Question on Liber L
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Scarecrow, 93,
Well, the only authority is going to be found in your own consciousness, or coming from behind it. There is no form of words I could offer here that would allay your doubts about the existence of True Will, or the supernal realm. And let's be clear - words like 'supernal' are an attempt to put into words what goes beyond them. We can, though, accept at least the possibility that terms such as True Will or soul have some degree of actual meaning, even if that meaning it doesn't conform to conventional definitions.
I have met a number of people who exhibit(ed) the qualities I listed. I didn't think it either relevant or polite to pin them down to a Grade. I was more interested in seeing what they had to say, and what effect they had on me. I doubt I have met an actual Magus, but then it might take a Magister Templi to spot one.
Beware thinking such 'advanced' people are devoid of a con-artist side, or other reprehensible traits. That's a common error. They are what they are - that's a primary teaching in Thelema. I have a lifelong friend who, I'm convinced, is an Adept - he's half crazy, and hit on another friend's wife some years ago while they were all heading downtown in the same car. He's also one of the most intuitive and aware people I've ever met. Strange and lovely stuff always happens when he's around.
I actually accept all the definitions you quote as being useful. They don't 'define' true will, any of them, but if you take the verbal formula of True Will as equivalent to a 'document' then everything here applies. What's missing is the 'True' bit - the overarching, underlying, wholly interpenetrating aspect to TW. When the first intuitions or indications or revelations or whatever come regarding that, there is usually a spontaneous evocation of the 'other' Tetragrammaton - "SHIT!" -[ which the automatic system for this forum will likely purge and replace with some euphemism]. It will provide food for thought. It will be scary, and exhilarating, and will cry out to be written down in your magical diary so, like a botanical specimen or a stamp in a collection it can be looked at, and thus appear to be safely disconnected from its primal power. For a time, anyway.
Then you can spend a few years negotiating with yourself while it keeps on keeping on until we have to act on what it shows us. There is no objective criterion (that I know of) that can be demonstrated to someone else in this matter. But to the person who has received the intimation about it, it eventually becomes relentless. And at some point, it becomes freedom, because there is no more conflict with it involved.
No, I'm not at that point. But today, I can at least understand being at that point.
Sometimes, I still wonder if Thelema, with its HGAs and True Wills and Holy Books and magick is not about some great truth, but is simply another way of organizing sensory and mental data. But then I get caught up in paradoxes about what prompts the quest, why there is this archetypal concept of order, why certain events synchronized with magical work I did, and so on. I am, frankly, stuck with memories of numerous experiences that contradict my 'rational' analysis of my own condition. Too much skepticism becomes a self-sustaining lie.
Things simply work more productively and more joyfully in my life if I include the 'irrational' and don't try to analyze everything down to neural impulses, hormonally driven instincts, traumas produced by my evil seventh grade biology teacher (restriction be ever unto the snarky creep in the name of Babalon) and my toilet training as a toddler. I can't get past the idea of accepting all this metaphysical and Qabalistic stuff as a necessary postulate for surviving this life as me. Rejecting it as romanticism might appeal to my self-styled 'rational' side but it is also dishonest towards everything else I am.
So, I don't have your answers. Those are some of mine.
93 93/93,
EM -
Well said EM. I'm not buying a word of it mind you... but you have the decency to not be selling it as such.
It seems to me that True Will as explained by Crowley, is his own unique invention. If there are older concepts that exactly the same and not just similar I would be pleased to know them for further insight.
Also it seems to me throughout Crowley's life, at times he was at times at odds with his True Will as he understood it. It didn't bring him, from what I've read, the freedom from conflict you have explained it would.
True Will just seems a lot like the Queen of Cups...
"Her image is of extreme purity and beauty, with infinite subtlety; to see the Truth of her is hardly possible, for she reflects the nature of the observer in great perfection."
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93
Pardon me whilst I interject.
