External entities or subconcious mind?
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I think it is presumptuous and careless to default to the belief that what appears as external to oneself actually is objective. I have had some experience with rituals and psycho-active drugs and both produce unusual states of mind, that are far too complex and really not possible to define unless you have had the experience. Part of this experience seems to be a massive widening of ones inner world or subjective awareness. One part of that widening is seems as if their is an over-lap between the inner and outer world. (5=6)
However again this is only subjective seeming, and we know from science that all "seemings" need to be tested. Now I may have taken a strange drug or had a psychotic episode where I am dead certain that I saw the lord God break forth out of the heavens in a fiery chariot, I may have felt the hot blast of air, I may be able to describe in perfect detail the time, place, location, the weather, the even the license plates on the cars, and may even describe the details of the chariot, the beasts that pulled it, etc. As clearly as if I had been describing a Stage coach driving lovers around the park. But, that does not prove that it was real, it only proves the how strong and detailed by perception was, no matter if it was real or delusion.
However, if the Chariot can be summoned again, with witnesses, or thermal scans to pick up the flames, or some evidence of scorch marks, that persist after the initial vision and can be verified by others. Then we can take this as evidence to the Objective reality of the event. As far as I have seen, little to no such evidence has been found other than some very small changes in ambient temperature and EMF back ground fields which accompany projections of apparitions in dark mirror, which I feel are better explained by metabolic changes in the bio-chemistry of the subject, who perhaps startled by the images, react with fear that restricts blood vessels and this reduces body heat emission.
Now various attempts to project the subjective into the objective involve the notion of planes, aethyrs, other world, dimensions, subtle energies, sepheroth, etc. These all assume than the stuff of the mind, spirits, gods, chariots of fire, etc do exist in reality but are made of a substance that is finer that physical matter and our bodies are too coarse a sifter the holes in our net are too wide to catch these finer grade substances. Or that they exist in some parallel universe or other dimensional type of heaven. Either way they these are unfalsifiable theories, founded on proclaimed axioms than these worlds are outside of the reach of science, reason and perception. (generally with the implied, my school and mine alone can teach you how to interact with these other worlds, it will only cost you a little for the first lesson.)
Those theories are non-falsifiable and thus useless from a scientific perspective. It the field of Cognitive science it has been shown than the parts of the brain that code the mental map for physical space, is also used when dealing with other types of logic. We think of dreams and thought as being in a 3D world much like the external 3D world. When we thing about math and logic problems we may create inner graphs that are spacial, and we may say that a dried stick from a hickory tree may exist in different semantic spaces. the idea of a the stick as a twig, is in a different space from its idea as a phallic rood, or an instrument of obedience used on a school child. Thus we can see that in our minds eye these other worlds heaven, hells etc are projections of the physical activity of the brain, creating the subjective projection of mental images and ideals into various consistent semantic spaces. But these spaces are actually the function of the brain, not actually real spaces.
However when we get to 5=6, we find a resolution, (sort of)
The awareness we have of being a body/mind which has a particular location in the physical world. Is actually a projected model created by the same spacial-reasoning centers in the brain, than project the semantic ideas of the subjective imagination. Thus the physical world (at least as it appears to our eye/mind) is just as suspect at being a metal projection into a semantic space, as the heavens and hells where spirits live. Times square may be no more "real" than Valhalla. Conversely Valhalla may be just as real as times square.
At this point your certainty on just where to draw the line "Truth vs Illusion" of "Subjective vs Objective" or "Self vs Other" should atleast begin to blur.
You can go with a duality where some things are in each category, You can return to science where all things are material, or you can go with idealism where all are ideal substance. Or you can become an adept and accept the confusion, and merge the two categories into one, in Tiphereth.
All True magick acts upon this new unified space than transcends the Subject-Object duality. It is in this space that you will encounter the spirits of the Goetia, but while in this space it is not correct to say these are True beings nor is it correct to say they are subjective illusions. They are not both nor neither, much as green is not blue or yellow, it is not blue and yellow, and green is not the lack of blue and yellow.
The spirits are green, and thus can't be classified into categories of blue and yellow at all. (you dig?)
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@Progress said
"BOTH."
Yes.
And/or: It depends.
In any case: Read Liber O, Sect. I, Par 2.
