External entities or subconcious mind?
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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.
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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."
In An Initiated Interpretation of Ceremonial Magick featured at the beginning of 666's publication of the Goetia he says:
"An Initiated Interpretation of Ceremonial Magick*":2qvzs91b]The spirits of the Goetia are portions of the human brain. Their seals therefore represent[...]methods of stimulating or regulating those particular spots (through the eye). The names of God are vibrations calculated to establish:
(a) General control of the brain. (Establishment of functions relative to the subtle world.)
(b) Control over the brain in detail. (Rank or type of the Spirit.)
(c) Control of one special portion. (Name of the Spirit.)"...and on a similar note:
"The Magical Record of the Beast*":2qvzs91b]Attainment 'is' Insanity. The whole point is to make it perfect in balance. (10:00pm 26 Dec. 1919)"
729
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I believe in a spirit world that is both within and beyond my own self. I base this on the hermetic principle the microcosm and the macrocosm, often phrased "As above, so below". Basically I interpret it as meaning the external "objective" universe or reality is mirrored within ourselves as the microcosm, and that the two are fundamentally linked yet each having power in of itself. Many of the world's greatest occultists believed that the human mind was a mirror of the greater universe that is formed by our perception and will. So in a nutshell I believe spirits are both external forces and internal aspects of the self, 2 sides of the same coin.
This is mostly based on theory rather than personal experience, as I have had little direct experience with spirits, and what little I did have didn't really answer the external/internal question. However I have known trustworthy people, including my younger sister who is a very normal girl who doesn't practice any kind of ritual magick, have very vivid spiritual experiences that even resulted in physical scars being manifested on her back. I have a very hard time believing this was just part of her psyche.
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@Infernal Seraph said
"However I have known trustworthy people, including my younger sister who is a very normal girl who doesn't practice any kind of ritual magick, have very vivid spiritual experiences that even resulted in physical scars being manifested on her back. I have a very hard time believing this was just part of her psyche."
Interesting. Does she happen to live in a repressive or otherwize unhealthy atmosphere?
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@JPF said
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@Infernal Seraph said
"However I have known trustworthy people, including my younger sister who is a very normal girl who doesn't practice any kind of ritual magick, have very vivid spiritual experiences that even resulted in physical scars being manifested on her back. I have a very hard time believing this was just part of her psyche."Interesting. Does she happen to live in a repressive or otherwize unhealthy atmosphere?"
Not at all. We both grew up in the same average conservative Christian (but not fundamentalist) family. She's always been a normal teenage girl in a normal life
I think I should elaborate on exactly what happened:
Back in spring 2007 (when I was still a Christian but gradually leaning more towards the occult) one of our teenage friends at our church died in a car wreck. Both me and my sister were hit pretty hard by it since it was so sudden and he was a really nice kid. Anyways my sister, who I think was 15 at the time, was going to a week long Christian retreat for teens called CIY in the Summer. I usually went every year too, but opted out this time. I told my parents it was because I wanted to focus on my part-time job, but in reality it was because of my waning faith in Evangelical Christianity.
Anyway my sister said that 2 weeks before she went to CIY, she had a dream where our friend who died appeared to her in the form of an angel, and told here that God would reveal himself to her soon. When she went to CIY, one night she woke up in her dorm room. She said that a black substance was forming on the walls and there was a very "evil" presence. She ran out of the room screaming for help but no one could figure out what was bothering her. I can't remember all the details, but among other things, she said she looked out the window and saw a huge grim reaper like being wearing a black robe and had gray flesh and black inhuman eyes. Somewhere along the line it calmed down and she went back to sleep. She woke up again, only this time to a horrible demonic face on the wall that she thought was Satan. By this time the other people from church realized what was happening and starting laying hands on her and praying. While they were praying my sister felt something inhuman touch her shoulder. When they were done everyone could see physical claw cuts on her shoulder. She was pretty traumatized for the next week, and said she could see spirits and such. However she eventually moved on and returned to normal life.
A few months later I "converted" to Wicca and when I told my parents I thought they would be understanding, but they were very upset and thought I was being deceived by Satan. My parents and I were very close and it was one of the most emotionally devastating moments of my life. However what I found strange was that my little sister was the most understanding of my choice. Even stranger, she then told me that when she saw "Satan", it seemed that even in the horror she could see the light of God emanating from him.
Some might find it strange that I would believe such a story and then turn to Satanism. I can't fully explain it myself, but I've had this irresistable drive to attempt to commune with the infernal powers. They are the very forces of destruction and chaos in the universe, yet beneath their outward horrors I feel there is some deep illumination that can transform the soul into something more.
I've had as couple of my own experiences, while not nearly as dramatic or interesting, I can't really explain. I'll have to get to them later though, as it's late and I've done enough typing.
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Anyone who has ever seen Scooby-Doo can attest that seemingly supernatural events ALWAYS have a natural and reasonable explanation and almost always has to do with some form of trickery and deceit an one party's side and a strong desire to believe + a refusal to question on the gullible parties side.
