Race & Thelema
-
Froclown, I think I understand your position, I just don't like it. I like you, just not the proposition.
I'm more than willing to be a bull in the china shop if I feel, as I often have, that things are stayed, unproductive, dead. Many of my students have been young people from working class families who were afraid to admit to themselves that they wanted to be artists because everything in their origins—family, class, the predisposition of their friends—ran counter to their hearts desire. Needles to say, I have had no qualms about encouraging them to just do it, much to the dismay of their parents. I suppose I was breaking some universal law by your standards then.
Of course, we could argue that my genetic inheritance and environment have determined me to do just what I have done and to be exactly the way that I am; or else we are left wondering where my predilections came from. If we are only environment then it should not be possible for me to act the way I have acted without some originating force in my past eventuating in my actions.
But here is my problem, and why I am still responding to this thread: I am bound to regard this deduction as little more than a word game, plain and simple, because I really, and I mean really don't know why I do what I do. Your logic and reason cannot help me know anything for certain in this regard because it's just another belief system. To just assume it has to be an environmental factor for logic's sake is to relinquish my responsibility to think and try to understand. Until I really know why, I don't, and that's the honest truth.
love and will
-
No it has to be "environment" because everything is there included. Every force that occurs in every action is included in the physical equation of it's causality, there is no room whatsoever for any other mysterious force acting out side the laws of physics. These is on close examination no room for an autonomous internally directed force.
Rather the WILL of the individual is the WILL of the entire cosmos which is an extension of oneself, while on the other hand the self is merely a concentration of the whole cosmos. Taking everything as a continuous whole, you and the external conditions are all part and parcel of one "divine plan". You can not peel yourself out of your social conditions as if Here is me and my WILL and there is the world there with it's ways. YOU and the world are one. If you are at odds with the world, it is because you are reactionary to it, rather than embracing. You are rejecting part of the life set out for you in fear, rather than Embracing fully the way of the TAO, ie your TRUE WILL, which spells out your name, and that spelled out fully is your entire cosmogony.
TRUE WILL is not free will and it is not determinism. It rectifies the two, because True Will is sets the SELF to include the external conditions, such that one might say the self that is continuous with all things freely wills each causally determined event.
Of course a wise man once admitted that to the the chap running late for the train, he is not concerned with grand cosmic theories than he may be destined to miss his ride, and his mantra "Blow destiny" serve well enough to banish such pessimism from undermining his moral.
-
How do these two ideas both hold water?
@Froclown said
"No it has to be "environment" because everything is there included. Every force that occurs in every action is included in the physical equation of it's causality, there is no room whatsoever for any other mysterious force acting out side the laws of physics. These is on close examination no room for an autonomous internally directed force.
Rather the WILL of the individual is the WILL of the entire cosmos which is an extension of oneself, while on the other hand the self is merely a concentration of the whole cosmos. Taking everything as a continuous whole, you and the external conditions are all part and parcel of one "divine plan". You can not peel yourself out of your social conditions as if Here is me and my WILL and there is the world there with it's ways. YOU and the world are one. "
...followed by....
@Froclown said
"If you are at odds with the world, it is because you are reactionary to it, rather than embracing. You are rejecting part of the life set out for you in fear, rather than Embracing fully the way of the TAO, ie your TRUE WILL, which spells out your name, and that spelled out fully is your entire cosmogony."
In the first part you seem to be saying that there is no choice, no chance for change, no way to resist whereas instead you then in the second part find someone to accuse of messing up their lives with this very (at first non-existent) force.
Now of course I understand the sentiment of it all. The philosophy is rather exciting, but contrary to popular belief, thought alone is not a force that can act upon the physical universe (so, indeed, I must inform you that there is a separation of the planes).
-
@Froclown said
"A leopard can not change it's spots, it has to discover what it is, and learn to be satisfied being a leopard and learn to stop dreaming about being a fish or a bird, that is what initiation is all about, giving up the fantasy that you can be anything you want to be and learning to be what you actually are."
