Thelemic Materialism (Thelemic Philosophy)
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A few discussions on this forum stimulated this thinking process for me recently (Thanks Los!) and I find it actually quite interesting. Wondering if the community here would not mind if I run it by to get a little feedback or edit/augmentation.
One of the appeals of Thelema to me historically was the idea of how compatible Thelema is with other religious, esoteric, or mystical traditions, and in principle, any religious or mystical tradition is 'upgradeable' to Aeon 3.0 so to speak.
Thelema, I think most here would agree, is a combination of a philosophy and a religion. Putting the religious component aside, how compatible is Thelema with modern western philosophy, primarily Materialism or Physicalism?
There is no question that Philosophical Materialism is the dominant 'belief system' of academic and educated western society. What does it look like if combined with Thelema?
This is where, to be honest, I found Los' posts absolutely fascinating because at face value, to me at least, I did not see compatibility between Philosophical Materialism with Philosophical Thelema (unless of course one is uniting philosophical materialism and combining it with it's opposite to produce a new child or synthesis).
Materialism is a monism - meaning it assumes there is only the measurable physical reality and provides no allowances for spirits or a mysterious dimension to consciousness and any activity must be a function of the brain/body
.
Thelema, one could say would still be Philosophical Dualism (as defined by philosophy, not thelemites) because Thelema of course does have allowances for spirits and indeed credits it's existence as a preternatural spirit as it's author.This gets interesting, I promise
As defined by Crowley (can't find the reference), the Aeon of Isis could be understood simply as the aeon where 'the material denies the spiritual'. The Aeon of Osiris could be defined as 'the spiritual denies the material'. Distinguished by our modern Aeon that is the child Horus, product of Isis and Osiris - 'both material and spiritual, at once' (my words).
This suggests to me that actually the idea of a Thelemic Materialism is quite an interesting 'concunction' to ponder. What happens to the union with the spiritual in a purely physical philosophy that for all states and purposes, is Thelemic? How does the physical transform enough to allow for all things spiritual, and how does the spiritual transform to become all things material?
What this would suggest to me is that a very pivotal point in the evolution of Western Science is on the horizon and we can find evidence of this emergence in academic progress now currently just outside of mainstream.
The reemergence of Pan Psychism'en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism as a mainstream theory. The discovery that the material universe is 'alive', having an experience with various levels of intelligence. (this idea is still not taken seriously amongst mainstream outspoken proponents of materialism, but at least it's now an accepted 'debate' academically philpapers.org/rec/HOLPPN).
Where does Materialism begin to 'touch' it's opposite and find a transcendent in the New Aeon?
Daniel Dennet and Ray Kurzweil famously assert that 'computers' can be conscious, and have conscious experience. Kurzweil's 'The Age of Spiritual Machines'. One favorite quote of mine by Kurzweil is "People ask me if I believe God exists, I always reply 'not yet' "
Coupled with the discovery that the universe, too, is a giant quantum computer. www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/03/the-universe-is-a-quantum-computer.html Seth Lloyd makes it clear that he is not saying the universe is like a quantum computer, it actually IS a quantum computer.
So to summarize - Materialism may be the least explored and possibly most relevant candidate for synthesis with Thelema that may do more to establish the 'aeon of the crowned and conquering child' than any other body of religious thought.
And while I often disagree with Los's conclusions, I do think his explorations of a purely material Thelema is something that is worthwhile and needs the support of the thelemic community.
Would love to hear some thoughts or feedback. Apologies if I have bastardized any one's knowledge or understanding and please correct me where you feel I have.
@Los said
"
In contrast, when you leap to supernatural conclusions, you're not being objective at all because nothing about the evidence leads to those conclusions, and the thing that's driving those conclusions is your preference for the ooky-spooky. If you objectively examined the evidence, you wouldn't be having this problem."Lol, this is both true and false
Problem is Los is that while this is true in one sense, it's invalid and inconsistent when you're using a bivalent True vs False framework. One can very easily have a profound mystical experience, say they experience leaving the body, floating around the room, and then return to their body. Just like your hunger metaphor, one can assume, objectively, that they left their body and then returned. Any assumptions about what this means can all be possible, and be kept in the 'unknown' category, but objectively, someone can still say that they left their body because they looked down from the top of the ceiling and saw their body lying there. Fyi, I can say this. This would happen to me quite often as a child, and I have clear memories of the experience to this day. It's probably what lead me to explore these kind of things because at a young age, I can certainly say I left my body and returned. I dont know what the 'I' is or how this was possible, but I do know sir that I left my body!
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Hint: the proper practice of Thelema is learning how to objectively look at your True Self. Training your mind to look at all issues objectively is part of the training."
I dont know if this is the proper practice of thelema or not, but I actually AGREE with this and there is an experience of 'pure objectivity' about self and universe that is available. Ironically however, I can say this only from experience!
EDIT: When one can see themselves objectively, this is only because they can also see themselves subjectively at the same time while observing the MYSTERY or third value
-
A few discussions on this forum stimulated this thinking process for me recently (Thanks Los!) and I find it actually quite interesting. Wondering if the community here would not mind if I run it by to get a little feedback or edit/augmentation.
One of the appeals of Thelema to me historically was the idea of how compatible Thelema is with other religious, esoteric, or mystical traditions, and in principle, any religious or mystical tradition is 'upgradeable' to Aeon 3.0 so to speak.
Thelema, I think most here would agree, is a combination of a philosophy and a religion. Putting the religious component aside, how compatible is Thelema with modern western philosophy, primarily Materialism or Physicalism?
There is no question that Philosophical Materialism is the dominant 'belief system' of academic and educated western society. What does it look like if combined with Thelema?
This is where, to be honest, I found Los' posts absolutely fascinating because at face value, to me at least, I did not see compatibility between Philosophical Materialism with Philosophical Thelema (unless of course one is uniting philosophical materialism and combining it with it's opposite to produce a new child or synthesis).
Materialism is a monism - meaning it assumes there is only the measurable physical reality and provides no allowances for spirits or a mysterious dimension to consciousness and any activity must be a function of the brain/body
.
Thelema, one could say would still be Philosophical Dualism (as defined by philosophy, not thelemites) because Thelema of course does have allowances for spirits and indeed credits it's existence as a preternatural spirit as it's author.This gets interesting, I promise
As defined by Crowley (can't find the reference), the Aeon of Isis could be understood simply as the aeon where 'the material denies the spiritual'. The Aeon of Osiris could be defined as 'the spiritual denies the material'. Distinguished by our modern Aeon that is the child Horus, product of Isis and Osiris - 'both material and spiritual, at once' (my words).
This suggests to me that actually the idea of a Thelemic Materialism is quite an interesting 'concunction' to ponder. What happens to the union with the spiritual in a purely physical philosophy that for all states and purposes, is Thelemic? How does the physical transform enough to allow for all things spiritual, and how does the spiritual transform to become all things material?
What this would suggest to me is that a very pivotal point in the evolution of Western Science is on the horizon and we can find evidence of this emergence in academic progress now currently just outside of mainstream.
The reemergence of Pan Psychism'en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism as a mainstream theory. The discovery that the material universe is 'alive', having an experience with various levels of intelligence. (this idea is still not taken seriously amongst mainstream outspoken proponents of materialism, but at least it's now an accepted 'debate' academically philpapers.org/rec/HOLPPN).
Where does Materialism begin to 'touch' it's opposite and find a transcendent in the New Aeon?