Also we find this theme in the Wizard of OZ / ZARDOZ (con artists use giant heads to scare primitive people), Star trek (the Gods turn out to be projections or aliens with powers) StarGate (again aliens pretend to be Gods) Doctor Who (Ghosts turn out to be aliens).
And many others.
Combined with the fact than science has always debunked mystical explanations, we must conclude than There is a rational and natural explanation for ALL phenomena, no matter how seemingly supernatural these phenomena appear to our limited and faulty senses, emotions, cognition, and brains than seek not truth but stories to reassure the emotional security.
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Infernal Seraph, 93,
Interesting story.
American Christianity has long struck me as being a form of magical Gnosticism. (Harold Bloom wrote a book called *The American Religion *that explores this. He's one of the few people who 'gets' Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet).
Because of the intense emphasis American Christianity places on personal experience, and the fact that it both invokes a version of the HGA (the personal Lord and Savior) and evokes the Shadow side of the Self (Satan) so effectively, it is able to produce magical effects: healing, conversions, visions and so on.
My personal "Sub-theory of Life No. 5-B" (or thereabouts - I don't keep a notebook:-) is that deprogramming and repositioning ourselves from any spiritual experience, encounter or lifestyle is a key phase in developing mature understanding. It sometimes requires an atheistic or agnostic phase, to decrease the lingering psychological power of what has been experienced. Another way of doing this leads us to exploration of the dark side. That's our sense of selfhood trying to find a viewpoint from which to get a handle on it all; to identify with our own Hadit in the midst of the turmoil.
But I don't doubt that magical effects and symptoms occur among Christian believers, for the reasons stated. A friend of mine, who long ago deprogrammed himself from his own evangelical group, recalls being told to hang out among the new and younger converts, because the interesting stuff (meaning ' paranormal phenomena') happened through them.
93 93/93,
Edward
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Alrah 93,
God bless the Vicars of the Anglican church - what would Britain have done for fun without them?
Deprogramming can sometimes be a job that takes years. Sure, you can nail the main issues quite rapidly, but really experiencing the places in ourselves that it all came from can be a major task. The difficult/interesting thing is that the bad things that happen also show us where to find the inner power and, through that, the inner wisdom.
Jerry Falwell used to say of people who spoke in tongues that they'd "eaten too much pizza the night before." I think he was onto something.
93 93/93,
Edward
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Alrah, 93,
"Would the difficulty people have deprogramming be from learning it when they were knee high? Like other difficult psychological blocks?"
Certainly. If you grew up in a religion, then you were being jointly programmed in the family values and dynamics at the same time as you were absorbing whatever faith you were in. Maintaining a relationship with family when you've rejected the family's religion has been very difficult for many people. Some distancing is going to be necessary to allow for resolution, and that distancing might take years.
There's a thread on the BBC site right now about Orthodox Jews who leave Orthodoxy that covers some of this:
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8435275.stmIt gets more complex when you join something as an adult or (dangerous, vulnerable time) as a near-adult. At some point, you may well find the New! Improved! Truths you've adopted don't deliver what you hoped, the God-inspired leader is a lecherous narcissist, and that you're in a headspace from which it's hard to move. The complexity here is that you joined the Order of the Hyperinflated Ego(TM) to gain the strength and insight to deprogram yourself from your upbringing, and now you have to absorb and analyze the OHE experience without any support structure, since you just burned the previous one. (Your family will just say they're glad you came back, and are unlikely to offer anything insightful).
So, really learning the lessons from that can be enormously valuable, but it can't be done in a brief while. Both the early programming and the later batch need to be deconstructed, while whatever values did seem virtuous in the OHE (or from before) need to be teased out and considered, not dissolved.
That's not easy to find. A friend of mine who shared my own interest in Scientology went onto an ex-members' site, and asked, "Okay, but surely there was something in Scientology that was of value? What was it that kept you there for X number of years?" Nobody, he told me, gave him a positive answer. The people were stuck in the grief and anger stages of it all, and couldn't reflect back on the communication skills they'd developed, or gaining the ability not to react to other people's rage, rudeness and so on. There wasn't anything they'd found, and certainly nothing they'd created, to offer that.
Yes, going back right to origins and an early childhood or pre-verbal memory if you can identify one might be very helpful, since it establishes a point outside the whole set of structures that you're trying to resolve. Anyone who persists in this endeavor, though, should be able to develop a mature, aware and balanced spirituality eventually.
93 93/93,
Edward
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Alrah, 93,
"Would the difficulty people have deprogramming be from learning it when they were knee high? Like other difficult psychological blocks?"
Certainly. If you grew up in a religion, then you were being jointly programmed in the family values and dynamics at the same time as you were absorbing whatever faith you were in. Maintaining a relationship with family when you've rejected the family's religion has been very difficult for many people. Some distancing is going to be necessary to allow for resolution, and that distancing might take years.
