Goetic "Demons"
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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.
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Ideas do not just float around disembodied in a timeless void and them just from time to time crystallize into actual things, with physical forms.
Actual physical substances to float about is actual space-time, they each have unique properties which interact and form complex systems of things, which include human brain.
Then later those human brains and bodies, come into contact with other things and the things cause the bodies to react is different ways physically. One such way the body reacts is by building models in the brain, from chemical signals and neuron structures, that represent the objects in encounters.
The idea or spirit is in the brain. the only REAL thing is the substance itself.
Brains create ideas, Ideas do not exist on their own, and thus can not create matter to cloth themselves inside of.
Existence precedes Essence.
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@Froclown said
"Ideas do not just float around disembodied in a timeless void and them just from time to time crystallize into actual things, with physical forms. "
Fully realized beings are not conditioned by time and space. Nirmanakaya is the intentional physical emanation of such a being who communicates Truth with silence. Any words such a being uses will be only words, which read from a book are basically the same as any other realized being and though communicating Truth, these words often fail to have the effect of the master's silence, which proves that Truth is not a condition of dead letters and "things," but of an essence which is received from mind-to-mind. If you want to call this essence "physical" I suppose it's fine with me, but it's kind of dumb since any scientist would whip out his electrospectrometer and tell you no energy transference has occured. This spirtual component of reality is also evident in the wang and lung transmissions, initiation ceremonies and the representation of Spirit as "clear light" consistently throughout all major cultural religious institutions.
The real Teacher is the Mind, for sure, but not the relative mind of the brain. In fact, when Truth is communicated to the relative mind, the experience is impossible to put into relative terms because it is beyond physical limitation and language is a representation of physical limitation. Speech in the sambogakaya / archetypal sense is the language with which Truth is communicated. Put it into a book and all you have are a bunch of symbols that a guy like you comes along and pokes fun of. Ever read The Cloud Upon The Sanctuary?
@Froclown said
"Actual physical substances to float about is actual space-time, they each have unique properties which interact and form complex systems of things, which include human brain. "
Elements. Dakini energy. Etc. We disagree on where this stuff originates. Nothing has changed there. And the use of a more modern term like "archetype" does nothing to scientifically sanitize the Wisdom Display of the Primordial State, which is Persona before it becomes personified into human beings' brains. I like the term archetype, too. The physical realm is the symbolic language Spirit manifests from previous causes. By observation, the real nature unfolds and the physical dimension points back to the unseen spiritual realm. Everything is like a trail of breadcrumbs. The secret "agent" (force) is the literally the secret agent (detective) examining the delusion looking for the Truth, oblivious to the fact that it is looking for itself, Spirit. IT is the only force at work in the universe. The metaphor is hunting for the elephant by following its tracks in the jungle when eventually you discover its tracks lead back to your home, where the elephant has been all along.
@Froclown said
"Then later those human brains and bodies, come into contact with other things and the things cause the bodies to react is different ways physically. One such way the body reacts is by building models in the brain, from chemical signals and neuron structures, that represent the objects in encounters."
And none of this disproves the existence of Spirit in the slightest nor the power of Spirit over matter. Way to go in circles. What do you make of The Devil card which blatantly represents this delusion you are espousing so adamantly?
@Froclown said
"The idea or spirit is in the brain. the only REAL thing is the substance itself.
Brains create ideas, Ideas do not exist on their own, and thus can not create matter to cloth themselves inside of.
Existence precedes Essence."
Repetition is the key to making your dreams a reality.
I must have missed the part where you went beyond the Antinomies of Kant in your "proof."
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Show me evidence of one of these "fully realized beings" that can vanish into thin air, shape-shift, read thoughts, possess others bodies, and teleport all over the globe at will.
Unless you can produce such a person or creature, I will have to assume you are engaging in speculative crypto-zoology.
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@Froclown said
"Show me evidence of one of these "fully realized beings" that can vanish into thin air, shape-shift, read thoughts, possess others bodies, and teleport all over the globe at will.
Unless you can produce such a person or creature, I will have to assume you are engaging in speculative crypto-zoology."
Aha, so there's the proof I was waiting for. Enjoy your armchair.
Might want to put the Lazyboy on "vibrate," though, since after all this effort, you still missed the whole "seeing is believing" debate regarding experiential data.
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I believe I claimed to have crossed tho abyss That is to have traced back the process by which by brain takes raw sense data and constructs the phenomenas perceptions, to its origin and then took the leap to the source of that raw sense data.
I never claimed I was a being with the kind of powers you seem to think come with transcending the gap between the signifier and the signified, ie between the symbol and what it stands for.
Read Liber OS Abysmi vel Daath.
All I claim is to have undergone this practice successfully.
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Seeing is doubting.
"trust not the human eye is sunlight or in shade, the shadow show of sight and sense in the devils masquerade"
It explains allot that you have not yet learned to thoughrally distrust your senses. Unless the evidence of the senses can be backed up by scientific observation in a controlled experiment and those experiments repeated with similar results by others, then one must assume all sense to be hallucination and all thought delusion. Thats simple skepticism.