Daniel Dennet and Ray Kurzweil famously assert that 'computers' can be conscious, and have conscious experience. Kurzweil's 'The Age of Spiritual Machines'. One favorite quote of mine by Kurzweil is "People ask me if I believe God exists, I always reply 'not yet' "
Coupled with the discovery that the universe, too, is a giant quantum computer. www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/03/the-universe-is-a-quantum-computer.html Seth Lloyd makes it clear that he is not saying the universe is like a quantum computer, it actually IS a quantum computer.
So to summarize - Materialism may be the least explored and possibly most relevant candidate for synthesis with Thelema that may do more to establish the 'aeon of the crowned and conquering child' than any other body of religious thought.
And while I often disagree with Los's conclusions, I do think his explorations of a purely material Thelema is something that is worthwhile and needs the support of the thelemic community.
Would love to hear some thoughts or feedback. Apologies if I have bastardized any one's knowledge or understanding and please correct me where you feel I have.
@ldfriend56 said
"One can very easily have a profound mystical experience, say they experience leaving the body, floating around the room, and then return to their body. Just like your hunger metaphor, one can assume, objectively, that they left their body and then returned."
No, the objective conclusion is that the person has had an experience that seemed like he was leaving his body.
This is where the comparison to hunger breaks down: "hunger" is a label for an entirely internal feeling. Paying attention to one's internal feelings is more than sufficient for demonstrating that one is hungry. But "leaving the body and traveling around" isn't (supposed to be) a label for a similar kind of internal feeling or daydream -- the implication of the label is that one really has gone outside of the body and is capable of perceiving things (like, say, things in the next room) that, under a typical understanding of the way stuff works, that person shouldn't be able to perceive by sitting still with his eyes closed.
If all you mean is "I had a dream where it seemed like I left my body," I wouldn't bother questioning that at all. But if what you're saying is that you really did, honestly and truly, leave your body, then just observing your own experience doesn't furnish you with sufficient evidence to make that claim.
If you really left your body, then you would be able to "astral travel" into the house next door where a neutral third party has printed two random words from a book on a piece of paper, read the words, return to your body, and report the words to another neutral third party who stays with your body. You would be able to do this over and over again, to the degree that it would be obvious that this isn't some daydream you had -- it would be crystal clear that you really did leave your body and really were gaining new information that you couldn't have had otherwise.
But nobody can do that. Because "astral travel" seems to be the rough equivalent of having a strong daydream.
-
A few discussions on this forum stimulated this thinking process for me recently (Thanks Los!) and I find it actually quite interesting. Wondering if the community here would not mind if I run it by to get a little feedback or edit/augmentation.
One of the appeals of Thelema to me historically was the idea of how compatible Thelema is with other religious, esoteric, or mystical traditions, and in principle, any religious or mystical tradition is 'upgradeable' to Aeon 3.0 so to speak.
Thelema, I think most here would agree, is a combination of a philosophy and a religion. Putting the religious component aside, how compatible is Thelema with modern western philosophy, primarily Materialism or Physicalism?
There is no question that Philosophical Materialism is the dominant 'belief system' of academic and educated western society. What does it look like if combined with Thelema?
This is where, to be honest, I found Los' posts absolutely fascinating because at face value, to me at least, I did not see compatibility between Philosophical Materialism with Philosophical Thelema (unless of course one is uniting philosophical materialism and combining it with it's opposite to produce a new child or synthesis).
Materialism is a monism - meaning it assumes there is only the measurable physical reality and provides no allowances for spirits or a mysterious dimension to consciousness and any activity must be a function of the brain/body
.
Thelema, one could say would still be Philosophical Dualism (as defined by philosophy, not thelemites) because Thelema of course does have allowances for spirits and indeed credits it's existence as a preternatural spirit as it's author.This gets interesting, I promise
As defined by Crowley (can't find the reference), the Aeon of Isis could be understood simply as the aeon where 'the material denies the spiritual'. The Aeon of Osiris could be defined as 'the spiritual denies the material'. Distinguished by our modern Aeon that is the child Horus, product of Isis and Osiris - 'both material and spiritual, at once' (my words).
This suggests to me that actually the idea of a Thelemic Materialism is quite an interesting 'concunction' to ponder. What happens to the union with the spiritual in a purely physical philosophy that for all states and purposes, is Thelemic? How does the physical transform enough to allow for all things spiritual, and how does the spiritual transform to become all things material?
What this would suggest to me is that a very pivotal point in the evolution of Western Science is on the horizon and we can find evidence of this emergence in academic progress now currently just outside of mainstream.
The reemergence of Pan Psychism'en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism as a mainstream theory. The discovery that the material universe is 'alive', having an experience with various levels of intelligence. (this idea is still not taken seriously amongst mainstream outspoken proponents of materialism, but at least it's now an accepted 'debate' academically philpapers.org/rec/HOLPPN).
Where does Materialism begin to 'touch' it's opposite and find a transcendent in the New Aeon?
Daniel Dennet and Ray Kurzweil famously assert that 'computers' can be conscious, and have conscious experience. Kurzweil's 'The Age of Spiritual Machines'. One favorite quote of mine by Kurzweil is "People ask me if I believe God exists, I always reply 'not yet' "
Coupled with the discovery that the universe, too, is a giant quantum computer. www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/03/the-universe-is-a-quantum-computer.html Seth Lloyd makes it clear that he is not saying the universe is like a quantum computer, it actually IS a quantum computer.
So to summarize - Materialism may be the least explored and possibly most relevant candidate for synthesis with Thelema that may do more to establish the 'aeon of the crowned and conquering child' than any other body of religious thought.
And while I often disagree with Los's conclusions, I do think his explorations of a purely material Thelema is something that is worthwhile and needs the support of the thelemic community.
Would love to hear some thoughts or feedback. Apologies if I have bastardized any one's knowledge or understanding and please correct me where you feel I have.
The Ganzfeld experiments have demonstrated exactly this repeatedly.
The current objection among the scientific community is that it challenges the materialistic paradigm they believe in.
-
A few discussions on this forum stimulated this thinking process for me recently (Thanks Los!) and I find it actually quite interesting. Wondering if the community here would not mind if I run it by to get a little feedback or edit/augmentation.
One of the appeals of Thelema to me historically was the idea of how compatible Thelema is with other religious, esoteric, or mystical traditions, and in principle, any religious or mystical tradition is 'upgradeable' to Aeon 3.0 so to speak.
Thelema, I think most here would agree, is a combination of a philosophy and a religion. Putting the religious component aside, how compatible is Thelema with modern western philosophy, primarily Materialism or Physicalism?
There is no question that Philosophical Materialism is the dominant 'belief system' of academic and educated western society. What does it look like if combined with Thelema?
This is where, to be honest, I found Los' posts absolutely fascinating because at face value, to me at least, I did not see compatibility between Philosophical Materialism with Philosophical Thelema (unless of course one is uniting philosophical materialism and combining it with it's opposite to produce a new child or synthesis).
Materialism is a monism - meaning it assumes there is only the measurable physical reality and provides no allowances for spirits or a mysterious dimension to consciousness and any activity must be a function of the brain/body
.
Thelema, one could say would still be Philosophical Dualism (as defined by philosophy, not thelemites) because Thelema of course does have allowances for spirits and indeed credits it's existence as a preternatural spirit as it's author.This gets interesting, I promise
As defined by Crowley (can't find the reference), the Aeon of Isis could be understood simply as the aeon where 'the material denies the spiritual'. The Aeon of Osiris could be defined as 'the spiritual denies the material'. Distinguished by our modern Aeon that is the child Horus, product of Isis and Osiris - 'both material and spiritual, at once' (my words).
This suggests to me that actually the idea of a Thelemic Materialism is quite an interesting 'concunction' to ponder. What happens to the union with the spiritual in a purely physical philosophy that for all states and purposes, is Thelemic? How does the physical transform enough to allow for all things spiritual, and how does the spiritual transform to become all things material?