This is good! You are absolutely correct, that in Crowley's context (and many others who share in his particular cosmology) the idea of True Will is a somewhat more esoteric concept. It suffices to say that True Will is NOT:
"
a. Diligent purposefulness; determination: an athlete with the will to win.
b. Self-control; self-discipline: lacked the will to overcome the addiction.- A desire, purpose, or determination, especially of one in authority: It is the sovereign's will that the prisoner be spared.
- Deliberate intention or wish: Let it be known that I took this course of action against my will.
- Free discretion; inclination or pleasure: wandered about, guided only by will.
- Bearing or attitude toward others; disposition: full of good will.
"
However, it is a logical fallacy to attempt to determine the nature of a thing by defining what it is not. The True Will may manifest in expression in many of the above things. In this sense it is approximately Primordial Will. e.g.: When Lance Armstrong gets on his bike and wins seven Tour de France races, that he seems physically and mentally constructed to do so, we might say that he is full of "diligent purposefulness, determination." That may be a result of him doing his True Will. It may not, but it isn't for me to determine.
"I'm very interested in the many parts of Crowley, and deeply interested in the Scientific Crowley, however the concept of the True Will seems like a religious concept such as the Soul... and you might understand that I get off the ferris wheel when that one comes around."
Personally, I have never looked at True Will as being a religious idea. Certainly a little more esoteric than the dictionary definition, granted, but there are plenty of concrete ideas to stand on in a scientific mode. The idea that the dictionary definitions can be seen as an expression of the True Will in some cases gives us a place to begin. It is said that the True Will must be discovered to be done. Now that implies that there is a process of discovery which some may call Magick, and others may call life. There is a set of operators which form a construct which can lead one to the discovery of the True Will.
I would assert that the discovery of that True Will by the individual is at least unmistakable to the individual, and probably recognizable to others.
"Let me put it another way. Who's authority do we have it on, that there is a True Will that each of us have? Why do we believe him? Please speak up if you've found your TW and can educate me further on this concept, but if you haven't, aren't you dogmatically following someone's position on faith?
"I don't believe so. We cite many so called facts and definitions from dictionaries and encyclopedias and internet articles often. That doesn't imply "dogmatic following." Science itself requires its own form of dogma in order to provide itself with an axiomatic leg to stand on. Question everything! But in order to do so, one must understand what one is questioning, and the method by which such questioning is done.
" I think the man of Faith says something like, I just know, and you'll never convince me otherwise that there is a God."
"
"True enough. Faith leads invariably to conviction. The scientist or mathematician with his theorem and proof is a variation of this. The True Will of some men leads them toward God and a life of faith... the True Will of other towards science and a life of reason. In either case, awareness of that Will and the strength to do it are great achievements, and the fertile ground in which more great achievements grow.
Just my handful of cents.
93/93
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I appreciate the interjection of a new perspective peregrinus93. Please continue to share.
From your post I didn't learn anything new to help me better understand TW and I believe this is my own fault.
For example, when you say that:
"In this sense it is approximately Primordial Will"
that doesn't add anything to my understanding because I don't know what Primorial Will is and will probably have a tough time understanding that one as well if it's just as esoteric.
You say that you've never looked at TW as a religious idea... how do you look at it? Please explain. I don't understand when you say:
"there are plenty of concrete ideas to stand on in a scientific mode"
Please share some. For example you talk about citing "so called facts"... I guess I missed those. Please share.
Perhaps we should return to what you said earlier in your post:
"However, it is a logical fallacy to attempt to determine the nature of a thing by defining what it is not. "
Maybe you can provide a definition of what it is?
I'm tring to make sense from your cents, so please send more my way.
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Scarecrow, 93,
One last comment from me:
"Also it seems to me throughout Crowley's life, at times he was at times at odds with his True Will as he understood it. It didn't bring him, from what I've read, the freedom from conflict you have explained it would."
Crowley was the *first *Thelemite. I think that is often overlooked. I don't personally see him as the "finished Aeonic product." His job, if you will, was to make every fumble, stumble and blunder, record it, and ensure everyone knew about it. That includes groaners like his recently quoted comments on the joys of being a pre-Civil War slave in the US South. I see his doing all that screwing up as a key part of him fulfilling his TW. What we knowabout him in his later years sounds like he had serenity come over him in his last decade or so. Not everybody gets that.