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Try it for yourself OP. Conduct your own experiments. There is often the debate among those who seek to demystify the mystical and rationalize the irrational, and others with the gift of imagination/madness can dance the razors edge between the worlds. The debate has gone on through the ages and will continue. The best way to answer for yourself is to try it yourself. Is there even an above or below, or is that a convienient way for us to deal with the illusion of duality, in which case it is both and neither. It is quite unmistakable when you have made contact with a bornless entity. They are not errant thoughts of the usual chatter of internal dialog or phantoms of the imagination. The brain lights up like a super nova and the rythm and patterns of the neural nets becomes completely different, and the communications come as vibrations, via mental and psychic links. When you do, if you can maintain your wits, ask it the very question you are asking now.
Sometimes I think of it as the brain is the radio hardware, and the sigil the frequency of the energy pattern represented by the entity. By activating that part of the brain with the sigil, it helps tune into the 'external' energy signature or 'radio station' of the entity. As far as genius and madness, are you inviting both by activating these centers above and below? Probably. Welcome to chaos and infinity.
The key is to let the trajectory of your Will be done in the black light of chaos as you spiral through eternity, not the other way around. -
Oh I just realized something I forgot.
It depends on what you mean by External also. Not every aspect of the brain is under control of the conscious volition or even generally accessible to the awareness. If you think of every task your brain is doing, regulating respiration, heart rate, body temperature, posture, hormone levels, these fundamentals are totally autonomous, that is they are controlled by events and forces than are external to the tiny bubble of awareness and ego control. Their are also more abstract cognitive functions the brain is performing without your understanding, a ball is thrown to you, your just reach out and get it, you have no idea HOW exactly your brain makes the million tiny predictions and adjustments to get your hand to the ball. Then af course their is semantic framing, or what Robert Anton Wilson calls reality tunnels. We encounter the same event in different contexts and frame its meaning differently, without consciously picking and choosing which combination of paradigms and perspective lenses we want to use, it just happens and may take great effort to re-imprint the mind to see things differently. All of these, if the ego is made in focus on them and bring them into its attention and awareness, seem as if it is not "I" who do these things but an external entity(s) or forces that are not under my direct control but merely my influence, just as say the lamp is not turned on by direct control, but merely by my influence over external events via direct control of my hand.
Of some of these forces or subroutines in the brain, in order for the ego to exert its influence and communicate to them, (create a feed back) the ego awareness has to build a model that represents these elements that consist of things not part of the conscious minds symbol set. The ego then has to cloth these in its own symbols, the forms of animals, people, kings, dukes, angels, dragons, shapes, etc. This model we call a spirit, and once the image is linked to the aspect of the mind we want to influence we can create a feed back, by saying or thinking a word or name to the spirit and seeing how it reacts, or by constraining it to a specific image or color, then see how that effects things.
Since these unconscious aspects of the mind vastly out number the conscious aspects and they so deeply effect the perception of the external world and also the nature and self image of the ego and the limits/nature of the tiny conscious bubble we call "the whole of reality" then when you change any aspect of this deeper mind, you change in some way your conscious perspective and thus your "Whole reality" will seem to change too.
Compare the desktop and open windows on your computer to the conscious mind, and the physical hardware + the unseen programing/software environment to the unconscious. The only way you can access and change the underlying programming is via a graphic interface of a window or a text interface with say a command prompt. Put the actual programing in not pictures of icons nor is it written in letters and words, It is the physical architecture of the chips and circuits themselves, which the User is never directly aware of, but can influence them in some ways with the user interface system, and other ways your can not influence the chips unless you cut open your computer and physically change the inputs at each point in the circuit with a probe, or pull then out and replace them. If you poke around at the chips in this way comparable to surgery or brain damage, the results are reflected in very bizaar behavior in the user interface, all the windows might be trapezoids or the world blue changes to elephant most of the time.
Magick results are more comparable to learning how to access the registry or root directory, making change here can also have very strange results on the function of the whole system and alter the user interface system as well.
For further information see John C. Lilly "Programming and meta-programming the human bio-computer" and Circuit 6 of the Leary-RAW 8 circuit model.
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@Blythe A. Blanche said
"I'm curious to the know everyone's opinion regarding the objetive reality or subjective illusions of gods, spirits, etc."