Thank you for that breath of fresh air, Froclown.
I think that faith-based religious propositions that are so common in esoteric circles have the potential to set people up to spend a lot of time and effort pursuing imaginary goals that are unattainable. "As above, so below" has so many people operating from the assumption that humans are miniature duplicates of the Universe, for example.
-
@RobertAllen said
"
As for changing your stripes, or spots if you are a leopard. Admittedly, real change is not easy, but it is possible.
"I don't understand how a leopard can stop being a leopard and become something else. The same for a human, for that matter. Regardie posited that esoteric disciplines can result in a human "becoming more than human." A paradigm like that collapses without faith based propositions.
-
@Grabarkiewctz said
"
@RobertAllen said
"
As for changing your stripes, or spots if you are a leopard. Admittedly, real change is not easy, but it is possible.
"I don't understand how a leopard can stop being a leopard and become something else. The same for a human, for that matter. Regardie posited that esoteric disciplines can result in a human "becoming more than human." A paradigm like that collapses without faith based propositions."
I believe that work on the self is possible, that you can learn to do new things, you can even change most aspects about your person—thought patterns, physical appearance, speech—except perhaps, your memories. I see actors do it all the time. I train them and I know when the work is honest. Now, changing from a human into a leopard, that's a bit more difficult.
Since people like to quote Crowley to bolster an opinion I will do the same, though I think what I just said stands on its own. Magick in Theory and Practice, the introduction, point eight, the Illustration, last two sentences:
"In practical life, a man who is doing what his conscious tells him to be wrong will do it very clumsily. At first."Crowley admits, even when an action goes against the grain, that a person can learn to do it. Think how much easier change is when it doesn't violate the man's sense of morality, say when you are trying to become a better person.
The whole premise of Gurdjieff's work, as I understand it—I'm no expert on this—is that work on the self, as hard as it is, is necessary. From Wikipedia article: "...one can "wake up" and become a different sort of human being altogether."
love and will
-
I think there is some confusion here between changing the nature of your being, and altering the mode of it's expression.
I like to quote fight club, "Sticking feathers up your butt, does not make you a chicken".
You can change your relation in the world, the mode of the expression of what you are, But you are still what you are.
Yes, you can choose to be at odds with the world, you can be in a mode of being that rejects who you are and rejects your WILL, This is a result of creating a veil between the planes. This thickening of the veils is the opposite of initiation, it is leads to dissociation. There is dissociation by a schism from the world which is depersonalisation, and deeper schism divides the self image into different personalties, one becomes at the hight of this an empty shell that falls prey to the warring cloud of spirits each fighting to express it's untamed desire through the physical body. The Self becomes a howling storm, as if the Will is being torn apart by wolves. This is the end result of the cycle of psychosis, the black brother ends in this state his mind that state of many hood, tearing him apart.
The method of thelems however is to do the opposite, to expand Self into the Other, so that rather than dissociate, you associate in Love under WILL. Until the small self is totally dissolved into the other, Both Subject and Object Annihilate in this union, producing the child.
IAO purity defiled and redeemed is replaced by a new IAO formula that at the child A playing between the twin pillars of I creation and O annihilation.
-
@Froclown said
"I think there is some confusion here between changing the nature of your being, and altering the mode of it's expression.
I like to quote fight club, "Sticking feathers up your butt, does not make you a chicken".
You can change your relation in the world, the mode of the expression of what you are, But you are still what you are.
Yes, you can choose to be at odds with the world, you can be in a mode of being that rejects who you are and rejects your WILL, This is a result of creating a veil between the planes. This thickening of the veils is the opposite of initiation, it is leads to dissociation. There is dissociation by a schism from the world which is depersonalisation, and deeper schism divides the self image into different personalties, one becomes at the hight of this an empty shell that falls prey to the warring cloud of spirits each fighting to express it's untamed desire through the physical body. The Self becomes a howling storm, as if the Will is being torn apart by wolves. This is the end result of the cycle of psychosis, the black brother ends in this state his mind that state of many hood, tearing him apart.
