imaginary images, are caused to appear in us by their actual existing things in the actual world.
The entire Tree of life is within Hadit, and Kether is the point at which Hadit touches NUIT. In the sea of NUIT are infinite Hadits.
When one Hadit (be it a man or an object) cames close to or bumps another, it creates a vibration in the Kether of the Hadit, which vibrates the void you speak of, this vibration in the void becomes a physical object in Malkuth.
Thus the object in Malkuth represents the Hadit that bumped into your own Hadit.
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Void is not nothing. That's your problem. The example given is the mirror: it's limpid clarity, energy of reflection and actual surface are all what make it a mirror. Without any of these qualities, it would not be a mirror. This is the Nature of Mind with it's inherent clarity, energy and form. It is not a physical thing. That is only 1/3 of what IT is.
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@Froclown said
"anything that has properties, qualities, etc, that distinguish it from something else, is a physical thing."
You seem to be oblivious that your ideas are counter to those you've supposedly mastered. By embracing a materialist, scientific, evolutionary belief system, you have rejected the basic premise of Thelema and every other related system from which it draws. Mind is not the product of evolution of physical structures: you've completely missed the fact that experience of awareness is invisible nothingness, totally indescribable by words. Try to find the beginning of your mind. You can't. It does not begin with physical anything. Before Malkuth comes Kether and not the reverse. And before that are nothing, no limit and limitless light. The fact that "limitless light" is at the very top and veiled by no limit and nothing assures us that it is beyond physicality and therefore not the oridinary kind of "light" we might think of by our everyday use of the word.
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Let me pose some questions.
Is it conceivable that a Computer can run a simulation of the world?
Is that computer simulation actual trees, planets, suns, water, human beings etc. Or is it merely a model of them made out of computer hardware and software?
IS the fact that the computer world is an illusion, evidence that the computer itself is an illusion, or is the computer the REAL thing which creates the illusion of the simulated world?
Now a citizen of this simulated world, has no access to the computer hardware, but he is aware of the simulated objects.
These simulated objects seem real to this simulated man.
Is it not the case that if this man traces back these simulation to their source he finds the seem comes to that void you speak of. Even he originates in that void.
Now, is not the actual computer hardware that which houses the void as well as the simulated reality. And the simulated mans is actually a component of that computer?
Now replace compute with physical brain, and simulated reality with the actual seemingly physical reality we see and touch.
We live in simulations created by the brain, I am a simulation of the brain, and can only trace those seemingly physical things back to the void. But the brain is the actually physical reality that which creates all the seeming physical objects. The brain creates these from actually interacting with actual objects.
Thus our world is a simulation of actual physical objects. The gap between the actual and the seeming is the abyss. And the seeming can take on different forms, that represent different aspects of the actual.
A moving stream of water or a river dragon spirit, are twe different ways of seeming, but the actual River is the same actual thing.
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Wrong direction.
For your proposition to be correct, you'd have to start out with the premise that a computer can run a very limited simulation of the world and that the simulation was put into computer form by intelligence. Then, you'd be right. Why? Because the intelligence would form the physical properties out of energy which spontaneously arises from the limitless light which make up silicon, petroleum-based plastics, etc. which go into the creation of a working computer. THEN, after the mind has fabricated a "reality" out of its own limitless (and therefore non-physical) substance, the mind can begin to project a very limited relative awareness of the world into the computer.
BTW, what you are trying to state has already been stated in Buddhism.
It is the Sambogakaya. It is the energy (reflection) of the "mirror."The problem (for you) is that nothing is a real thing since everything is interdependent and in flux and time is illusory. So, freezing a "thing" in time might lead to a convincing thought process about thing-ness, but the fact is that this is just a symbol of how relative ideas could be. Probability. Symbol. Sambogakaya. Not thing-ness. Thingness does get expressed in the relative dimension of time, however, which is what you're hung up on. But, it does not create the Creator in the ultimate sense. It modifies IT in the relative sense.
