Joining the A.'.A.'.
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Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Yeah, I understood the point you were attempting to get across perfectly, Frater AVV. I was merely commending you on doing it so bloody well!
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours in LVX,
-M -
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
"Further, what is the point of doing that list of things you think is so important, many of the greatest thinkers, inventers, and progressive figures in history never married, were not concerned with mundane things like that."
The point Frater AVV was attempting to get across to you, Frowclown, to put it succinctly, is to master all aspects of your REAL life instead of ignoring it in favour of escapism.
Some of the greatest thinkers actually engaged the real world instead of hiding from it, which is directly apparent from the amount of influence they actually had upon it.
"and my last point the way you speak of Second Life and cyberspace, I bet is exactly the way people at the transition from Isis to Osiris spoke of the ctiy, People in the cities just want to escape the reality of nature, they hide behind giant walls and play games, with their silly numbers and letters, and their silly metal costumes the prance around in. They don't do real work. Not like us out here who have toil in the REAL WORLD"
I fail to see the parallel between organizing society into cities and the escapism of virtual reality. Also, your depiction of events is arguably quite historically inaccurate. Some evidence suggests that the first "cities" came into being when Neolithic hunter-gatherers opted to settle near agriculturally rich centres over their original nomadic lifestyles, the former having created denser population areas that were conducive to easier ways of life.
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours in LVX,
-M -
explain why it is escapism to organize a virtual community that is based an a set of laws, customs, legal system, punishments for crimes, etc
But it is not escapism to physically built wooden houses on a physical plot of land, charter a legal system, set laws, develop customs, etc as was the plan for the OTO.
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"Further, what is the point of doing that list of things you think is so important, many of the greatest thinkers, inventers, and progressive figures in history never married, were not concerned with mundane things like that. Di Vinci seldom slept and spent all his time working an his paintings and contraptions, Edison almost never left his lab, Einstein was always so deep in though his sister had to pick out his clothes, Marx nearly never left his house. A great many others.
"But would you say, given their example, that they had completely mastered themselves? You seek to instruct others with a title that implies mastery of yourself. The question is not whether or not they did. The question is whether or not you can, for none of them openly aspired to teach with the authority of a Magister Templi of the A.'.A.'. as you do.
Don't you understand yet? You're aspiring not only to equal but to surpass the examples you gave...! In fact, you're trying to get us to say it's okay to claim that you already have...!
And... Also. This is where I get off. I can't say it any clearer, and it sounds like it's about to digress from what I feel is the main point again anyway.
Satisfy your SELF! Satisfy yourSelf! Satisfy your Self! It's not your job to please anyone else, and you can't anyway, so stop trying.
Find what course of action will satisfy yourSelf!
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Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Well for one thing, the answer appears directly in your question: VIRTUAL community, versus a PHYSICAL community.
Burying oneself in an online world surrounded by pixels that are meant to represent people is escapism, or in other words, choosing to ignore the real world in favour of a fabricated one. Of course, I'm using the word 'escapism' insofar as what you're describing is concerned.
"Wooden houses on a physical plot of land" is exactly the opposite. It wasn't the denial of physical reality that the "original plan" for the OTO was proposing, but an ACTUAL and PHYSICAL community of Thelemites based in physical reality.
The bottom line is that these laws, customs, legal systems, et cetera are only truly "enforceable" -- or applicable -- in the real world, and would have absolutely no impact or bearing of any significant consequence in a virtual reality.
You're talking about, for lack of better terms, creating a simulation rooted entirely in cyberspace, to which Frater AVV has demonstrated that no one beyond yourself would take seriously.
You're talking about, for lack of better terms, a game. Hell, I could go ahead and set up something I will call the A.'.A.'. in an online chat room, set up an A.'.A.'. squadron in an online campaign of Battlestar Galactica: Beyond the Red Line (awesome game, by the way) to shoot down Black Brother Cylons. Both are as unreal as what you are proposing.