What this would suggest to me is that a very pivotal point in the evolution of Western Science is on the horizon and we can find evidence of this emergence in academic progress now currently just outside of mainstream.
The reemergence of Pan Psychism'en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism as a mainstream theory. The discovery that the material universe is 'alive', having an experience with various levels of intelligence. (this idea is still not taken seriously amongst mainstream outspoken proponents of materialism, but at least it's now an accepted 'debate' academically philpapers.org/rec/HOLPPN).
Where does Materialism begin to 'touch' it's opposite and find a transcendent in the New Aeon?
Daniel Dennet and Ray Kurzweil famously assert that 'computers' can be conscious, and have conscious experience. Kurzweil's 'The Age of Spiritual Machines'. One favorite quote of mine by Kurzweil is "People ask me if I believe God exists, I always reply 'not yet' "
Coupled with the discovery that the universe, too, is a giant quantum computer. www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/03/the-universe-is-a-quantum-computer.html Seth Lloyd makes it clear that he is not saying the universe is like a quantum computer, it actually IS a quantum computer.
So to summarize - Materialism may be the least explored and possibly most relevant candidate for synthesis with Thelema that may do more to establish the 'aeon of the crowned and conquering child' than any other body of religious thought.
And while I often disagree with Los's conclusions, I do think his explorations of a purely material Thelema is something that is worthwhile and needs the support of the thelemic community.
Would love to hear some thoughts or feedback. Apologies if I have bastardized any one's knowledge or understanding and please correct me where you feel I have.
@Avshalom Binyamin said
"The Ganzfeld experiments have demonstrated exactly this repeatedly."
No, they haven't. They're ill-designed and stupid.
These are the ridiculous "tests" where subjects try to demonstrate psychic powers by babbling until something they say seems like it resembles something in a videotape playing in another room or something. It's utterly ridiculous. By having them try to "see" something with so many variables, open to interpretation, the "experiment" is worthless.
Here's a good revision: put the subjects in a room, and next door are twenty signs numbered one through twenty. Have someone go into the other room and turn all of the signs around except one (so that only one number is visible). Have all the test subjects try to guess that one number.
Do that thousands of times. Call me when you get something that seems like anything more than rolling a d20 for days.....
-
A few discussions on this forum stimulated this thinking process for me recently (Thanks Los!) and I find it actually quite interesting. Wondering if the community here would not mind if I run it by to get a little feedback or edit/augmentation.
One of the appeals of Thelema to me historically was the idea of how compatible Thelema is with other religious, esoteric, or mystical traditions, and in principle, any religious or mystical tradition is 'upgradeable' to Aeon 3.0 so to speak.
Thelema, I think most here would agree, is a combination of a philosophy and a religion. Putting the religious component aside, how compatible is Thelema with modern western philosophy, primarily Materialism or Physicalism?
There is no question that Philosophical Materialism is the dominant 'belief system' of academic and educated western society. What does it look like if combined with Thelema?
This is where, to be honest, I found Los' posts absolutely fascinating because at face value, to me at least, I did not see compatibility between Philosophical Materialism with Philosophical Thelema (unless of course one is uniting philosophical materialism and combining it with it's opposite to produce a new child or synthesis).
Materialism is a monism - meaning it assumes there is only the measurable physical reality and provides no allowances for spirits or a mysterious dimension to consciousness and any activity must be a function of the brain/body
.
Thelema, one could say would still be Philosophical Dualism (as defined by philosophy, not thelemites) because Thelema of course does have allowances for spirits and indeed credits it's existence as a preternatural spirit as it's author.This gets interesting, I promise
As defined by Crowley (can't find the reference), the Aeon of Isis could be understood simply as the aeon where 'the material denies the spiritual'. The Aeon of Osiris could be defined as 'the spiritual denies the material'. Distinguished by our modern Aeon that is the child Horus, product of Isis and Osiris - 'both material and spiritual, at once' (my words).
This suggests to me that actually the idea of a Thelemic Materialism is quite an interesting 'concunction' to ponder. What happens to the union with the spiritual in a purely physical philosophy that for all states and purposes, is Thelemic? How does the physical transform enough to allow for all things spiritual, and how does the spiritual transform to become all things material?
What this would suggest to me is that a very pivotal point in the evolution of Western Science is on the horizon and we can find evidence of this emergence in academic progress now currently just outside of mainstream.
The reemergence of Pan Psychism'en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism as a mainstream theory. The discovery that the material universe is 'alive', having an experience with various levels of intelligence. (this idea is still not taken seriously amongst mainstream outspoken proponents of materialism, but at least it's now an accepted 'debate' academically philpapers.org/rec/HOLPPN).
Where does Materialism begin to 'touch' it's opposite and find a transcendent in the New Aeon?
Daniel Dennet and Ray Kurzweil famously assert that 'computers' can be conscious, and have conscious experience. Kurzweil's 'The Age of Spiritual Machines'. One favorite quote of mine by Kurzweil is "People ask me if I believe God exists, I always reply 'not yet' "
Coupled with the discovery that the universe, too, is a giant quantum computer. www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/03/the-universe-is-a-quantum-computer.html Seth Lloyd makes it clear that he is not saying the universe is like a quantum computer, it actually IS a quantum computer.
So to summarize - Materialism may be the least explored and possibly most relevant candidate for synthesis with Thelema that may do more to establish the 'aeon of the crowned and conquering child' than any other body of religious thought.
And while I often disagree with Los's conclusions, I do think his explorations of a purely material Thelema is something that is worthwhile and needs the support of the thelemic community.
Would love to hear some thoughts or feedback. Apologies if I have bastardized any one's knowledge or understanding and please correct me where you feel I have.
Even when the tests have been redesigned by sceptics, they continue to perform better than possible by chance. You're just not capable of being objective, because of your beliefs.
And, by the way, the experiments don't resemble what you imagine. It's just another example of you having an a priori judgment of something you haven't even researched.
-
A few discussions on this forum stimulated this thinking process for me recently (Thanks Los!) and I find it actually quite interesting. Wondering if the community here would not mind if I run it by to get a little feedback or edit/augmentation.
One of the appeals of Thelema to me historically was the idea of how compatible Thelema is with other religious, esoteric, or mystical traditions, and in principle, any religious or mystical tradition is 'upgradeable' to Aeon 3.0 so to speak.
Thelema, I think most here would agree, is a combination of a philosophy and a religion. Putting the religious component aside, how compatible is Thelema with modern western philosophy, primarily Materialism or Physicalism?
There is no question that Philosophical Materialism is the dominant 'belief system' of academic and educated western society. What does it look like if combined with Thelema?
This is where, to be honest, I found Los' posts absolutely fascinating because at face value, to me at least, I did not see compatibility between Philosophical Materialism with Philosophical Thelema (unless of course one is uniting philosophical materialism and combining it with it's opposite to produce a new child or synthesis).
Materialism is a monism - meaning it assumes there is only the measurable physical reality and provides no allowances for spirits or a mysterious dimension to consciousness and any activity must be a function of the brain/body
.
Thelema, one could say would still be Philosophical Dualism (as defined by philosophy, not thelemites) because Thelema of course does have allowances for spirits and indeed credits it's existence as a preternatural spirit as it's author.This gets interesting, I promise
As defined by Crowley (can't find the reference), the Aeon of Isis could be understood simply as the aeon where 'the material denies the spiritual'. The Aeon of Osiris could be defined as 'the spiritual denies the material'. Distinguished by our modern Aeon that is the child Horus, product of Isis and Osiris - 'both material and spiritual, at once' (my words).