However, since ultimately time doesn't exist, you could say any possibility exists. Because it does. (That would include time, so there is a paradox). But that doesn't make the underlying essence "physical." Except that it becomes as such given the right circumstances. And those circumstances are created by experience.... in the MIND/SPIRIT. That is why the void is not empty in a literal sense, but pregnant with potential.
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you fail to realize that the world out there is not created by you, you are a creation of the world. not by intelligent design, not out of "energy" but out of actual stuff, that happens to come together in a way that processes and stores information.
The same world is there before and ofter you as one arrangement of substances happen to persist. You were born and will die a physical being. Just as a whirl pool is the water, it comes to be and fades away, but the water is water before during and after.
The world of sense is a model created in that brain.
Energy= potential to do work
Work = Mass moved through a distance.
E = Mc^2
Thus Energy is a physical entity, and it is dependent upon mass (substance) as well as space and time.
you fail to realize that not just any random though becomes a tangible object, this is because only when an actual object that exists in its own right makes an impression on us does it manifest.
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@Redd Fezz said
"And so, the physical is dependent on the spiritual moreso than the spiritual is dependent on the physical. A fully awakened being is not limited by any physical aspect whatsoever and will arise anywhere and in multiple places simultaneously which present the appropriate conditions. These conditions also are more spiritual than physical, as they are linked to causes and their manifestation is the effect. This is why there is a devotional aspect to all religious practices. We are creating the causes for a desired effect."
Couldn't have said it that nicely myself. It's how I instantly thought about quantum physics/probabilistic causality when I began to understand what physicists meant by it.
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@Froclown said
"you fail to realize that the world out there is not created by you, you are a creation of the world. not by intelligent design, not out of "energy" but out of actual stuff, that happens to come together in a way that processes and stores information.
The same world is there before and ofter you as one arrangement of substances happen to persist. You were born and will die a physical being. Just as a whirl pool is the water, it comes to be and fades away, but the water is water before during and after.
The world of sense is a model created in that brain.
Energy= potential to do work
Work = Mass moved through a distance.
E = Mc^2
Thus Energy is a physical entity, and it is dependent upon mass (substance) as well as space and time.
you fail to realize that not just any random though becomes a tangible object, this is because only when an actual object that exists in its own right makes an impression on us does it manifest."
And you fail to realize that energy/matter represented in E-Mc^2 is magically created from non-physical substance, and so that Source is not physical energy/matter. Thus, the Qabalistic symbolism of a "fountain of extreme and infinite pressure" projecting down through Kether and overflowing down to Malkuth. Were IT physical, IT would be limited, but IT is beyond nothing and limitless. So, IT becomes energy as we know it, but IT is not limited to energy/matter and has ITS origins beyond your scope of categorization. IT is called the "clear light" in/from which the essences of the elements naturally radiate and which eventually become actual light, energy and matter. Realization of IT leads to the Rainbow Body, the Body of Light, Subtle Body, Diamond/Vajra Body, etc.
The Body of Light leads me to my next point: You also fail to realize the world IS, literally, created by me and I am not actually the physical limitation you are communicating with. That is not to say that I am a "soul" because the concept of a soul is flawed in that it is defined as an eternal something, when in fact I am constantly in the process of death and rebirth, the continuation of which is Life. IT is not an "essence" of anything since IT can only be described as lack of essence (well, okay, IT could be described as the "essence" of awareness, Life, etc.), and since IT is nothing IT has the potential to be anything and everything, which is what makes IT "radiant awareness" or "full emptiness" or "pregnant with potential." Sunyata is not exhausted in relativity. This is expressed in Qabalah as a sphere, in Buddhism as "the crystal." If a crystal ball is put on a red fabric, it becomes the color red. IT is also expressed as the mirror, which reflects (takes on the appearance) of its surroundings. But, these metaphors are incomplete as the mirror is everywhere, the crystal is everything. Thus, again, the Qabalistic symbolism of the eternal fountainhead pressing down through Kether. Again, the symbolism of the mirror: luminous clarity, reflective energy, and the physical surface. Again, the symbolism of the crystal: not only does it "absorb" the colors of its environment, but as light passes through, a crystal splits the light and projects rainbow colors both within itself and to the outside environment. So, too, the mind receives, absorbs, reflects and projects. From where does it draw this "light"? This is a quality of the luminous clarity of Mind: it naturally dances with this energy of reflection and projection. This is the infinite fountainhead. This is why the Tree is shown upside-down with its roots in Kether and why the "ray of creation" begins at the top: it streams forth effortlessly from "Above", or beyond physicality, to the crystallization of "Below". Your interpretation is backwards and is simply the relative mind, dancing with a flicker of the Light, looking back at the gaping maw which puked him out and continually threatens to eat him (and does). This movement of life exhausts physicality by burning it up one calorie at a time and converting it into other life processes which also die in each moment, birthing new life. Sakyamuni Buddha explained it with a succession of candles burning out as the original flame from the first candle is passed on to the next and to the next straight on down the line: at the end, the previous candles are gone, the flame is different, but it is also the same. This is the movement of life which kills to create just as the movement of a mirror's reflection is what distinguishes it from being a mere picture (dead symbol). The scientific supposition that energy cannot be created or destroyed does not rule out spirit being the controlling factor in all things, but of course science is not looking there.