But hey, who am I to tell you what to do? I think it's a silly notion, but the notion isn't mine, so why should you even care what I -- or anyone else on this forum -- have to say about it? Go out and do it already! Who knows, maybe you'll create a heard of virtual Adepts with really interesting avatars who will one day save us from the inevitability of the Matrix.
It's your call. After all, it's your Will, even if a whole lot of us do not agree with it.
But as you said, you are not seeking our permission, nor our approval. So do what thou wilt.
You continuously refuse to hear what we have to say on the matter, and yet you continuously return to debate your point with us.
If you're really set on doing this thing, do it!
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours in LVX,
-M -
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
@Frater_AVV said
"
"Further, what is the point of doing that list of things you think is so important, many of the greatest thinkers, inventers, and progressive figures in history never married, were not concerned with mundane things like that. Di Vinci seldom slept and spent all his time working an his paintings and contraptions, Edison almost never left his lab, Einstein was always so deep in though his sister had to pick out his clothes, Marx nearly never left his house. A great many others.
"But would you say, given their example, that they had completely mastered themselves? You seek to instruct others with a title that implies mastery of yourself. The question is not whether or not they did. The question is whether or not you can, for none of them openly aspired to teach with the authority of a Magister Templi of the A.'.A.'. as you do.
Don't you understand yet? You're aspiring not only to equal but to surpass the examples you gave...! In fact, you're trying to get us to say it's okay to claim that you already have...!
*"I agree with this assessment in its entirety.
Have you mastered yourself and become a Magister Templi, Frowclown, or merely regurgitating the theory behind the grade you claim to have attained to?
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours in LVX,
-M -
when I say I crossed the abyss, perhaps this description of alchemy by Julius Evola can best explain what I consider to be that experience, Perhaps I am wrong.
Be that as it may, the alchemical process has the skeleton of the quest stories. The would-be initiate must go on a night-journey, perform a great deed, and then return to transform his place of origin. The initiate, in fact, must literally die, or at least temporarily dissociate his consciousness from his physical body. He must hold his awareness together against the temptation to dissolve into the All, which is the trap of mysticism. He must withstand the universal elemental forces that lie below the threshold of conscious. These are the archons, the souls of the metals and their associated astrological planets, which may appear as demons or as gods.
The spirit of the initiate must be “fixed,” its individuality frozen out of the infinite possibilities of the disincarnate state. This is done by union with the poison that initiated the dissolution. The spirit then returns back to the body, which it transforms into an indestructible “body of light” (though this will not necessarily be apparent to objective observers), in which the primordial elements are balanced.
I certainly was dissociated from my body and held between total dissolution and an infinite number of possible world I might end up incarnate within, and the demon of my inhibitions, fears, and such attacking me at every turn.
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@Froclown said
"when I say I crossed the abyss, perhaps this description of alchemy by Julius Evola can best explain what I consider to be that experience, Perhaps I am wrong.
Be that as it may, the alchemical process has the skeleton of the quest stories. The would-be initiate must go on a night-journey, perform a great deed, and then return to transform his place of origin. The initiate, in fact, must literally die, or at least temporarily dissociate his consciousness from his physical body. He must hold his awareness together against the temptation to dissolve into the All, which is the trap of mysticism. He must withstand the universal elemental forces that lie below the threshold of conscious. These are the archons, the souls of the metals and their associated astrological planets, which may appear as demons or as gods.
The spirit of the initiate must be “fixed,” its individuality frozen out of the infinite possibilities of the disincarnate state. This is done by union with the poison that initiated the dissolution. The spirit then returns back to the body, which it transforms into an indestructible “body of light” (though this will not necessarily be apparent to objective observers), in which the primordial elements are balanced.
I certainly was dissociated from my body and held between total dissolution and an infinite number of possible world I might end up incarnate within, and the demon of my inhibitions, fears, and such attacking me at every turn."
Join the club, baby...
And when I regain the simple discipline of being able to consistently meditate everyday and write in my silly little notebook again, I may just apply for 0=0 ...
after I get the balls to tell my girlfriend...
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@Froclown said
"when I say I crossed the abyss, perhaps this description of alchemy by Julius Evola can best explain what I consider to be that experience, Perhaps I am wrong."