They are subjective 'entities,' and externalized parts of oneself. There are no such thing as external, objective demons or angels just like there are no djinns and no Zeus and no Vishnu and no Loki and no Cherubim... they are metaphors, at best.
"For example, I once read an initiated interpretation of Lemegeton in which it was suggested that the so-called "spirits" were but supressed or subconcious parts of the human mind, and that the sigils used to call them forth were simply ways to stimulate that section of the brain visually."
You were probably reading Crowley's 'Initiated Interpretation of Ceremonial Magick' where he claims not that they are subconscious parts of the human mind but that they are, in fact, parts of the human brain (an even more materialistic claim than the one you are giving)
"What do you think? Does it even matter whether something is real or unreal?"
Yes, in most cases it matters...
" In Magick in Theory and Practice, Crowley writes of Divination saying it doesn't matter whether the intelligences invoked are externally real or not - either way it "works.""
And in Liber AL it says 'Success is your proof.' We call this view of truth 'pragmatism,' i.e. what works is 'true.'
"It's well-known that genious is heriditarily tied in with insanity."
No its not. Its absolutely not.
"(Einstein's son was a paranoid schizophrenic.) "
And?
"Could it be that hallucinogens truly do open dormant parts of the brain, while even the slightest "mess up" often leads to insanity?"
Perhaps, but believe you me, psychedelics do not necessarily open up anything we would call 'genius.' More often than not it opens up the sloppy slobbish sentimentality that is opposite to Adepthood.
" We invoke spirits, gods, and godesses, but maybe by doing so we're evolving into higher forms of being a little at a time. From ape to human to god."
Thats certainly a positive way to look at yelling at your walls.
IAO131
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both geniuses and those raised by geniuses often have difficulty relating to the general population of common intelligence, and thus having inadequate social skills, develop existential issues, which can lead not only to neurotic anxiety, depression, and phobias, but also to dissociative disorders which the ego distortion is Schzophrenics, to hear voices, would fall under a dissociative delusion.
Social alienation and inadequate preparation to use ones enhanced ability, and even facing negative social feed back against ones very superior abilities, can lead to many problems.
Which is why I propose the system where natural genius is cultivated and an aristocratic class of genius is separated from the common stock, and a culture of cultivated knowledge and wisdom created which works on higher goals and values than the common worker, the slaves than serve.
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@Blythe A. Blanche said
"
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"It's well-known that genious is heriditarily tied in with insanity."No its not. Its absolutely not."
By saying that, I wasn't implying that a genious is necessarily insane, simply that some of the greatest minds seem to be related to some pretty insane ones. The case is presented well in a book called <i>The Madness of Adam and Eve</i>."
Yet why characterise it as hereditary? If the correspondence can be substantiated as something more than occasional anecdotal examples, there isn't any reason to think it genetic.
Consider the case of a child of average intelligence whose parent is a bona fide genius. There would be both good things and bad things emerge in the formative environment from this, no?
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@Froclown said
"Which is why I propose the system where natural genius is cultivated and an aristocratic class of genius is separated from the common stock, and a culture of cultivated knowledge and wisdom created which works on higher goals and values than the common worker, the slaves than serve."
Interesting... because that's pretty much why I endorse a system where the natural genius potentially present in each person is cultivated and unlocked so that more and more of society, over the generation, becomes an inclusive (rather than exclusive) artistocracy, and those who were slaves may fulfill the promise of truly serving.
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the point in not to be exclusive, anyone who proves themselves can enter the higher class. But to prove oneself means to undergo certain training. Not everyone who walks into a temple has what it takes to be a zen master, a larger number may achieve enlightenment, and an even larger number may feel a sense of awe of peace while visiting, and the largest number being crude and uncultivated sorts ie red neck bumpkins, will just say What god damed bull shit, I got yer buddha right here, while spiting a plug a tobacco in the coi pond and grab his crotch, then make a rude comment to the monk about his bald head, and leave to "Go get fucked up and find some pussy".
I simply do not thing that the refined and disciplined individuals should have to live constantly out and fight their way within the society of rude, drunken, loudmouthed, hillbillies. I mean how can you even have the peace to perform Resh when its time, if these judgemental fulls are going to see you doin some "devil worship shit" and come over and at best yell annoying insults at you, at worse beat your face in, possibly with a bat or chains, if not level a shot gut your way.