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Maybe you'll respect Jim's word, maybe not. I see elsewhere you've freely expressed how wrong he is about things and, if I'm not mistaken, I believe I saw a thread where you said you were the "head" of some "A.'.A.'.", so I have no idea what your deal is, but I believe Jim once described it to me as "magick you can reach out and touch." The point of this work is not necessarily to have these sorts of experiences, but they are experiences people have attested to repeatedly. As for myself, I have had such experiences and, no, there weren't any drugs involved.
Of course, you can rationalize this any way you like. But, as science and philosophy prove regarding experiential data: all you know is that you experience something and when enough people experience something it becomes status quo and accepted as factual enough to take for granted until the light of new evidence proves otherwise. But, magick, by its very nature, doesn't work that way (except, of course, in cases of like-minded magicians). And, yes, you're right: simple skepticism (emphasis on "simple"). You seem oblivious, again, to the fact that scientific method is no more than observation of experiential data and, therefore, relies on the senses. A microscope is just an extension of eyesight. You don't doubt your senses which tell you things are "physical," so your accusation is pretty hypocritical.
Since these sort of "super-normal" events happen as a result of individual causes and conditions, it takes a bit of work before results appear. And, typically, such beings don't make public displays too often, although we do have written records of such accounts and the lineage of transmission and method of practice still exist to this day. Among Tibetan Buddhists, such things are said to happen all the time, but nothing changes, even among Tibetan people who are disbelievers. It doesn't shake up the status quo to see a lama flying through the air every once in a while.
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Well you have shown that we all have the capacity for the same sort of hallucinations and delusions, and perhaps a method by which such common illusions and cognitive tricks or misfirings can occur.
But it order to be taken seriously you should be able to produce these effects in controlled situations and provide tangible evidence for what you say.
anyone can say they bend spoons, may even believe it themselves if they whip themselves up into a state about it. But unless one can bend the spoon without touching it, in a situation where tricks ar slight of hand are ruled out, there is no evidence.
I claim to run, because I was put in charge of, a Second life simulation of the A.'.A.'. which I attempt to use all the source material the actual A.'.A.'. uses to the best of my ability to reconstruct the system, and fill in the gaps with some materials, rituals, and such that have worked for me, as voluntary alternatives.
I was never officially in the A.'.A.'. or the OTO nor any other Thelemic group, I did most of my work on my own, from Crowley's libers, Peter Carroll's Kaos magick, a great amount of Robert Anton Wilson, some Lovecraftian necronomican, a few dealings with neo-pagans, Buddhism, Taoism, etc.
Also the whole cannon of western Philosophy and the semanto-pathic systems of Discordianism and post-moderism in general.
Also physics/achemy from techo brache to bruno, Newton to Shrodinger.
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sorry I am what you call an INTP
Arguments from title or claimed authority hold little watter with me, unless you can back up your claims with scientific evidence, they best you can get is a maybe. If your statements contradict existing evidence, then I will not accept them without strong support or showing known evidence to be wrong in some way, with strong evidence.
The strength of your conviction says nothing about how correct you are.
"Convictions cause convicts
Can you chart the path to captain Valentines sweet heart" -
It doesn't matter to me. Pun intended.
It would be nice if you would wake up and realize your statements are not supported and no more scientific than any other experiential observations, but you're obviously pretty full of yourself, so I think you'd have trouble finding any of the glaring holes in your pet theories.
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Well I shall endeavor to discover textbook examples of haw the process of perception occurs, in the neuro-physiology of the brain.
I shall provide examples of exactly how atoms form molecules and DNA arises, how DNA acts as a template for proteins, those proteins form cells and cellular structures, up to whole organisms, those evolve over time. How Neural-nets form in brain tissues, which work to replicate the information in sensory input from nerves.
And how the sensory input used by the brain is divided from the event that caused the input of that data.
All of this is well known, understood and documented science.
Now, I said that the impressions that arise in our subject perception, have a physical source in the objective world.
Keep in mind I give no details about the nature of those other than they are physical, and in some way analogous to the subjective images they produce.
If we are brains in a vat, then the brain, the vat, and the computer putting the info in are physical, as are the wires and the electricity.
If there is an evil genie at work, then that evil genie is something, it is a physical object, a being of the objective world, and has some sort of a physical effect on our whatever objective form our minds take be it a brain or otherwise.
If spirits or other such entities are at play, then these must also have physical objective forms that can effect the objective form of the mind.
What is the objective mind to our subjective perspective if not the brain?
And where do impressions in the brain come from if not physical objects that have an effect upon the brain.
I have much evidence for my theory.
I see no evidence for your non-physical ??? whatever that means, undergoing some kind of change for some unknown reason, that can not be detected in any way, such that in builds a physical shell as a vehicle to interact with other non-physicals in a physical way.
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Scientific proofs are based on the assumption that there is a world out there that is real, because it bases its proofs on statements like "in order to be taken seriously you should be able to produce these effects in controlled situations and provide tangible evidence for what you say."
In order to provide such an evidence we must assume what Philip K Dick terms reality: whatever remains when we stop thinking about it. Such a reality concept is a reality only provided we believe the same thing when we think about it in spacetime position 1 and get back to generally the same circumstance in spacetime position 2.