93 93/93,
EM
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The supernals are a state of awareness, a way or ordering conscious perceptions, specifically it is a state were the categorical distinctions made by the rational mind, that is the symbols of knowledge are not used. The pure raw, data is not divided into parts, it is non-dual. Rather than perceiving as if one is a self apart from and juxtapose to the world of other things, one realizes that all is one continuous process. There is nothing supernatural about this its perfectly physical.
The true Will does derive from this level of physical brain structure, of which the conscious mind is only a sub-layer, a software run on the physical brain hardware, Crossing the abyss is simply the discerning how to influence the hardware of the brain, to reprogram the software of the conscious mind. It is what RAW and Leary called the 6th brain circuit or John Lilly calls Meta-programming the human bio-computer.
Any way the TRUE WILL, is the set hardware of the brain-body-nervous system which is shaped by the environment both by the chemical-genetic make up and the effects upon it from space-time. Where as the whims and conscious Will, is the software of the conscious mind that merely attempts to use symbolic data in the present, to achieve the ends of the unconscious WILL. The conscious mind must however feel that it is free to find a means to achieve the TRUE WILL, bu if for example it is afflicted with the Chrisitan notion of SIN, then one is at conflict with the True WILL, because the conscious mind feels the ones TRUE WILL is sinful and immoral by nature, and thus the mind undermines itself, it becomes a state of many-hood.
Thus their are no moral laws or restrictions in Thelema, which is more concerned with the individuals free expression of under-lying psychology than with the social good of other people. Thus if you possess a Will to hate and kill, then you must be free to rape and murder without moral restriction, guilt or self-loathing. (As the only thing that liber all claims directly is to free one from all fear, guilt and sentimentality that makes on a slave to moral laws and supernatural authority.)
However, we also must realize that as a race we can't have people raping and killing Willy nilly, and we can't just have anyone doing anything at any time. So instead what we need is a social order that discerns atleast in general what sort of WILLs people generally have, and provides a proper role and means to express those WIlls in a productive way for the common good.
For example some one with a murderous WILL, may make an excellent soldier or assassin, working for the good of society. Or say a child who mutilates animals may become a serial killer, or if we discern these tendency early this Child's WILL can produce an a ficst rate veterinary surgeon.
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93
Not sure I have much to add to Froclown's excellent mapping of the concept of True Will onto society. That perspective tends to be somewhat underplayed, especially in certain countries where the illusion of freedom must be maintained, and the mode of improving society is penal rather than progressive.
With regard to a better definition of the True Will, however... look at it like this. We are all constructed and wired slightly differently. Our physical beings and our non-physical beings are not so much bound together as they are intertwined... mated with one another for the duration of a life. It is the form that this union takes that determines the True Will.
The fundamental problem is awareness. How many are acutely (or even peripherally) aware of their own natures? I believe that Crowley gave us a set of tools for discovering this nature, and chose his words carefully along the lines of Rabelais and others to indicate that we must gain a conscious awareness of our innate nature. This makes the idea a philosophical one. The tool used is a spiritual one. The method used is a scientific one.
Since man moves through his experiential universe, that nature is not static, but possessed with a momentum and an evolution. This motion is also part of the True Will, at the very least from the perspective of the individual. Which leads us into the realm of relativistic physics, and I could very easily see professor Einstein being possessed of his own sort of enlightened adepthood through his disciplines as well.
It isn't the language "True Will", or the tool used, or the method invoked that is critical... it is the unmistakable experience of working in concert with one's own nature and the universe.
93/93
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This has been such an interesting thread to me that I was hoping someone would share another post to keep it rolling. I'm going to try to... sorry if everyone else has moved on. True Will just seems like something not worth accepting on faith to me, and I appreciate the different perspectives.
Peregrinus93 said this:
"it is the unmistakable experience of working in concert with one's own nature and the universe."