What you described is representative of the attainment of Tiphereth, not Binah. It is the archetype of the Hero (the Sun) expressed especially through the last stages of the Path of Nun.
It's hard from the words alone to assess the level of this Tiphereth attainment. It could, of course, by that attainment of Tiphereth in Briah which constitutes the 5=6 of A.'.A.'.. More commonly, this kind of meticulous attention to the alchemical phases is representative of the attainment of Tiphereth in Yetzirah which is the level of the old Golden Dawn's 5=6 (or T.'.O.'.T.'. 5°) - roughly equal to A.'.A.'. late 1=10 or bridging to 2=9 through the Path of Tav.
It's a very good description of that. (The reference to the alchemical metals is especially a good mark of the old G.D. 5=6, Netzach in Assiah bridging into Tiphereth in Yetzirah.)
"I certainly was dissociated from my body and held between total dissolution and an infinite number of possible world I might end up incarnate within, and the demon of my inhibitions, fears, and such attacking me at every turn."
Chemically induced, I presume?
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chemically catalyzed I would say, it made the trance unshakable by normal means such as opening my eye or shaking by head, eyes open and shut made no difference, my mind was a shewstone, no escape.
I used the method of the soldier and the hunchback, Every though form, paradigm or ideal, I denied it, I cut to its flaw, and a new one would a arise and I would strike it down, until it was automatic, I wanted to take "nothing is TRUE : Everything is permissible" to its deepest source, but one can alway deny any ethos, an always find reason to accept any ethos. The path to this had my ego divided into what seemed like millions of bits, each one a spirit or demon that held only one ideal or desire and each one wanted to take over the now vacant seat of power in which my ego once ruled, so than it could enact its one law, be it God is real, God is a lie, drink a pepsi or kill yourself, it was a dust cloud of this. It seemed like these demons dragged by mind though not just all of history but other types of time and space, other worlds, but I just kept denying any validity to any of it. This "I" was more like an outer shell looking in than a point within the mind.
Eventualy, that all stopped when I hit a vast tension, where every action or inaction seemed equally futile and without truth or meaning, I felt like God at the instant of creation, in the void but having to reason to create this or that sort of world and no reason to create no worlds or all. I felt like I just did not want the responsibility, like if I could just fade away. Then some element deeper than reason took over, almost like a survival instinct, I realized that it was this that I had been fighting all along, that my sword of reason with its doubt had repressed, and divided against itself. I had to give myself to this deeper part of me, give up reason and just trust this to put everything back the way it should be.
in the end when I was solid and myself again, I saw great triumphant images, goddess statues with swords stabbed threw apples, the apples flashing bright colors Red Blue and Violet. and triumphant parade music. (I though Babalon, but maybe Netzatch, the image was linked with Eris though, through chaos on into the eye of the storm to return the apple of discord united with the sword).
And after a year or so of coming to terms with this organizational principle, I have come to trust those hunches, I even find that I often seem to have information I am sure I never read or heard, but just seem to know is right, and usually it is.
It certainly seemed to be like I dissolved into the void, dealt with the dispersing forces of Choronzion and came to meet a higher depersonalized force or principle of organization. (not a personified entity like an angel at all, more like a sense or dynamic vector from pre-rational mind that re-orders the rational mind and ego, when it becomes dispersed beyond its own ability to repair)
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@Froclown said
"It certainly seemed to be like I dissolved into the void, dealt with the dispersing forces of Choronzion and came to meet a higher depersonalized force or principle of organization. (not a personified entity like an angel at all, more like a sense or dynamic vector from pre-rational mind that re-orders the rational mind and ego, when it becomes dispersed beyond its own ability to repair)"
I've often told students over the years that you sometimes have to 'cross the Abyss' several times before you work your way up to being a beginner.
That is, there often are many layers of us that, when stripped away, feel like all footing and definition are lost. To that extent, they are a genuinely big deal at the time. But these experiences are more in the form of preliminary purifications before one is really ready to begin at the beginning.