The method of thelems however is to do the opposite, to expand Self into the Other, so that rather than dissociate, you associate in Love under WILL. Until the small self is totally dissolved into the other, Both Subject and Object Annihilate in this union, producing the child.
IAO purity defiled and redeemed is replaced by a new IAO formula that at the child A playing between the twin pillars of I creation and O annihilation."
What?!
Anyway. I'm talking about changing real things, be they your relationship with the world—see Crowley's novel Diary of a Drug Fiend—or the actual fact of how you are in the world. you know, 'environment.' The whole premise of Crowley's novel is that you can master yourself, this is change in my book.
As far as the other aspect of the person, their actual 'spots,' see my article on yoga for actors, specifically the end: www.robert-allen.net/publications/yoga-for-actors-part-i
I'll paste the significant paragraphs, though something is lost without the larger context:
"There is a memorable story concerning Michael Chekhov. By the end of his life he was living in Hollywood where he had a studio, and where he trained actors. During this period of his life, the story goes, he was demonstrating an aspect of his technique involving something called the imaginary body. To this day, the people who witnessed this demonstration claim that this notably small Russian man—about five and a half feet tall—transformed himself into a nine-foot giant. As an experienced audience person I can vouch that these types of experiences are both real and fairly common, especially at the upper end of the theatre-going experience where one is apt to see amazing performances.
"When I was a student at UCLA my choreography class was visited by another Japanese theatre artist, also named Suzuki, who was a choreographer in the recent Japanese dance tradition of Butoh. He taught us a piece of choreography, the final gesture of which included instructions to touch a dot floating in front of the body. Touching the dot would cause it to expand into a large, dark hole. When this happened we were instructed to step inside, the hole promptly closing behind us. In this way we were supposed to disappear. Our efforts were less than satisfactory, involving recourse to mime, symbolism, and desperate pretending. Then he performed the sequence. To this day I still have a vivid memory of the dot and how it expanded to reveal a dark void. But more amazing by far was his disappearance. Clearly, what I saw with the imagination and what my eyes actually saw were two different things. But the importance of the eyes was totally diminished, while that of the imagination became my primary reality. And what’s more, this was a shared experience for everyone present."
These were real transformations, not tricks or illusions, I assure you. I interviewed still living individuals about the Michael Chekhov story, and I was present at the other.
love and will
-
Froclown- I realize what you are saying. I think the slave reference threw me, but I see your POV in a different light. In the sense where evolution is concerned, it is not willed, but the spots can change over vast amounts of time.
I appreciate your persistance.
-
The enire concept of "race" is an unsupportale construct created at a particular time when people of one particular set of skin and eye characteristics enslaved a large number of people with a different set. These characteristics meld into one another across historical boundaries. However, academics wishing to justify this mass kidnapping invented "race" and started studies to justify their advantageous position in euro-american society. It is all so much shit, genetics has shown this, and any so-called Thelemite who furthers this nonsense is no true child of the New Aeon.
You are all welcome to disagree but frankly I don't care.
-
Racialism does not justify slavery.
You see the value of a culture is in how far it conforms to it's founding myth, which is it's link via the king to the perennial truth. Different founding myths have shaped the culture and thus the marriage habits of the people as well as which attributes were genetically selected for. Thus Race differences exist because of the genetic effects of following the founding myths, which apply to semi-isolated gene pools.
Thus we see that different Races have their own foundational myth their own unique expression of the perennial truth. Thus each has a unique role to play, just as each organ has it's own role to play in the body. Slavery is just another example of one race mixing with and interfering with the destiny of another. With the technology that has shrunk the world, we have conflicts and crisis as one race waters down the other. The crisis is that no one believes that any of the founding myths are worth living by, sine the existence of other people in close proximity who follow other myths, castes doubt on both. Thus the "progressives" believe that we should be rid of all founding myths and exist on a purely economic level. this breaks the link to the Tradition which links the lower to the higher, ie to the perennial truth.