Which I find very nice, poetic, and romantic. I like it as an idea. But as a practical explanation of reality, my scarecrow brain begs me to question:
- This implies that the universe has a True Will. Which implies a unity, which we might call God. So we're saying if you follow God's will, and your own nature (which I assume from Peregrinus93's comments to be our physical and non-physical (soul???)) you will be following your True Will.
- It will be unmistakable.
I can't believe the Universe has 1 Will.
I can't believe in a non-physical (soul like) quality that we all possess.
I can't believe that "it will be unmistakable" is the measure of success, since I've known the feeling of being absolutely sure of something only to be proved incorrect later.In this debate of True Will it just seems we're assuming sooooo much.
What would it take away from AC's methods to say that we each of us have Wills; why do we have to tie it into something cosmic? What does that get us?
You've told me what you think True Will is. Can it be shown? Can it be proven? Or do you just "know it" and can maybe recognize it in other people in which case we must ultimately take it on FAITH?
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Scarecrow, 93,
"You've told me what you think True Will is. Can it be shown? Can it be proven? Or do you just "know it" and can maybe recognize it in other people in which case we must ultimately take it on FAITH?"
Have you taken this too far? True will is a term that sums up the essence of a person. In saying that, we assume we humans are not here simply to be, but to act.
But you seem to be striving for a metaphysical concept first. In fact, I could switch around some of your phrasing here, and comment that you are asking if God exists.
Keep this on a level in which you can believe. Do you feel you have an individuality? That in some respects you are unique? That there are things you want to achieve that others don't, and which are important to you? If so, then you'll see the idea of True Will isn't some invention of Aleister Crowley's, it's commonsense. Sure, (most) Thelemites extend TW into the metaphysical realm, because they have a metaphysical belief or perspective. But that has to be something that is real to the person, not a borrowed concept that strains one's credulity.
If I take myself as an example, I see TW as a vital means on the road toward the mystical state we call the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. I have very little patience with using Thelema to form political philosophies or indeed, philosophies or any kind. Philosophy, to my mind, is any temporary mental resting place that keeps the intellect reasonably happy and busy while the real work of dissolving fixed ideas about life is done.
Other people here are the opposite - they cannot even stomach the idea of an HGA or a non-physical realm of any kind. For them, philosophy, along with concrete values, is the vital need and the vital goal.
So, such a person and myself have very different True Wills. But insofar as we are both living, conscious expressions of a dynamic universe, there is no inherent conflict in this.
I think you remarked in one post that True Will is a concept unique to Thelema. I disagree. Christians are urged by their scriptures, "To thine own self be true." A Zen Buddhist discovers his/her Original Face. Hindus may see themselves working out their karma on the road to Liberation. A classic Sartrean existentialist would be striving to be authentic. And so on and so on. The difference in Thelema is its recognition of the <b>dynamism</b> of the essential self, especially once it's freed from Old Aeon dogmas and guilt.
Understanding True Will does not mean reaching some inflexible state of unchanging illumination, It's a process, subject to endless revision. If you are ever offered the final, fixed formula for defining True Will, if you follow that you are probably just getting yourself stuck.
93 93/93,
EM
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EM: you make the case, if I'm hearing you right, that TW is a path and not a goal. I love this concept.
In the case of Crowley and Thelemites in general, I've heard it discussed that a person discovers their TW (ie, final results attained).
If I heard more "I'm discovering my TW", as in, I'm on the path, I think I wouldn't get stuck on the label.
Anyway, thanks for the input. Your perspective helps me to see another color from the prism.
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I'll add a post, though I said it way earlier in this thread when replying to Froclown. If this helps, TW is something that is discovered. You have to ATTAIN it. You may feel hints of it, or, as I've heard, when you find it, it isn't a surprise as much as an affirmation. But importantly, it is a path. You're on the path to find your TW. (This should already separate it from instinct and nature, although Crowley praised them I think he wasn't calling them TW, yet embracing them as part of the path to discovering your TW). Then when you discover your TW you are on another path, doing your TW. The concept of paths shouldn't be that much of a revelation if you are familiar with the Qabalah and Tarot.