I would think that, a closed off abby in which to practice Thelema, without constant harassment would be a benefit. The abbey acting as a whole then could use its resources to do charitable deed, make itself known, get positive public relations, and in this way make slow progress of enlightening those who are capable of it.
Like Alex in a clock work orange, (the real last chapter) once being a crude jerk becomes unpopular, those who persist will be left without friends and will be forced to change their ways.
Even Jesus who went about helping the poor and the common people, traveled with a his self selected band of elites, only venturing out to spread his message, and returning to his roving monastery of 13.
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I did, because, Jesus is colloquially known as some one who got off his high horse in heaven and intermixed with the common man. Even those who do not buy his divine birth, can't deny than he could have lived better, if he stayed home and ran his fathers business, instead of walking the earth penniless and starving, to intermix with lepers, gentiles, tax collectors, whores and the likes.
But despite his dedication to helping the poor and wretched, he did not become one of them, and he hand selected a group of peers with whom to travel, socialize and to teach his secret wisdom which the vulgar masses were not able to grasp,
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Are we both talking about imaginary make believe Jesus? Cause I am. Do you know another kind?
Although I guess the question is... does it matter?
Which brings me around to the thread. How does one determine the difference? What scientific method would one go through to make a proof one way or the other?
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well, for one thing, it is claimed that spirits can influence objective events, they can bring you objects, give you super-human power, tell you the location of secret treasures, and inflict death or disease on the target of your choice, etc.
Now if we take these claims literal, and if the spirits really are objective entities they should be able to do these things as claimed, Then merely set up a test to see if this can be done. Ask the spirit to give your target small pox and see if he so much as develops the small pox sores. Have the spirit draw you a map to Solomon's mines, and when the pen magically floats through the air, on camera, we have confirmation. Or if the spirit tells you to draw the map, follow it and see if you find anything of geological or archaeological significance at the location that indicates a mine was ever there.
Now, if we assume the spirits are REAL but not tangible and can't actually effect reality (nor have and true knowledge like about secret treasures) then we shall have to examine the brain directly while the evocation is being done, MRI, PET scans, EEGs, and even radioactive chemical tracers to locate which specific neurons are triggered, blood work done before and after the ritual, and many other techniques used in cognitive science and neuro-biology to observe how the brain functions and reacts to situations.
Though, if you demand the spirits exist anyway, who can convince you otherwise, you refuse to listen to reason. You employ the God is in the gaps, fallacy. Let's say you believe the rain is caused by the great river God Ungabagunga, you pray for rain and pray for less rain when their is enough. So I explain to you how the water cycle works, the water evaporates and clouds form then colld and rain falls, You then say, yes but Ungabagunga makes the water evaporate and the cloud to form. So then I explain diligently and detailed the nature of matter and solid-liquid-gas phases and about atoms and molecules, boyles law, vapor pressure, and covalent bonds, etc. Then you say all this I believe fully, but still Ungabagunga makes the bonds stick and makes the vapor pressure ect. So I explain further about atoms and electron and sub-quantum particles, etc. Then you say, yes fine very well, I don't know where or how undabagunga makes in rain, but there is still something missing, some gap in the understanding of the water cycle and ungabaguga works his magic their. The fact than I can't understand it only makes it that much more sublime and awe inspiring, In fact your science has only enhanced the greatness of our River God, that he could work in such a detailed and complex system and remain undetected, he is so awesome beyond measure.
No I can not stop you from holding faith that something is true with no evidence to support it. The best I can do for you rm that case is "speculate on the likely outcome of a fool"(1)
- From "The Soldier and the Hunchback".
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Honestly I dont think that the beings magicians contact can be neatly fit into a box. When you work magick synchronicities seem to happen which is how I most commonly experience it. So for those results to take place there has to be some sort of interface between the magician and the universe that is activated through ritual. Dreams are subjective, but dreams have influenced soo many inventions and ideas that have helped shape the way we live...so even thought the dream is subjective it has objective results in the end.