This suggests to me that actually the idea of a Thelemic Materialism is quite an interesting 'concunction' to ponder. What happens to the union with the spiritual in a purely physical philosophy that for all states and purposes, is Thelemic? How does the physical transform enough to allow for all things spiritual, and how does the spiritual transform to become all things material?
What this would suggest to me is that a very pivotal point in the evolution of Western Science is on the horizon and we can find evidence of this emergence in academic progress now currently just outside of mainstream.
The reemergence of Pan Psychism'en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism as a mainstream theory. The discovery that the material universe is 'alive', having an experience with various levels of intelligence. (this idea is still not taken seriously amongst mainstream outspoken proponents of materialism, but at least it's now an accepted 'debate' academically philpapers.org/rec/HOLPPN).
Where does Materialism begin to 'touch' it's opposite and find a transcendent in the New Aeon?
Daniel Dennet and Ray Kurzweil famously assert that 'computers' can be conscious, and have conscious experience. Kurzweil's 'The Age of Spiritual Machines'. One favorite quote of mine by Kurzweil is "People ask me if I believe God exists, I always reply 'not yet' "
Coupled with the discovery that the universe, too, is a giant quantum computer. www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/03/the-universe-is-a-quantum-computer.html Seth Lloyd makes it clear that he is not saying the universe is like a quantum computer, it actually IS a quantum computer.
So to summarize - Materialism may be the least explored and possibly most relevant candidate for synthesis with Thelema that may do more to establish the 'aeon of the crowned and conquering child' than any other body of religious thought.
And while I often disagree with Los's conclusions, I do think his explorations of a purely material Thelema is something that is worthwhile and needs the support of the thelemic community.
Would love to hear some thoughts or feedback. Apologies if I have bastardized any one's knowledge or understanding and please correct me where you feel I have.
@Los said
"
No, the objective conclusion is that the person has had an experience that seemed like he was leaving his body."
In my case, the experience was not leaving my body, but returning to it. In the mornings when I would awake, I would see my body sleeping in bed next to my little brother. I would feel a 'pull' in my stomach and float down until I entered my body.
"
This is where the comparison to hunger breaks down: "hunger" is a label for an entirely internal feeling. Paying attention to one's internal feelings is more than sufficient for demonstrating that one is hungry. But "leaving the body and traveling around" isn't (supposed to be) a label for a similar kind of internal feeling or daydream -- the implication of the label is that one really has gone outside of the body and is capable of perceiving things (like, say, things in the next room) that, under a typical understanding of the way stuff works, that person shouldn't be able to perceive by sitting still with his eyes closed."
I have no idea what your talking about. I would look down in waking consciousness and see my body and float down to it. There was no dreaming, I was awake and I could also feel the sensation returning to my body.
"
If all you mean is "I had a dream where it seemed like I left my body," I wouldn't bother questioning that at all. But if what you're saying is that you really did, honestly and truly, leave your body, then just observing your own experience doesn't furnish you with sufficient evidence to make that claim."
I dont need evidence to make the claim, I experienced it. to say ' it appeared like I was entering my body' is just as relevant as saying it appears that I am typing this sentence right now. yes it certainly does appear that way when it actually appears that way.
"
If you really left your body, then you would be able to "astral travel" into the house next door where a neutral third party has printed two random words from a book on a piece of paper, read the words, return to your body, and report the words to another neutral third party who stays with your body. You would be able to do this over and over again, to the degree that it would be obvious that this isn't some daydream you had -- it would be crystal clear that you really did leave your body and really were gaining new information that you couldn't have had otherwise."
I have no idea if this was 'astral travel' or not, and I did not have control over it, but I was able to observe my room, my self, and my brother as exactly as they were in the room.
"
But nobody can do that. Because "astral travel" seems to be the rough equivalent of having a strong daydream."Lol to be objective, you mean "Because "astral travel" *appears to me * to be the rough equivalent of having a strong daydream".
-
A few discussions on this forum stimulated this thinking process for me recently (Thanks Los!) and I find it actually quite interesting. Wondering if the community here would not mind if I run it by to get a little feedback or edit/augmentation.
One of the appeals of Thelema to me historically was the idea of how compatible Thelema is with other religious, esoteric, or mystical traditions, and in principle, any religious or mystical tradition is 'upgradeable' to Aeon 3.0 so to speak.
Thelema, I think most here would agree, is a combination of a philosophy and a religion. Putting the religious component aside, how compatible is Thelema with modern western philosophy, primarily Materialism or Physicalism?
There is no question that Philosophical Materialism is the dominant 'belief system' of academic and educated western society. What does it look like if combined with Thelema?
This is where, to be honest, I found Los' posts absolutely fascinating because at face value, to me at least, I did not see compatibility between Philosophical Materialism with Philosophical Thelema (unless of course one is uniting philosophical materialism and combining it with it's opposite to produce a new child or synthesis).
Materialism is a monism - meaning it assumes there is only the measurable physical reality and provides no allowances for spirits or a mysterious dimension to consciousness and any activity must be a function of the brain/body
.
Thelema, one could say would still be Philosophical Dualism (as defined by philosophy, not thelemites) because Thelema of course does have allowances for spirits and indeed credits it's existence as a preternatural spirit as it's author.This gets interesting, I promise
As defined by Crowley (can't find the reference), the Aeon of Isis could be understood simply as the aeon where 'the material denies the spiritual'. The Aeon of Osiris could be defined as 'the spiritual denies the material'. Distinguished by our modern Aeon that is the child Horus, product of Isis and Osiris - 'both material and spiritual, at once' (my words).
This suggests to me that actually the idea of a Thelemic Materialism is quite an interesting 'concunction' to ponder. What happens to the union with the spiritual in a purely physical philosophy that for all states and purposes, is Thelemic? How does the physical transform enough to allow for all things spiritual, and how does the spiritual transform to become all things material?
What this would suggest to me is that a very pivotal point in the evolution of Western Science is on the horizon and we can find evidence of this emergence in academic progress now currently just outside of mainstream.
The reemergence of Pan Psychism'en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism as a mainstream theory. The discovery that the material universe is 'alive', having an experience with various levels of intelligence. (this idea is still not taken seriously amongst mainstream outspoken proponents of materialism, but at least it's now an accepted 'debate' academically philpapers.org/rec/HOLPPN).
Where does Materialism begin to 'touch' it's opposite and find a transcendent in the New Aeon?
Daniel Dennet and Ray Kurzweil famously assert that 'computers' can be conscious, and have conscious experience. Kurzweil's 'The Age of Spiritual Machines'. One favorite quote of mine by Kurzweil is "People ask me if I believe God exists, I always reply 'not yet' "
Coupled with the discovery that the universe, too, is a giant quantum computer. www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/03/the-universe-is-a-quantum-computer.html Seth Lloyd makes it clear that he is not saying the universe is like a quantum computer, it actually IS a quantum computer.
So to summarize - Materialism may be the least explored and possibly most relevant candidate for synthesis with Thelema that may do more to establish the 'aeon of the crowned and conquering child' than any other body of religious thought.
And while I often disagree with Los's conclusions, I do think his explorations of a purely material Thelema is something that is worthwhile and needs the support of the thelemic community.
Would love to hear some thoughts or feedback. Apologies if I have bastardized any one's knowledge or understanding and please correct me where you feel I have.
@Avshalom Binyamin said
"the tests [...] perform better than possible by chance."
Yeah sure, whatever you say, buddy.