There's a thread on the BBC site right now about Orthodox Jews who leave Orthodoxy that covers some of this:
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8435275.stmIt gets more complex when you join something as an adult or (dangerous, vulnerable time) as a near-adult. At some point, you may well find the New! Improved! Truths you've adopted don't deliver what you hoped, the God-inspired leader is a lecherous narcissist, and that you're in a headspace from which it's hard to move. The complexity here is that you joined the Order of the Hyperinflated Ego(TM) to gain the strength and insight to deprogram yourself from your upbringing, and now you have to absorb and analyze the OHE experience without any support structure, since you just burned the previous one. (Your family will just say they're glad you came back, and are unlikely to offer anything insightful).
So, really learning the lessons from that can be enormously valuable, but it can't be done in a brief while. Both the early programming and the later batch need to be deconstructed, while whatever values did seem virtuous in the OHE (or from before) need to be teased out and considered, not dissolved.
That sort of help is not easy to find. A friend of mine who shared my own interest in Scientology went onto an ex-members' site, and asked, "Okay, but surely there was something in Scientology that was of value? What was it that kept you there for X number of years?" Nobody, he told me, gave him a positive answer. The people were stuck in the grief and anger stages of it all, and couldn't reflect back on the communication skills they'd developed, or gaining the ability not to react to other people's rage, rudeness and so on. There wasn't anything they'd found, and certainly nothing they'd created, that gave them that.
Yes, going back right to origins and an early childhood or pre-verbal memory if you can identify one might be very helpful, since it establishes a point outside the whole set of structures that you're trying to resolve. Anyone who persists in this endeavor, though, should be able to develop a mature, aware and balanced spirituality eventually.
93 93/93,
Edward
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@Alrah said
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I suppose if you were indoctrinated into a religion that not only had a lot of emotional bagage and dependancy/identity issues but cued into some very basic and primal archetypal imagery, then it would take a lot longer to shift, and you've have to go through each one of images in the purge.
No wonder people become atheists for a time!
Do you think that people that come from a deeply indoctrinated background and just swap one type of interpretation for another when it comes to the archetypes, ever really feel as satisfied as a person whos started off from a blank page I wonder?
On the other hand - we all start out that way, don't we?
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A pertinent quote from the Man himself (Liber 536):
(I'll have to paraphrase, I don't have the book in front of me.)
"A child raised by ignorant and bigoted parents, if he is able to free himself from their control, finds himself admirably suited for the struggle of life."
Some of the best minds I've known were raised by sadistic Christians. In a survival-of-the-fittest world, the child who has to struggle and strive to achieve mental independence often enters life better equipped than the child raised in relative comfort. I myself, raised by brutal Fundamentalists, had a good deal of deprogramming to do, which I accomplished largely through meditation and large, frequent doses of LSD. While I wouldn't recommend this regimen to everybody, it worked for me. The slate being clean, I turned to Bhakti Yoga, and eventually Thelema. I am now a happy, well-adjusted, (relatively) sober Thelemite.
Most of us have had to start in the Old-Aeon format--but, in a world where we have to fight to survive (if not physically, at least intellectually), this is often our greatest boon.
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JPF I grew out of the same type of environment and used the same methods. I had eaten LSD often and always enjoyed it, but once I started to truly realize the potential for change, it was absolutely indescribable. I would eat at least 5 hits twice a week and during the trip would spend approx 4 hours meditating. Without that tool I know I would probably be nowhere near the state of mind I am in normally now. I eat LSD about 4 times a year now, mostly during celebration or when I am feeling in a funk and need to get a better perspective on the situation. I wouldn't recommend doing that to people who don't have extensive experience with psychadelics owing to the fact that whatever is bothering you will smack you in the face. I find that when I have some kind of issue I'm trying to work out, tripping makes me innitially get very uncomfortable, but during the process I transform and come out of it much more positive. It's kind of like going through hell to get to heaven.
I definitely have in the past and still do get lots of criticism from my family for not wanting to stay dogmatically catholic. It can definitely be difficult to endure the conversations which inevitably lead to, "you need to go to church", but it truly doesn't bother me. In all honesty I feel sorry for people trapped in that state of existence, but I know it's all just programming. Most of our believes about everything were formed when we were children and everything continues to build upon them unless they are examined later. At such a young age our mind is not able to reason and we have to find a way to cope and exist in our environment. All of our fears and the reasons for our cyclic existences stem from believes we developed before we realized we were able to develop believes. Because of this, we should all show ourselves the same love and understanding we were afford a 5 year old. I remember years ago when I started reprogramming myself and truly understanding myself, I would see events I didn't remember from my childhood. From there I would see how that affected me in another situation a year or so later. This chain would continue and I could easily view the entire chain which would lead to different believes and actions that I had at the present. Just seeing the chain made it able to be broken. LSD and many hours of meditation and self examination seem to be an incredible way to de/reprogram. If you don't have alot of experience with it though, remember fear is failure and to love yourself. For me at least, alot of my memories were painful, yet didn't bother me because I was able to detach and view the events as an outsider. I could see others driving themselves into some real depressed states though. We don't supress memories because we enjoyed them lol
For all the psychadelic warriors or future psychadelic warriors, good luck and remember, YOU ARE IN CONTROL. If anythings get too intense take a deep breathe and think of something that makes you happy. Also, if you are brave enough let your mind run wherever it goes. Sometimes the darkest states of our mind can be the most illuminating.