It also may help to look at what isn't TW. Crowley was quite clear, as well as my own personal experience, that when you go against your TW (even if you do not know it yet) those actions will cause you pain. Immediate or later. One example could be a bad relationship. Your "heart may not be in it" (not doing you TW) but you stay in it anyway and relationship problems become worse and worse and you find yourself engaging in other activities to get away from it, but these may not be TW either and the situation is made even worse. So if you know what feels wrong (against your TW) you may over time (on the path) be able to sum these up and know what your TW isn't and perhaps through this, take a huge step toward discovering your TW. You could use the example of being a vegan yet taking a job in cow slaughter house. There's a definite "not doing your TW." This would cause the individual pain, morally and otherwise.
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93,
I would like to add a yes, yes, and yes to pretty much everything Edward Mason (or, as I like to call him, "E to the M") just said. I will also add a few thoughts of my own.
I think it's unconscionably arrogant and indefensible to assert that Crowley and TBOTL are correct, while every other mystic philosopher and his/her accompanying path is wrong. I don't even think Crowley was the first to realize that different people have different paths - even the Buddha is remembered as saying that he could not teach the path to enlightenment, he could only teach his path and it was up to others to see whether or not it worked.
While I would never argue that every religion is at its core the same, I do believe that if you limit your search to mystic thinkers and mystic means of attainment there is a surprising degree of conformity. In the end, I think it's different people looking at different parts of the same elephant. The knowledge and conversation of my HGA and the knowledge and conversation of yours may be so different that we barely recognize them as the same experience. How much different must it be to encapsulate such a subjective moment in a way people in the West will understand, to the way people in the East will understand?
This is why, although I enjoy dreaming up Thelemic social systems as much as the next guy, deep down I think we all might benefit from a little less day-dreaming and a little more half-lotus (or full lotus, if that's your bag). I think to come at Thelema and try to use it as a means to master the external world is putting the cart before the horse. Use it to master yourself, and the rest will fall into place, or the rest won't fall into place, but what the f@ck will you care, you're already where you want to be, doing what you want to be doing.
For me, the problem with saying the universe has one Will is the word "Will." To be perfectly frank, I don't care much for the word Will, and much prefer the term "Way," to borrow from the Taoists. I also believe the two concepts are entirely analogous in the broader definitions, although I recognize there is no absolute consensus even among Taoist philosophers as to the Way's essential nature.
While it seems perfectly reasonable to argue that the universe does not have a Will, it seems impossible to me to argue that the universe does not have a way. Even if one asserts that the universe is completely random, this is still a way - randomness - that the universe exists, or doesn't exist, depending.
This is why, for me, someone who makes no claims to having discovered his True Will, the experience cannot possibly be "Oh, that's why I've been so unhappy; I'm supposed to have been living in Budapest for the past 5 years." Rather, I expect it will come as something far less concrete, far less amenable to definition, or even understanding.
Now if anyone needs me I'll be reviewing the vocabulary for my finals next week, which I have, for some reason, decided is more important that the half-lotus I mentioned a few paragraphs up. Certainly I am not meant for greatness.
Love=Law
- C
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93,
Do you have to 'attain' the true will or is it a realization or pulling back of the layers of the mind? Do you have to believe in 'free will' to believe in true will (Crowley and Hymenaeus Beta certainly think not)? Why shoudl we distinguish animal and plant 'instincts' from human (I think we shouldnt). Stars 'shine,' Humans 'go.' Whether you are mired in the delusion of ignorance and therefore suffer from the changing circumstances of life or whether you dont or whether you find an occupation you like or whether you dont - does that alter Will at all?
"Our minds and bodies are veils of the Light within. The uninitiate is a "Dark Star", and the Great Work for him is to make his veils transparent by 'purifying' them. This 'purification' is really 'simplification'; it is not that the veil is dirty, but that the complexity of its folds makes it opaque. The Great Work therefore consists principally in the solution of complexes. Everything in itself is perfect, but when things are muddled, they become 'evil'." - The Law is for All, I:8
I find it funny that There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt but everyone has their own idea of what Will is in the first place...