One of my favorite mockeries of this kind of nonsense was written by Robert Todd Carroll in his article "What if Dean Radin's Right?" [Radin being a wackaloo who supports this kind of nonsense, of course]
A few choice excerpts that sum up my feelings on the subject as well:
@Robert Todd Carroll said
"The evidence Radin presents, however, is little more than a hodgepodge of occult statistics. Unable to find a single person who can correctly guess a three-letter word or move a pencil an inch without trickery, the psi researchers have resorted to doing complex statistical analyses of data. In well-designed studies they assume that whenever they have data that, by some statistical formula, is not likely due to chance, they attribute the outcome to psi. A well-designed study is one that carefully controls for such things as cheating, sensory leakage (unintentional transfer of information by non-psychic means), inadequate randomization, and other factors that might lead to an artifact (something that looks like it's due to psi when it's actually due to something else).
The result of this enormous data that Radin cites is that there is statistical evidence (for what it's worth) that indicates (however tentatively) that some very weak psi effects are present (so weak that not a single individual who participates in a successful study has any inkling of possessing psychic power). Nevertheless, Radin thinks it is appropriate to speculate about the enormous implications of psi for biology, psychology, sociology, philosophy, religion, medicine, technology, warfare, police work, business, and politics. Never mind that nobody has any idea as to how psi might work. That is a minor detail to someone who can write with a straight face (apparently) that:
@Dean Radin said" lots of independent, simple glimpses of the future may one day innocently crash the future. It's not clear what it means to "crash the future," but it doesn't sound good. (297)"
No, it certainly doesn't sound good. But, as somebody once said, "the future will be better tomorrow."
[...]
As noted above, in The Conscious Universe, Radin uses statistics and meta-analysis to prove that psychic phenomena really do exist even if those who have the experiences in the labs are unaware of them. Statistical data show that the world has gone psychic, according to the latest generation of parapsychologists. You may be unconscious of it, but your mind is affecting random number generators all over the world as you read this. The old psychic stuffâthinking about aunt Hildie moments before she calls to tell you to bugger offâis now demonstrated to be true by statistical methods that were validated in 1937 by Burton Camp and meta-validated by Radin 60 years later when he asserted that meta-analysis was the replication parapsychologists had been looking for. The only difference is that now when you think of aunt Hildie it might be moments before she calls her car mechanic and that, too, may be linked to activity in your mind that you are unaware of."
The lawls come hot and heavy when the subject is insane tripe written by people who make grandiose claims on the back of a handful of number games they play. It really is a trip. Full article: www.skepdic.com/essays/radin.html
-
A few discussions on this forum stimulated this thinking process for me recently (Thanks Los!) and I find it actually quite interesting. Wondering if the community here would not mind if I run it by to get a little feedback or edit/augmentation.
One of the appeals of Thelema to me historically was the idea of how compatible Thelema is with other religious, esoteric, or mystical traditions, and in principle, any religious or mystical tradition is 'upgradeable' to Aeon 3.0 so to speak.
Thelema, I think most here would agree, is a combination of a philosophy and a religion. Putting the religious component aside, how compatible is Thelema with modern western philosophy, primarily Materialism or Physicalism?
There is no question that Philosophical Materialism is the dominant 'belief system' of academic and educated western society. What does it look like if combined with Thelema?
This is where, to be honest, I found Los' posts absolutely fascinating because at face value, to me at least, I did not see compatibility between Philosophical Materialism with Philosophical Thelema (unless of course one is uniting philosophical materialism and combining it with it's opposite to produce a new child or synthesis).
Materialism is a monism - meaning it assumes there is only the measurable physical reality and provides no allowances for spirits or a mysterious dimension to consciousness and any activity must be a function of the brain/body
.
Thelema, one could say would still be Philosophical Dualism (as defined by philosophy, not thelemites) because Thelema of course does have allowances for spirits and indeed credits it's existence as a preternatural spirit as it's author.This gets interesting, I promise
As defined by Crowley (can't find the reference), the Aeon of Isis could be understood simply as the aeon where 'the material denies the spiritual'. The Aeon of Osiris could be defined as 'the spiritual denies the material'. Distinguished by our modern Aeon that is the child Horus, product of Isis and Osiris - 'both material and spiritual, at once' (my words).
This suggests to me that actually the idea of a Thelemic Materialism is quite an interesting 'concunction' to ponder. What happens to the union with the spiritual in a purely physical philosophy that for all states and purposes, is Thelemic? How does the physical transform enough to allow for all things spiritual, and how does the spiritual transform to become all things material?
What this would suggest to me is that a very pivotal point in the evolution of Western Science is on the horizon and we can find evidence of this emergence in academic progress now currently just outside of mainstream.
The reemergence of Pan Psychism'en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism as a mainstream theory. The discovery that the material universe is 'alive', having an experience with various levels of intelligence. (this idea is still not taken seriously amongst mainstream outspoken proponents of materialism, but at least it's now an accepted 'debate' academically philpapers.org/rec/HOLPPN).
Where does Materialism begin to 'touch' it's opposite and find a transcendent in the New Aeon?
Daniel Dennet and Ray Kurzweil famously assert that 'computers' can be conscious, and have conscious experience. Kurzweil's 'The Age of Spiritual Machines'. One favorite quote of mine by Kurzweil is "People ask me if I believe God exists, I always reply 'not yet' "
Coupled with the discovery that the universe, too, is a giant quantum computer. www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/03/the-universe-is-a-quantum-computer.html Seth Lloyd makes it clear that he is not saying the universe is like a quantum computer, it actually IS a quantum computer.
So to summarize - Materialism may be the least explored and possibly most relevant candidate for synthesis with Thelema that may do more to establish the 'aeon of the crowned and conquering child' than any other body of religious thought.
And while I often disagree with Los's conclusions, I do think his explorations of a purely material Thelema is something that is worthwhile and needs the support of the thelemic community.
Would love to hear some thoughts or feedback. Apologies if I have bastardized any one's knowledge or understanding and please correct me where you feel I have.
@ldfriend56 said
"I dont need evidence to make the claim, I experienced it. to say ' it appeared like I was entering my body' is just as relevant as saying it appears that I am typing this sentence right now. yes it certainly does appear that way when it actually appears that way."
Right, let's say you seemed to be typing a sentence into a word processor, and then you go to bed, but when you wake up the next day, the sentence is gone. Word processor is still up, but no sentence is on it. No signs that anyone has been in your house. No signs that the computer has experienced any kind of "crash" or "glitch." What you thought that you did the night before has left absolutely no trace at all on anything. Now you have some reason to be skeptical that you actually did write that sentence, even though it seemed that you did.
Let's say that it also seems you can leave your body. But when you do this, you can't go and obtain any information -- at all -- that you didn't already know or couldn't have guessed on your own. You've not only got grounds to be skeptical that you really left your body, but if you seriously can never obtain this kind of information when you "astral project," you have absolutely no reason to think you actually left your body, no matter how convincing it may have seemed to you.
You disagree? Then astral project into a room where a neutral third party is waiting with random words printed on a piece of paper, read them, and report them to the other netural third party who waits with your body. Report the correct words and do this several times.
What's that? No? Gee, what a surprise....
-
A few discussions on this forum stimulated this thinking process for me recently (Thanks Los!) and I find it actually quite interesting. Wondering if the community here would not mind if I run it by to get a little feedback or edit/augmentation.
One of the appeals of Thelema to me historically was the idea of how compatible Thelema is with other religious, esoteric, or mystical traditions, and in principle, any religious or mystical tradition is 'upgradeable' to Aeon 3.0 so to speak.
Thelema, I think most here would agree, is a combination of a philosophy and a religion. Putting the religious component aside, how compatible is Thelema with modern western philosophy, primarily Materialism or Physicalism?
There is no question that Philosophical Materialism is the dominant 'belief system' of academic and educated western society. What does it look like if combined with Thelema?