Doing that, however, is no different than when a thousand magicians "delude" themselves into believing the same general thing about something that's not commonly accepted by people who claim to be rational. After all, rationality is only clinging to the idea that something is practical, which something only is in the eye of the beholder. So as I see it, we're still on square 1, no matter which system of proof we use.
It's impractical to believe truthfully that the Earth is flat if we need to use its spherical shape for something practical, like relying on Newtonian laws when placing a satellite in geosynchronous orbit in its gravitational field e.g. So from that p o v people in the medieval times who distrusted Galileo were fools, because he had mathematical evidence to back up his claims but was thrown in the tower by the Papists anyway.
It's also impractical to assume that the Earth has extension and thereby can be called spherical if we get to the conclusion that in order to move the mind from point A to point B, one must transcend any reality and bend all given rules, if going to point B is more important than building a satellite, because the matrix of mathematical rules is shown to destroy itself, and the only thing that can save the gathered information, excluding mathematics, of humanity is the above given solution.
Example 1 of the two above defends theory 1 by result 1, and example 2 defends theory 2 by result 2. Both are inductively reasoned, something we never can seem to get out of, but it's useful nonetheless, because it's fun to build things which seem to sustain themselves more than seemingly more self destructive things.
The way I see it is also inductively reasoned, and the p o v including inductive reasoning is no more true than any other system of thought. There is no point to anything other than the chance of union, which isn't a point but a chance of union. All I'm saying is of course bullshit and absolute truth and whatever.
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If there is chance of union there must be 2 things which unite.
Thingness = physicality
Uniting is a physical process.
If as you say everything emanates from a single non-physical source, and oneself is really that source, then there are not different things, and all things are in our mind. That would mean all other people and things are thoughts in your head. That is Solipsism, and goes against the Thelemic principle that all other people exist as centers of their own universe, but each exists separately in the body of Nuit.
As it is true that every phenomena of the mind, constructed from the sense organs and cognitive processes, is exactly as you say, derived from a single source, the mind. But the world of sight and touch is not the physical world, its the world of appearances.
The Physical world is that which is seen and touched, that which does the seeing and the touching.
I see some one on the street, What happens is that their Physical existence is projected as an appearance in my mind, I see the appearance. But It is assured that, that other person is not a mere figment of my mind, but has a real distinct existence of his own, and from his perspective I am but an appearance in his mind.
But Appearances aside the real world remains what it is, not a single point or a nothingness, but a plurality of different objects.
infinity objects effect the body. Infinity becomes 1.
The brain takes that 1 and divides in into dimension of sense data, each with 2 poles. The 1 becomes duality.
Since the all appearances are dualistic, the return to the 1 is appears as 0, as there are no dualities to compare.
But, the world out there exists as many objects, and magic effects mostly one of these objects, the brain, and how it displays the appearances produced in the mind.
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Since there is no thing-in-itself, any textbook description of the "physical causes" of thought are nothing but ultimately meaningless relative labels describing delusion in minutiae.
All configurations of events/meanings present themselves in experience. Since they are neither our experience of them nor something other than it, they elude, at any given moment, both speech and thought. Like a conjurer's illusion, apparently visible but really nonexistent. IT is beyond the labels of one and many.
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@Redd Fezz said
":roll:
Since there is no thing-in-itself, any textbook description of the "physical causes" of thought are nothing but ultimately meaningless relative labels describing delusion in minutiae."
Your pressupposition that there is no thing-in-itself isnt necessarily true, and I would LOVE to see you try to back up this statement (with anything, let alone Thelemic books).
"All configurations of events/meanings present themselves in experience. Since they are neither our experience of them nor something other than it, they elude, at any given moment, both speech and thought. Like a conjurer's illusion, apparently visible but really nonexistent. IT is beyond the labels of one and many."
Is IT not another label of the thing-in-itself?
65 & 210,
111-418 -
@aum418 said
"
@Redd Fezz said
":roll:Since there is no thing-in-itself, any textbook description of the "physical causes" of thought are nothing but ultimately meaningless relative labels describing delusion in minutiae."
Your pressupposition that there is no thing-in-itself isnt necessarily true, and I would LOVE to see you try to back up this statement (with anything, let alone Thelemic books)."
I was speaking in terms of scientific limitation, since this is the sort of evidence which was proposed. We cannot know things-in-themselves (if they exist) but can only postulate their nature from what we know about observable phenomena, which is a series of assumptions.
Nothing has been discovered to be a thing-in-itself and, upon further examination, we are lead further and further away from such a notion.
As far as Thelemic books, you could start with Book of Lies, maybe (45) Chinese Music or (5) The Battle of The Ants or (31) The Garotte.
@aum418 said
"
"All configurations of events/meanings present themselves in experience. Since they are neither our experience of them nor something other than it, they elude, at any given moment, both speech and thought. Like a conjurer's illusion, apparently visible but really nonexistent. IT is beyond the labels of one and many."Is IT not another label of the thing-in-itself?
65 & 210,
111-418"IT's actually not, seeing as IT is not a thing at all. IT is beyond existence and nonexistence, both and neither, everything and nothing.