All of these religious symbols and metaphors are "fingers pointing to the moon." That moon can be reflected into a million cups of water infinitely and the moon will never be exhausted no matter how many times it is duplicated and reflected in the water. This moon metaphor represents the effortless, inexhaustible radiance of IT. This brings to mind Crowley's Star Sponge vision... "Nothingness with twinkles."
You can't possibly have crossed the Abyss if you're still oblivious to the fact that intelligent design has nothing to do with theism and everything to do with the Nature of Mind. As the famous Zen koan goes, "Who is the master that makes the grass green?" Who is the All-Creating-King of the atheist Mahayana Buddhism, Samantabhadra? If we do not create the world, then who makes computers, builds houses, molds the environment to his will?
As I stated previously, science/philosophy/logic can't prove anything really exists, yet our experience persists. The only thing we know for sure is awareness of experience. It is everything else, we're not so sure about, including the experience itself. The formula of IHVH expresses this. A dream expresses this. And cause-effect relationships within waking life express this. Using Occam's Razor, then, if a demon appears and, after all scrutiny, appears to have actually caused a change in your reality, for example: two or more people saw the demon pick up a physical object and throw it against the opposite wall, breaking it in half, what is the simplest explanation? Days later, as you hold the broken object, you may rationalize that your friend tricked you or some sublimated mental powers caused this strange phenomenon which you can't explain, but the simplest explanation is that a demon threw it.
And how do you feel about Kant's Antinomies?
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Yes Kabbalah was built around beliefs is Idealism, but that was thousands of years ago before psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, computer technology, information theory, etc.
I change nothing from Kabbalah.
Kether - the thing in and of itself existing in the sea of Ayn Sof with many other things in and of themselves.
Chokmah - The point where the thing in itself enters the mind, where the stone hits the water.
Binah - The water itself smooth clear un-rippled reflection of the mind, pure understanding, the water in the cup of Babalon etc.
Abyss - The unorganized rippling in the waters of the mind.
Chesed - the through of the waves, also the quieting of them
Gevurah - the Crests of the waves, the active aspect of the mind.
Tiphereth - The balanced mind, the ripples begin to take order, beauty, the sun in plato.
Netzatch - ordering of the continuity analog aspects, affects, personalities, etc.
Hod - Breaking the analog up into discrete unites, quantities etc.
Yesod - balancing the analog continuous with the digital discrete into Forms as per plato.
Malkuth, the mixing of the forms to replicate the information of the ripples and produce perceived replicas of Objects and events in Space-time etc.
The known object in the minds perception at Malkuth, is a model, a replica of the actual but not yet known object (KETHER) in the Ayn Sof.
Binnah, is the totally cleared mind, receptive to the word of Chokmah, which is to say the sensory input of the external world.
The external physical world of space-time we see perceive is the way we model the separation between Kethers in the Ayn sof.
Kethers in Ayn Sof = Hadits in the body of Nuit.