This is where, to be honest, I found Los' posts absolutely fascinating because at face value, to me at least, I did not see compatibility between Philosophical Materialism with Philosophical Thelema (unless of course one is uniting philosophical materialism and combining it with it's opposite to produce a new child or synthesis).
Materialism is a monism - meaning it assumes there is only the measurable physical reality and provides no allowances for spirits or a mysterious dimension to consciousness and any activity must be a function of the brain/body
.
Thelema, one could say would still be Philosophical Dualism (as defined by philosophy, not thelemites) because Thelema of course does have allowances for spirits and indeed credits it's existence as a preternatural spirit as it's author.This gets interesting, I promise
As defined by Crowley (can't find the reference), the Aeon of Isis could be understood simply as the aeon where 'the material denies the spiritual'. The Aeon of Osiris could be defined as 'the spiritual denies the material'. Distinguished by our modern Aeon that is the child Horus, product of Isis and Osiris - 'both material and spiritual, at once' (my words).
This suggests to me that actually the idea of a Thelemic Materialism is quite an interesting 'concunction' to ponder. What happens to the union with the spiritual in a purely physical philosophy that for all states and purposes, is Thelemic? How does the physical transform enough to allow for all things spiritual, and how does the spiritual transform to become all things material?
What this would suggest to me is that a very pivotal point in the evolution of Western Science is on the horizon and we can find evidence of this emergence in academic progress now currently just outside of mainstream.
The reemergence of Pan Psychism'en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism as a mainstream theory. The discovery that the material universe is 'alive', having an experience with various levels of intelligence. (this idea is still not taken seriously amongst mainstream outspoken proponents of materialism, but at least it's now an accepted 'debate' academically philpapers.org/rec/HOLPPN).
Where does Materialism begin to 'touch' it's opposite and find a transcendent in the New Aeon?
Daniel Dennet and Ray Kurzweil famously assert that 'computers' can be conscious, and have conscious experience. Kurzweil's 'The Age of Spiritual Machines'. One favorite quote of mine by Kurzweil is "People ask me if I believe God exists, I always reply 'not yet' "
Coupled with the discovery that the universe, too, is a giant quantum computer. www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/03/the-universe-is-a-quantum-computer.html Seth Lloyd makes it clear that he is not saying the universe is like a quantum computer, it actually IS a quantum computer.
So to summarize - Materialism may be the least explored and possibly most relevant candidate for synthesis with Thelema that may do more to establish the 'aeon of the crowned and conquering child' than any other body of religious thought.
And while I often disagree with Los's conclusions, I do think his explorations of a purely material Thelema is something that is worthwhile and needs the support of the thelemic community.
Would love to hear some thoughts or feedback. Apologies if I have bastardized any one's knowledge or understanding and please correct me where you feel I have.
So statistics are no longer valid when you dont like the results.
How objective.
-
A few discussions on this forum stimulated this thinking process for me recently (Thanks Los!) and I find it actually quite interesting. Wondering if the community here would not mind if I run it by to get a little feedback or edit/augmentation.
One of the appeals of Thelema to me historically was the idea of how compatible Thelema is with other religious, esoteric, or mystical traditions, and in principle, any religious or mystical tradition is 'upgradeable' to Aeon 3.0 so to speak.
Thelema, I think most here would agree, is a combination of a philosophy and a religion. Putting the religious component aside, how compatible is Thelema with modern western philosophy, primarily Materialism or Physicalism?
There is no question that Philosophical Materialism is the dominant 'belief system' of academic and educated western society. What does it look like if combined with Thelema?
This is where, to be honest, I found Los' posts absolutely fascinating because at face value, to me at least, I did not see compatibility between Philosophical Materialism with Philosophical Thelema (unless of course one is uniting philosophical materialism and combining it with it's opposite to produce a new child or synthesis).
Materialism is a monism - meaning it assumes there is only the measurable physical reality and provides no allowances for spirits or a mysterious dimension to consciousness and any activity must be a function of the brain/body
.
Thelema, one could say would still be Philosophical Dualism (as defined by philosophy, not thelemites) because Thelema of course does have allowances for spirits and indeed credits it's existence as a preternatural spirit as it's author.This gets interesting, I promise
As defined by Crowley (can't find the reference), the Aeon of Isis could be understood simply as the aeon where 'the material denies the spiritual'. The Aeon of Osiris could be defined as 'the spiritual denies the material'. Distinguished by our modern Aeon that is the child Horus, product of Isis and Osiris - 'both material and spiritual, at once' (my words).
This suggests to me that actually the idea of a Thelemic Materialism is quite an interesting 'concunction' to ponder. What happens to the union with the spiritual in a purely physical philosophy that for all states and purposes, is Thelemic? How does the physical transform enough to allow for all things spiritual, and how does the spiritual transform to become all things material?
What this would suggest to me is that a very pivotal point in the evolution of Western Science is on the horizon and we can find evidence of this emergence in academic progress now currently just outside of mainstream.
The reemergence of Pan Psychism'en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism as a mainstream theory. The discovery that the material universe is 'alive', having an experience with various levels of intelligence. (this idea is still not taken seriously amongst mainstream outspoken proponents of materialism, but at least it's now an accepted 'debate' academically philpapers.org/rec/HOLPPN).
Where does Materialism begin to 'touch' it's opposite and find a transcendent in the New Aeon?
Daniel Dennet and Ray Kurzweil famously assert that 'computers' can be conscious, and have conscious experience. Kurzweil's 'The Age of Spiritual Machines'. One favorite quote of mine by Kurzweil is "People ask me if I believe God exists, I always reply 'not yet' "
Coupled with the discovery that the universe, too, is a giant quantum computer. www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/03/the-universe-is-a-quantum-computer.html Seth Lloyd makes it clear that he is not saying the universe is like a quantum computer, it actually IS a quantum computer.
So to summarize - Materialism may be the least explored and possibly most relevant candidate for synthesis with Thelema that may do more to establish the 'aeon of the crowned and conquering child' than any other body of religious thought.
And while I often disagree with Los's conclusions, I do think his explorations of a purely material Thelema is something that is worthwhile and needs the support of the thelemic community.
Would love to hear some thoughts or feedback. Apologies if I have bastardized any one's knowledge or understanding and please correct me where you feel I have.
@Avshalom Binyamin said
"So statistics are no longer valid when you dont like the results."
You know the old saying, "Figures don't lie but liars figure." Statistics are very open to manipulation, and that's just when conducting very simple kinds of opinion polls or collecting data on crime. Nevermind performing complicated meta-analysis of data and demonstrating that guessing games might, if we run a large enough number of guessing games, produce results that are a tiny bit higher than what we might assume by chance.
What in the world do you think that demonstrates?
Look how paltry this stuff is. This is your "evidence" for the outrageous claims you make and the outlandish beliefs you accept as given fact?
It's a joke. Like I said, name the two words printed on a piece of paper. Over and over again. Name the correct number out of twenty. Over and over again. If someone could do something like that even half the time or a third of the time, it would be incredible. But of course it doesn't happen because this stuff is all malarkey.
I realize you want to believe it, and this flimsy stuff gives you the excuse you need to pretend that your make believe games are actually doing something.
Good luck with that.
-
A few discussions on this forum stimulated this thinking process for me recently (Thanks Los!) and I find it actually quite interesting. Wondering if the community here would not mind if I run it by to get a little feedback or edit/augmentation.
One of the appeals of Thelema to me historically was the idea of how compatible Thelema is with other religious, esoteric, or mystical traditions, and in principle, any religious or mystical tradition is 'upgradeable' to Aeon 3.0 so to speak.
Thelema, I think most here would agree, is a combination of a philosophy and a religion. Putting the religious component aside, how compatible is Thelema with modern western philosophy, primarily Materialism or Physicalism?