I don't think I'm anything special in having had half a dozen or more experiences, such as you describe above, in just the first two or three grades of the A.'.A.'.. At the time, each seemed huge and (for lack of a better word at the moment) absolute. It would have been easy to take any one of them as the mark of some very high attainment, and in some cases I'm sure I did for a few days or weeks after.
But when one has such an ultimate event at (for example) late 1=10 and then goes on to find that 2=9 opens up entirely new levels - and there are four more grades from there just to 5=6 with significant threshold experiences each step along the way - it puts these early things into a lot more perspective. (It would be sooooo easy to mistake 1=10 phenomena for the Knowledge & Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel were it not for the fact that it is barely beginning in that experience compared to the actual experience to which that phrase is applied at the threshold of the Inner College.)
Or, to put it another way: I was quite right to be proud of my report card in second grade, and the good mariks I received were a genuine reflection of accomplishment and future promise; but to mistake them for a graduate degree would have been really silly.
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I never claimed to be anything special, I only claimed I had the experience, and that it gave me access to the layers of my own mind and to how the mind takes raw sensory data that is pre-conscious and divides its into categories to create reality as we perceive it consciously with wordls, including that the sense of meaning or importance in a thing is actually more akin to an emotion, not a property of the thing we believe to be meaningful.
Also than mastery over these aspects of the mind, constitutes magick, that many of the claims people push off as hokey in occult science is because they claims seem to express a literal miracle, when really its more psychological, or a better term is transcendent, it is a effect in the astral or pre-conscious to conscious translation
My interest is to teach this in such a way that academic science, hard science like neuro-chemistry will accept it.
But it also has social and political implications on the as this same meaning creation aspect of the mind, effect our sense of personal identity, and our duty to others and society, as well as our place in a greater transient whole.
My hope is that I could teach this science to those no specifically open to hocus-pocus rituals and ancient alchemical codes. I am trying to distill a method where by Thelema can effect all people. I feel I approached what RAW and LEARY call the 6th circuit meta-programmer. and a whole new level of reality exists that humanity should be exploring. But it seems people who have not had the experience have no idea what I'm even talking about, It's like trying to talk colors with the blind.
I know its not just a drug trip, because others who do more drugs than myself, seem to have no clue any more than those who are totally clean.
I assumed is NO ONE understands what I'm talking about I must be very advanced indeed.
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Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
"I assumed is NO ONE understands what I'm talking about I must be very advanced indeed."
Or you could be completely wrong.
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours in LVX,
-M -
@Froclown said
"I never claimed to be anything special, I only claimed I had the experience, and that it gave me access to the layers of my own mind and to how the mind takes raw sensory data that is pre-conscious and divides its into categories to create reality as we perceive it consciously with wordls, including that the sense of meaning or importance in a thing is actually more akin to an emotion, not a property of the thing we believe to be meaningful.
Also than mastery over these aspects of the mind, constitutes magick, that many of the claims people push off as hokey in occult science is because they claims seem to express a literal miracle, when really its more psychological, or a better term is transcendent, it is a effect in the astral or pre-conscious to conscious translation
My interest is to teach this in such a way that academic science, hard science like neuro-chemistry will accept it. "
Here are some key articles in my own research. I was going to put something together for my thesis using seminary students and their experiences with kataphatic prayer, but alas, the mountain is high, and appropriate and willing subjects are so difficult to come by...
Hill, P.C., & Hood, R.W. (1999). Affect, Religion, and Unconscious Processes. Journal of Personality, 67, 1015-1046. ----(A Lit Review of the common ground between liberal theologians and personality theorists, based in "affect.")
Thalbourne, M.A., & Maltby, J. (2008). Transliminality, thin boundaries, Unusual Experiences, and temporal lobe lability. Personality and Individual Differences, 44, 1617-1623. ----(Examines the "ease" of flow of information back and forth from consciousness to subconsciousness in the brain from a neuropsych perspective).