NarrowFellow: you seem to be confusing Will as a metaphysical principle (like Schopenhauer's Will-to-Life and Nietzsche's Will-to-Power) with the notion of willpower or volition. I would say teh universe certainly doesnt have volition but it certainly has a Will... IS Will. I see Will and Way/Tao as essentially coterminous (as does Crowley). "It should be clear from the foregoing that the Law of Thelema "Do what thou wilt" must be a logical rule of conduct to anyone who accepts the above premises... That the task is endless is no detriment to this process, but makes it all the more interesting. It is the way of the tao. Finality would cloy." -"On Thelema" by A.C.
IAO131
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93,
ThatNarrowFellow wrote:
"Edward Mason (or, as I like to call him, "E to the M")"
Not sure I get the reference here, other than some altered version of E-MC squared.
I'm just curious.
93 93/93,
EM
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*Crowley was the first Thelemite. I think that is often overlooked. *
Actually, Rabelais was the first Thelemite in spirit since he coined the term Thelemite, but in practice, the Monks of Medmenham, A.K.A. The Hellfire Club were probably the first practicing Thelemites.
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93,
The Hellfire Club(s) - there were apparently several - consisted of a bunch of rich guys getting drunk and laid. They did, it seems, believe in stamping down the wretched and the weak, but not much beyond that and their own enjoyment.
Rabelais' status is arguable, since he did offer a laissez-faire philosophy. But I think he fell halfway between Thelema as presented by Crowley and expanded by others since, and the 18th Century rakes in the Hellfire Club. I'd give him honorary status, mostly for having coined several notions and phrases that Aiwass was able to appropriate as part of the conceptual framework in the Book of the Law.
93 93/93,
EM -
@Edward Mason said
"93,
ThatNarrowFellow wrote:
"Edward Mason (or, as I like to call him, "E to the M")"
Not sure I get the reference here, other than some altered version of E-MC squared.
I'm just curious.
93 93/93,
EM"
93,
No need to be curious, just a joke.
Aum: You're right, and I think this is why I prefer the word "Way." Even though intellectually I understand that there is the will of volition and the metaphysical concept of Will and that they are different (just look at their initial letters) in terms of understanding where the lower will of my animal desires ends and the higher Will of my Higher Self (to choose one of many insufficient terms) is something that still escapes me.
I also think that because of language, and the way in which language informs thought, no matter how clear I think I am on the different uses of this English word "(W)will," I still catch myself falling into confusion. The fact is, the word "will" implies a certain conception of what we're striving for, and on days when I feel particularly clear-headed it seems like a wonderful vision and I attain to it, but on days when I am more muddled I find it helps for me to go back to "Way" as a means to encapsulate what I am striving for, because it is easier to sort out, and clearer in definition. I'm not likely to mistake the path to the subway as my individually-expressed "Way," or "Dao," as it were.
Love=Law
- C
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I like the concept mentioned before as the TW being a Way, a continuous and never-ending road.
I'm not sure this is what Crowley meant. He seemed to mean it as an ending. Something you can attain. (I'm not sure if you can actually attain a path, after thinking about that metaphor, since it could be argued one is ALWAYS on a path, and all of us are Gods in the midst of Going).
I also disagree strongly with the concept that:
"when you go against your TW (even if you do not know it yet) those actions will cause you pain. "
I'm sure following people's TW (whatever that is) has caused much pain, morally and otherwise.
I'd like to ask a new, but similar question of the group:
How does True Will differ from Destiny in your interpretation of the concept.
One thought I immediatly had on the subject was that destiny as it's normally understood cannot be circumvented... you are always following your destiny (or maybe I'm misguided on this subject too)... but it seems as many people have explained TW, you can NOT be following your TW.
Thoughts?
Also I've liked the different posts about Crowley and "being a thelemite"... in another thread it was posted that one could seperate the prophet Crowley from the person. I wonder if people consider Crowley the person as a prime example of a thelemite. If not why?
Thanks again folks - you all rock and so do your posts!