The physical world as we see it is unreal, but it is an unreal reflection of the REAL the actual physical world.
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Hmm... well, it hardly seems appropriate to label the "real" world with a term which is literally a label for limitation and delusion. In doing so, you run into this problem we've been hashing out. And it is senseless because...
Your admission that "not just any random thought" becomes a tangible object is proof that not everything is physical. Despite the infinite gulf between pure intelligence and matter, the operation of pure intelligence upon matter transcends the multifariousness of infinite microcosms, producing an absolute unity. This is "experience." And awareness of experience is all we can assert... and only this because it is undeniable, though inexplicable. Upon closer examination, experience of anything falls apart. You can't prove a "thing-in-itself". For a person who doesn't like fantasies, you're actually promoting the idea of God, the original "thing-in-itself."
You may claim that thoughts are nothing more than energy in our brains and thus reducible to energy/matter in this way, but there is an imponderable chasm here and no known explanation for why a brain would produce thinking, awareness, consciousness and the illusion of selfhood. Theoretically, you can sum it up as you have previously as the sum of relationships particular to a physical vessel, but this does not explain anything. It only describes it.
And this is the limit of scientific inquiry: it is only descriptive in minutiae using deductive logic, which, though ultimately incomplete, is used jointly with inductive logic to promote broad generalizations supposed from incomplete data. There is no difference between Occam's Razor of science and spirituality. As Crowley said, demons may not be literal things (because there is no such thing as a thing-in-itself, although you seem to be affirming just the opposite), but they sure behave as "real things," so it is best to treat them as such when the experience presents itself. So, when a demon materializes before your eyes, is it, in your opinion, a "real" or "physical" or not? If not, then what is it? Your imagination? How does your imagination have power over the physical dimension, magickally speaking, unless of course it is of a "higher order" than matter?
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its appearance is something of a cognitive illusion.
Not an hallucination, but a projection of aspects of the mind to a physical phenomena.
When I see castles in the clouds, it is not that the clouds are made of stone, its that the process I described above with Kabbalah, gets mixed up a bit.
This is because perception is not fully passive. When the signal is unclear we fill in the gaps with forms of things we have seem before or have familiarity with.
The demon is really a creation of a medium which the mind uses as a feed back mechanism. A mirror is a feed back to of the face, by looking in the mirror we can apply things to the face, better that if we try to do it without one.
the spirit medium is a sort of mirror that reflects aspects of the mind, including archetypes in the Jungian sense, that are hardwired in the brain genetically, and not normally cast into awareness.
The brain is very complex and has all kids of features that we can't have awareness of, the same way we can't see our face. but the spirit like the mirror makes these aware to us, in a symbolic way.
Even when you speak of the spirit of a thing like Christmas or a River Spirit, its a combination of the event and its meaning to you, its connection with other ideas, visceral reactions, affect, etc
So a Dragon Kami does not really live in the river, is is a union of the river and its impact on your psyche. Just as the Ancestors are nat really summoned from the dead, it is the spirit of the ancestor you call, the minds semantic network that relates to him. Regular devotion at the shrine helps to fortify this semantic link with the ancestors name, which is necessary to summon him up.
One can summon up Bugs Bunny, as an archetype as easily as Zeus or Bacchus, Even Christians invoke the holy spirit, which they may or may not think of as a non-physical being. Generally its thought of as a shared attitude of kindness and brotherhood, not some sort of "energy" or non-physical thing that infects them. Well the ones that fall on the ground and twitch think they are infected, but thats called hypnosis and not wanting to disappoint peers and authority.
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And you've conveniently ignored thing-in-itself and demons throwing physical objects.
The Greek origin of the word "personality" reflects the idea of Spirit projecting through the human mechanism/mask. It is not that personality originates within our complex human brains, but that our human brains are relative (and simplistic) waystations through which Spirit manifests in symbolism relevant to our experience. Spirits are not "personified" by human dipshits. Spirit has the quality of persona to begin with which is expressed all around us in the material realm.
Continual reference to jack frost, the easter bunny or the christmas spirit do nothing to improve your argument, btw.