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Synchronicity is of course the seeing events in the world, but at the same time it is applying special attention to those events and relating them to each other, such than one selectively remembers hits and forgets misses. Thus synchronicity is in fact an feed-back between the events in the world and the events in the mind. Thus the actual experience is a combination of internal and external factors, as is all perception, however there is more of a dynamic back and forth in the case of synchonicity.
The spirits are sort of like synchronicity there is a feed back between the nervous system and the smoke or glare in the mirror, or pendulum or whatever you use. In the feedback process aspects of the unconscious mind come to surface, and are expressed via the spirit. The spirit is visible to the conscious awareness via the medium used, thus it creates a means by which the unconscious mind can express itself to the conscious mind, which have no direct internal link to one another.
The synchronicity then is the after effect of that communication where the unconscious mind has informed the conscious mind to pay extra attention to certain things than it normally over looks, as a sort of clue that reminds one of the unconscious drive.
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I tend to agree with you froclown to an extent....however I dont think that the unconcious mind is something that resides solely in the brain in the first place. My experience with synchronicities has definitly not been that I just pay more attention to certain things, a number of times people have been drawn to me that become my friends that later help me with the things that I had done rituals for in the first place.
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I have enjoyed this discusion greatly. I think a good explaination would be to categorize synchronicities as a tangled hierachy. I believe looking at pure cause and effect present a duality which is not inherently present in the situation. Do the synchronicities happen because of the magick, or did the magick happen because of the synchronicities...OR are they both intrinsically linked and to seperate would only serve to dilute the true beauty which is the experience of both.
As for the is it within or is it without debate, I would have to say that like Schroedinger's cat it lies in a state trancendent of both until you make the decision to view it as an event happening outside of you or inside of you. Let me explain this more because I know I am using this example kind of loosely for the situation and do not want to have a discussion on how I have misused it. Perhaps I have, but here. Every event you have experienced in this life that feels "outside" of yourself is going on outside of yourself and inside of yourself. Your nervous system is sending information to your brain which is being decoded and pushed into consciousness through the view of your own paradigm. So as you see while a wave may be crashing into your body "outside" you, all the perceptions of the wave are "inside" of you, yet both are intrinsically linked. To seperate is to fracture.
Also I think it was this post that talked about hallucinogens, possibly not but I feel like this is some cool knowledge. Our brains get millions of bits of information constantly, yet our consciousness can only handle 200 bits of information at a time. Owing to this fact, we connect the data we receive to concepts and schemas in our mind. Because of this, the vast majority of the sensory information we receive we don't truly perceive. I mean that if you have seen your computer monitor 10,000 times, the 10,001 you don't see it, you see the idea you have of it based on how your mind connects it to the concept you have of it. Now here comes the fun part. When you take LSD, and I'm going to go out on a very thick limb and say this is true of most hallucinogens, the part of your brain that connects your perceptions to your schemas doesn't really. What happens, is that you TRULY see. That is what gives everything it's novelty when on LSD, because to your mind you are experiencing everything for the first time and not continually relating it to your ideas of what your are experiencing.
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@Blythe A. Blanche said
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One last thing, I've been reading several essays on psychoactive chemicals being used to awaken spiritual sections of the mind. It's well-known that genious is heriditarily tied in with insanity. (Einstein's son was a paranoid schizophrenic.) Could it be that hallucinogens truly do open dormant parts of the brain, while even the slightest "mess up" often leads to insanity?
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Psychedelics are some of the most powerful evolutionary tools we have at our disposal, and as such are the most dangerous. While it is true that they tend to enhance one's creative/mental ability, and open the spiritual centers of the brain, they also release latent inhibitions. For example: an intelligent, fit, and "intellectually healthy" college student ingests a threshold dose of LSD for the first time. He spends the next twelve hours wandering naked through the forest, muttering gibberish about little green men. This sort of thing is rare, of course, but the point is this: there is no telling what the consequences may be. My advice for the curious (as you seem to be), is to first discover whether such things are in conformity with your Will. If, after deep reflection, you decide it is your Will to take the plunge, then start small and work your way up. Also, seeing as there are so many adulturated look-alikes being sold as LSD, little better than toilet paper soaked in speed, I'd stick to the organics, like mushrooms and peyote.
Personally, after years of experimentation, I've found that the best trips in life are free.