Thelema is meant to rectify by providing a formula which can re-establish foundational myths. But we do not want to have only one myth and one culture and one race. We need to have variation in that myth, so that we develop different flavours and expressions of Thelemic races. Because it is via the competition between small groups that allows flexibility to the environment and out of conflict and co-operation the greater social order is built up while inferior systems are weeded out.
At no point was I justifying slavery. It's not a matter of morality, slavery was the case into which the black man of the time was born, and he could try to fight on the same plane as the master, but he would lose as the rebellious slave did not have the power. He could be manipulative and dishonest and use the lower planes, but he would suffer karmic backlash. Thus the right way was as I showed to work within the limits of his WILL, as his will includes the social conditions into which he had incarnated, thus gaining a degree of power by earned trust and respect.
Slavery was not ended by rebellion by the slaves, it was ended by political acts from outside the master-slave system. The fact that slavery was brought to such an abrupt end rather than as in Europe allowed to run it's course and extinguish itself from within the system, is part of the problem in US society at this time. Freedom thrust on a group of people who have been stripped of tradition and have not learned over generation a new tradition that is not based on one sided dependency. This left the race in a place to be exploited by liberal progressive ideals, powering the so called democratic party, to increase their own power by vying after entitlement programs and expanded government, and leading ultimately to globalism, via the controlled weakening of the US political and economic power from within, by a president driven by resentment of colonialism.
-
@RobertAllen said
"I believe that work on the self is possible, that you can learn to do new things, you can even change most aspects about your person—thought patterns, physical appearance, speech—except perhaps, your memories. I see actors do it all the time. I train them and I know when the work is honest."
I agree that work on self is possible, and that people are capable of making changes in the things you mention.
@RobertAllen said
"Now, changing from a human into a leopard, that's a bit more difficult."
Here is where I have to disagree. It's not difficult, it's impossible. Authors like Michael Ford and Andrew Chumbley offer formulae for a species of astral lycanthropic transformation. I submit that even if one undertook such an operation and perceived it to be successful, one is only having the experience of a human experiencing a human perception of an animal state. One is not really a wolf or bear or whatever.
Here is one of my favorites:
"I further take this opportunity of asserting my Atheism. I believe that all these phenomena are as explicable as the formation of hoar-frost or of glacier tables. I believe 'Attainment' to be a simple supreme sane state of the human brain." - Crowley in John St. John
With that, I do agree that the human capacity for human experience can be expanded and would even go so far as to submit that the limits of that possible expansion are unknown.
-
@Grabarkiewctz said
"
@RobertAllen said
"Now, changing from a human into a leopard, that's a bit more difficult."
Here is where I have to disagree. It's not difficult, it's impossible. Authors like Michael Ford and Andrew Chumbley offer formulae for a species of astral lycanthropic transformation. I submit that even if one undertook such an operation and perceived it to be successful, one is only having the experience of a human experiencing a human perception of an animal state. One is not really a wolf or bear or whatever. "
I can't tell if you took me seriously or not, If not, then you have a very dry sense of humor—bravo!
If you are responding in earnest, then it gets a lot murkier. But you know, as someone posted on another topic, in response to one of my posts, 'what is reality?' Or something to that effect. Please, don't feel as if you have to answer the question.
Take care. If we are ever in the same bar at the same time, I swear, I will drink you under the table! The drinks are on me!
love and will
-
@RobertAllen said
"If you are responding in earnest, then it gets a lot murkier. But you know, as someone posted on another topic, in response to one of my posts, 'what is reality?' Or something to that effect. Please, don't feel as if you have to answer the question.
Take care. If we are ever in the same bar at the same time, I swear, I will drink you under the table! The drinks are on me!"
I'm enjoying this very much. I think there's a lot of profit in these kinds of discussions. I'm not participating as much as I'd like as time is limited. "What is reality" would certainly be a fun and challenging topic! By the way, if the drinks are on you I hope you make it to Berkeley sometime.