There is no question that Philosophical Materialism is the dominant 'belief system' of academic and educated western society. What does it look like if combined with Thelema?
This is where, to be honest, I found Los' posts absolutely fascinating because at face value, to me at least, I did not see compatibility between Philosophical Materialism with Philosophical Thelema (unless of course one is uniting philosophical materialism and combining it with it's opposite to produce a new child or synthesis).
Materialism is a monism - meaning it assumes there is only the measurable physical reality and provides no allowances for spirits or a mysterious dimension to consciousness and any activity must be a function of the brain/body
.
Thelema, one could say would still be Philosophical Dualism (as defined by philosophy, not thelemites) because Thelema of course does have allowances for spirits and indeed credits it's existence as a preternatural spirit as it's author.This gets interesting, I promise
As defined by Crowley (can't find the reference), the Aeon of Isis could be understood simply as the aeon where 'the material denies the spiritual'. The Aeon of Osiris could be defined as 'the spiritual denies the material'. Distinguished by our modern Aeon that is the child Horus, product of Isis and Osiris - 'both material and spiritual, at once' (my words).
This suggests to me that actually the idea of a Thelemic Materialism is quite an interesting 'concunction' to ponder. What happens to the union with the spiritual in a purely physical philosophy that for all states and purposes, is Thelemic? How does the physical transform enough to allow for all things spiritual, and how does the spiritual transform to become all things material?
What this would suggest to me is that a very pivotal point in the evolution of Western Science is on the horizon and we can find evidence of this emergence in academic progress now currently just outside of mainstream.
The reemergence of Pan Psychism'en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism as a mainstream theory. The discovery that the material universe is 'alive', having an experience with various levels of intelligence. (this idea is still not taken seriously amongst mainstream outspoken proponents of materialism, but at least it's now an accepted 'debate' academically philpapers.org/rec/HOLPPN).
Where does Materialism begin to 'touch' it's opposite and find a transcendent in the New Aeon?
Daniel Dennet and Ray Kurzweil famously assert that 'computers' can be conscious, and have conscious experience. Kurzweil's 'The Age of Spiritual Machines'. One favorite quote of mine by Kurzweil is "People ask me if I believe God exists, I always reply 'not yet' "
Coupled with the discovery that the universe, too, is a giant quantum computer. www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/03/the-universe-is-a-quantum-computer.html Seth Lloyd makes it clear that he is not saying the universe is like a quantum computer, it actually IS a quantum computer.
So to summarize - Materialism may be the least explored and possibly most relevant candidate for synthesis with Thelema that may do more to establish the 'aeon of the crowned and conquering child' than any other body of religious thought.
And while I often disagree with Los's conclusions, I do think his explorations of a purely material Thelema is something that is worthwhile and needs the support of the thelemic community.
Would love to hear some thoughts or feedback. Apologies if I have bastardized any one's knowledge or understanding and please correct me where you feel I have.
Even the most hardcore, objective sceptics who don't believe in remote viewing admit that there is an unexplained statistical anomaly at play here.
My point is that you're a biased fanatic.
-
A few discussions on this forum stimulated this thinking process for me recently (Thanks Los!) and I find it actually quite interesting. Wondering if the community here would not mind if I run it by to get a little feedback or edit/augmentation.
One of the appeals of Thelema to me historically was the idea of how compatible Thelema is with other religious, esoteric, or mystical traditions, and in principle, any religious or mystical tradition is 'upgradeable' to Aeon 3.0 so to speak.
Thelema, I think most here would agree, is a combination of a philosophy and a religion. Putting the religious component aside, how compatible is Thelema with modern western philosophy, primarily Materialism or Physicalism?
There is no question that Philosophical Materialism is the dominant 'belief system' of academic and educated western society. What does it look like if combined with Thelema?
This is where, to be honest, I found Los' posts absolutely fascinating because at face value, to me at least, I did not see compatibility between Philosophical Materialism with Philosophical Thelema (unless of course one is uniting philosophical materialism and combining it with it's opposite to produce a new child or synthesis).
Materialism is a monism - meaning it assumes there is only the measurable physical reality and provides no allowances for spirits or a mysterious dimension to consciousness and any activity must be a function of the brain/body
.
Thelema, one could say would still be Philosophical Dualism (as defined by philosophy, not thelemites) because Thelema of course does have allowances for spirits and indeed credits it's existence as a preternatural spirit as it's author.This gets interesting, I promise
As defined by Crowley (can't find the reference), the Aeon of Isis could be understood simply as the aeon where 'the material denies the spiritual'. The Aeon of Osiris could be defined as 'the spiritual denies the material'. Distinguished by our modern Aeon that is the child Horus, product of Isis and Osiris - 'both material and spiritual, at once' (my words).
This suggests to me that actually the idea of a Thelemic Materialism is quite an interesting 'concunction' to ponder. What happens to the union with the spiritual in a purely physical philosophy that for all states and purposes, is Thelemic? How does the physical transform enough to allow for all things spiritual, and how does the spiritual transform to become all things material?
What this would suggest to me is that a very pivotal point in the evolution of Western Science is on the horizon and we can find evidence of this emergence in academic progress now currently just outside of mainstream.
The reemergence of Pan Psychism'en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism as a mainstream theory. The discovery that the material universe is 'alive', having an experience with various levels of intelligence. (this idea is still not taken seriously amongst mainstream outspoken proponents of materialism, but at least it's now an accepted 'debate' academically philpapers.org/rec/HOLPPN).
Where does Materialism begin to 'touch' it's opposite and find a transcendent in the New Aeon?
Daniel Dennet and Ray Kurzweil famously assert that 'computers' can be conscious, and have conscious experience. Kurzweil's 'The Age of Spiritual Machines'. One favorite quote of mine by Kurzweil is "People ask me if I believe God exists, I always reply 'not yet' "
Coupled with the discovery that the universe, too, is a giant quantum computer. www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/03/the-universe-is-a-quantum-computer.html Seth Lloyd makes it clear that he is not saying the universe is like a quantum computer, it actually IS a quantum computer.
So to summarize - Materialism may be the least explored and possibly most relevant candidate for synthesis with Thelema that may do more to establish the 'aeon of the crowned and conquering child' than any other body of religious thought.
And while I often disagree with Los's conclusions, I do think his explorations of a purely material Thelema is something that is worthwhile and needs the support of the thelemic community.
Would love to hear some thoughts or feedback. Apologies if I have bastardized any one's knowledge or understanding and please correct me where you feel I have.
@Avshalom Binyamin said
"Even the most hardcore, objective sceptics who don't believe in remote viewing admit that there is an unexplained statistical anomaly at play here."
Call me severely skeptical of that, but even if I were to grant you that something (incredibly minor) is happening that cannot be explained, what do you think that would demonstrate?
It's not exactly an easy jump from "We don't know what this is" to "people have psychic powers" or even "Magic goblins grant my wishes."
-
A few discussions on this forum stimulated this thinking process for me recently (Thanks Los!) and I find it actually quite interesting. Wondering if the community here would not mind if I run it by to get a little feedback or edit/augmentation.
One of the appeals of Thelema to me historically was the idea of how compatible Thelema is with other religious, esoteric, or mystical traditions, and in principle, any religious or mystical tradition is 'upgradeable' to Aeon 3.0 so to speak.
Thelema, I think most here would agree, is a combination of a philosophy and a religion. Putting the religious component aside, how compatible is Thelema with modern western philosophy, primarily Materialism or Physicalism?
There is no question that Philosophical Materialism is the dominant 'belief system' of academic and educated western society. What does it look like if combined with Thelema?