Epstein, S. (2003). Cognitive-experiential self-theory of personality. In Millon, T., & Lerner, M. J. (Eds), Comprehensive Handbook of Psychology, Volume 5: Personality and Social Psychology ( pp. 159-184). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley & Sons. ----(CEST is a newer personality theory that seeks to put some operational definitions on the "subconscious." It sounds like it would mesh nicely with your own directions. Ties together the other two articles.)
"My hope is that I could teach this science to those no specifically open to hocus-pocus rituals and ancient alchemical codes. But it seems people who have not had the experience have no idea what I'm even talking about, It's like trying to talk colors with the blind. "
According the Thalbourne's research on Transliminality, some people have a lower threshold for information to cross from unconsciousness to consciousness. They generally experience more dreams, "sensed presences," and mystical experiences, and they tend to be more interested and open to exploring things of a mystical and "hocus pocus-y" nature. Those with high thresholds, do not have the experiences and therefore consider it all an aberration and foolishness. Those with completely ungated thresholds are insane and cannot distinguish reality from fantasy.
The knowledge that this threshold can be lowered and this flow of information can be safely and sanely increased to Higher-Genius level functioning is beyond the range of empirical science at the moment and entirely still in the "unprovable" realm of the ancient mysteries. That will probably take a while. But it's not out of sight. The groundwork is pretty much being slowly tested and proven in our generation.
I've found that trying to present this information to the mind that doesn't have some sort of direct experience of it is like trying to convince a man burning in the desert sun that he really needs to think about coats. Talking to this same person after they have bent their mind around ANY experience of truly altered perception becomes easier. I think that may just be the nature of the beast. But I'd like the empirical evidence to be there as well for when they DO have those experiences...
"I know its not just a drug trip, because others who do more drugs than myself, seem to have no clue any more than those who are totally clean.
I assumed is NO ONE understands what I'm talking about I must be very advanced indeed."
I hear ya. When I do talk about it, people give me those looks. When I don't talk, they think I'm secretive and witholding. I'm not sure what to make of that. I think that maybe if we'd been "in the program," so to speak, then the experience would have been much more controlled and prepared for. It's easier for people to process afterward if they know about where you were "on the map" in the first place and the specific "symbol sets" you're dealing with. If not, then there are all kinds of unknowns that people seem hesitant to comment upon. Don't want to affirm someone who is just plain crazy, you know...?
That's the best I got for that part.
**
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yes, the specific program I was using was not orderly, I was a early philosophy student, and in my own time trying to understand traditional Hermeticism, Chaos magic of Carrol, Lovecraftian, and RAW style Discordianism, all of which I was attempting to organize with the tree of life.
So no particular method was used, I had no knowledge of what order to do any practices in, but had been doing daily LBRP, and had some effects from Simon's Necronomicon, and the with chaos sigils, to assure be that their was something to this after all.
But I did expect what ever result I had would match the grade structure, which I assumed was straight up, one tree each sepheroth a grade, the 4 worlds I assumed only applied at Malkuth / Yesod-Netzach-Hod / Tiphereth-Gevurah-Chesed / Kether-binna-Chokmah
I assumed that any attainment of Tiphereth was HGA.I re-read Liber O, that sounds like what I experienced actually, but I always assumed that Crowley was just exaggerating and just trying to make these things seem more intense than they actual are, to make students weary.
I thought this warning ("In this book it is spoken of the Sephiroth and the Paths; of Spirits and Conjurations; of Gods, Spheres, Planes, and many other things which may or may not exist. It is immaterial whether these exist or not. By doing certain things certain results will follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them") was just general advice to apply towards all visions or supposed supernatural events a sort of call to find a naturalistic explanation.
However I seems so clear to me now that this is an instruction meant to be particular to tho VI the part of this exersize. That only by denying with all your might, can one cast off the images and demons than assail one and rise on further and further. (I used nothing in true) as my motto to achieve this.
Maybe I should work on evoking at this point, I never was very good at it.
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You are not an 8=3, and any claim to that is ridiculous.
Your last sentence alone speaks volumes.
The whole Second Life thing is bloody hysterical!Seriously, you should count yourself lucky that people here are actually giving this absurd topic the time of day.
Im not convinced that Froclown isn't playing a big joke on the forum.
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Well, as one who has spent some time sparring with him verbally, I'm pretty sure he's quite serious.
I don't know... You touch something vast and mind-boggling... You answer deep questions within yourself that you have carried for years... You realize that if you can put that answer you found into the proper words, that it could potentially be wildly revolutionary and wildly beneficial not only to yourself but to humanity in general...
And then you have to come back to everyday life and figure out how in the world to do the work of communicating it meaningfully to others. When I came back down out of - what I guess was something of a similar experience - I became a bit of a "mad prophet" for a while. I spoke to my close friends and loved ones, trying to help them understand that I understood "HaShem" as the "Eye of the Storm...! -- The Eye of the furious and raging Storm of Love that We Are...!"
And that still means something very definite and incredibly, heart-wrenchingly beautiful to me, but it sounds like madness to anyone who was not struggling with the questions I was struggling with when the ordeal was triggered and I entered the experience.
I see Froclown as a brother.
"7 O LORD, you deceived me, and I was deceived;
you overpowered me and prevailed.
I am ridiculed all day long;
everyone mocks me.
8 Whenever I speak, I cry out
proclaiming violence and destruction.
So the word of the LORD has brought me
insult and reproach all day long.
9 But if I say, "I will not mention him
or speak any more in his name,"
his word is in my heart like a fire,
a fire shut up in my bones.
I am weary of holding it in;
indeed, I cannot."---- Jeremiah 20:7-9
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A good point to remember is that the grades demarcate the stabilization of the gnosis, not the peak experience. This threw me off at first. One of my postulates was that anyone who attained a Samadhi upon the Ain should technically be an 8 = 3, as they transcended all and united with it. However while those experiences are very healthy and demarcate a minor progress, they never demarcate a permanent leap on the Tree. It is like an electron shooting off to the next orbital, it comes back when the energy dissipates. In speaking of initation, the electron doesn't come back to exactly the same place, but is a little more developed. It is where one is stabilized at that is the current grade of one. This doesn't imply in the high grades one is teeming with energy per the electron model, but that everything has been internalized and subtilized to a very high degree. This is admittedly hard to ascertain and also generally useful to know (heeding the pitfalls of being "hung up" about one's grade), but since the Way is in the Work the importance is rather offset.
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@Wizardiaoan said
"A good point to remember is that the grades demarcate the stabilization of the gnosis, not the peak experience. This threw me off at first. One of my postulates was that anyone who attained a Samadhi upon the Ain should technically be an 8 = 3, as they transcended all and united with it. However while those experiences are very healthy and demarcate a minor progress, they never demarcate a permanent leap on the Tree."
This just might be the best point anyone has made on this entire thread! Very well stated.
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what I really don't get is how is what I described different than say Buddha's fight with Mara under the Bodhi tree, and how is Mara different that Choronzon. If Mara is identified with Choronzon how then is crossing the abyss different from the path of ayin, the Devil.
When I look to Crowley's account of the abyss he says this "The name of the Dweller in the Abyss is Choronzon, but he is not really an individual. The Abyss is empty of being; it is filled with all possible forms, each equally inane, each therefore evil in the only true sense of the word --- that is, meaningless but malignant, in so far as it craves to become real. These forms swirl senselessly into haphazard heaps like dust devils, and each such chance aggregation asserts itself to be an individual and shrieks, "I am I!" though aware all the time that its elements have no true bond; so that the slightest disturbance dissipates the delusion just as a horseman, meeting a dust devil, brings it in showers of sand to the earth."
Now how do these dust devils, differ from the various demons and entities I experienced that all wanted to posses me, to take the place of my seat of ego, To proclaim "the king is dead, long live the king" only in this case the king is EGO. and how does that differ from mara.
and how does any of this differ from what RAW alluded to as the Chapel Perilous, which only the divine fool can pass by not being caught up in the illusions than present themselves.
and lastly how can I distinguish any of that from what the DSM IV, classifies as dissociative psychosis.