This is where, to be honest, I found Los' posts absolutely fascinating because at face value, to me at least, I did not see compatibility between Philosophical Materialism with Philosophical Thelema (unless of course one is uniting philosophical materialism and combining it with it's opposite to produce a new child or synthesis).
Materialism is a monism - meaning it assumes there is only the measurable physical reality and provides no allowances for spirits or a mysterious dimension to consciousness and any activity must be a function of the brain/body
.
Thelema, one could say would still be Philosophical Dualism (as defined by philosophy, not thelemites) because Thelema of course does have allowances for spirits and indeed credits it's existence as a preternatural spirit as it's author.This gets interesting, I promise
As defined by Crowley (can't find the reference), the Aeon of Isis could be understood simply as the aeon where 'the material denies the spiritual'. The Aeon of Osiris could be defined as 'the spiritual denies the material'. Distinguished by our modern Aeon that is the child Horus, product of Isis and Osiris - 'both material and spiritual, at once' (my words).
This suggests to me that actually the idea of a Thelemic Materialism is quite an interesting 'concunction' to ponder. What happens to the union with the spiritual in a purely physical philosophy that for all states and purposes, is Thelemic? How does the physical transform enough to allow for all things spiritual, and how does the spiritual transform to become all things material?
What this would suggest to me is that a very pivotal point in the evolution of Western Science is on the horizon and we can find evidence of this emergence in academic progress now currently just outside of mainstream.
The reemergence of Pan Psychism'en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism as a mainstream theory. The discovery that the material universe is 'alive', having an experience with various levels of intelligence. (this idea is still not taken seriously amongst mainstream outspoken proponents of materialism, but at least it's now an accepted 'debate' academically philpapers.org/rec/HOLPPN).
Where does Materialism begin to 'touch' it's opposite and find a transcendent in the New Aeon?
Daniel Dennet and Ray Kurzweil famously assert that 'computers' can be conscious, and have conscious experience. Kurzweil's 'The Age of Spiritual Machines'. One favorite quote of mine by Kurzweil is "People ask me if I believe God exists, I always reply 'not yet' "
Coupled with the discovery that the universe, too, is a giant quantum computer. www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/03/the-universe-is-a-quantum-computer.html Seth Lloyd makes it clear that he is not saying the universe is like a quantum computer, it actually IS a quantum computer.
So to summarize - Materialism may be the least explored and possibly most relevant candidate for synthesis with Thelema that may do more to establish the 'aeon of the crowned and conquering child' than any other body of religious thought.
And while I often disagree with Los's conclusions, I do think his explorations of a purely material Thelema is something that is worthwhile and needs the support of the thelemic community.
Would love to hear some thoughts or feedback. Apologies if I have bastardized any one's knowledge or understanding and please correct me where you feel I have.
Semmelweis demonstrated a statistical correlation between hand washing and hospital survival rates decades before Pasteur demonstrated that germs exist.
Scientists are the ones discovering new stuff. Fanatics are the ones saying it can't be done.
I don't care whether remote viewing is true, or not. I just object to you pretending to know the truth, and to pretend you're a scientist. The universe is to big to justify such hubris.
-
A few discussions on this forum stimulated this thinking process for me recently (Thanks Los!) and I find it actually quite interesting. Wondering if the community here would not mind if I run it by to get a little feedback or edit/augmentation.
One of the appeals of Thelema to me historically was the idea of how compatible Thelema is with other religious, esoteric, or mystical traditions, and in principle, any religious or mystical tradition is 'upgradeable' to Aeon 3.0 so to speak.
Thelema, I think most here would agree, is a combination of a philosophy and a religion. Putting the religious component aside, how compatible is Thelema with modern western philosophy, primarily Materialism or Physicalism?
There is no question that Philosophical Materialism is the dominant 'belief system' of academic and educated western society. What does it look like if combined with Thelema?
This is where, to be honest, I found Los' posts absolutely fascinating because at face value, to me at least, I did not see compatibility between Philosophical Materialism with Philosophical Thelema (unless of course one is uniting philosophical materialism and combining it with it's opposite to produce a new child or synthesis).
Materialism is a monism - meaning it assumes there is only the measurable physical reality and provides no allowances for spirits or a mysterious dimension to consciousness and any activity must be a function of the brain/body
.
Thelema, one could say would still be Philosophical Dualism (as defined by philosophy, not thelemites) because Thelema of course does have allowances for spirits and indeed credits it's existence as a preternatural spirit as it's author.This gets interesting, I promise
As defined by Crowley (can't find the reference), the Aeon of Isis could be understood simply as the aeon where 'the material denies the spiritual'. The Aeon of Osiris could be defined as 'the spiritual denies the material'. Distinguished by our modern Aeon that is the child Horus, product of Isis and Osiris - 'both material and spiritual, at once' (my words).
This suggests to me that actually the idea of a Thelemic Materialism is quite an interesting 'concunction' to ponder. What happens to the union with the spiritual in a purely physical philosophy that for all states and purposes, is Thelemic? How does the physical transform enough to allow for all things spiritual, and how does the spiritual transform to become all things material?
What this would suggest to me is that a very pivotal point in the evolution of Western Science is on the horizon and we can find evidence of this emergence in academic progress now currently just outside of mainstream.
The reemergence of Pan Psychism'en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism as a mainstream theory. The discovery that the material universe is 'alive', having an experience with various levels of intelligence. (this idea is still not taken seriously amongst mainstream outspoken proponents of materialism, but at least it's now an accepted 'debate' academically philpapers.org/rec/HOLPPN).
Where does Materialism begin to 'touch' it's opposite and find a transcendent in the New Aeon?
Daniel Dennet and Ray Kurzweil famously assert that 'computers' can be conscious, and have conscious experience. Kurzweil's 'The Age of Spiritual Machines'. One favorite quote of mine by Kurzweil is "People ask me if I believe God exists, I always reply 'not yet' "
Coupled with the discovery that the universe, too, is a giant quantum computer. www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/03/the-universe-is-a-quantum-computer.html Seth Lloyd makes it clear that he is not saying the universe is like a quantum computer, it actually IS a quantum computer.
So to summarize - Materialism may be the least explored and possibly most relevant candidate for synthesis with Thelema that may do more to establish the 'aeon of the crowned and conquering child' than any other body of religious thought.
And while I often disagree with Los's conclusions, I do think his explorations of a purely material Thelema is something that is worthwhile and needs the support of the thelemic community.
Would love to hear some thoughts or feedback. Apologies if I have bastardized any one's knowledge or understanding and please correct me where you feel I have.
-
A few discussions on this forum stimulated this thinking process for me recently (Thanks Los!) and I find it actually quite interesting. Wondering if the community here would not mind if I run it by to get a little feedback or edit/augmentation.
One of the appeals of Thelema to me historically was the idea of how compatible Thelema is with other religious, esoteric, or mystical traditions, and in principle, any religious or mystical tradition is 'upgradeable' to Aeon 3.0 so to speak.
Thelema, I think most here would agree, is a combination of a philosophy and a religion. Putting the religious component aside, how compatible is Thelema with modern western philosophy, primarily Materialism or Physicalism?
There is no question that Philosophical Materialism is the dominant 'belief system' of academic and educated western society. What does it look like if combined with Thelema?
This is where, to be honest, I found Los' posts absolutely fascinating because at face value, to me at least, I did not see compatibility between Philosophical Materialism with Philosophical Thelema (unless of course one is uniting philosophical materialism and combining it with it's opposite to produce a new child or synthesis).
Materialism is a monism - meaning it assumes there is only the measurable physical reality and provides no allowances for spirits or a mysterious dimension to consciousness and any activity must be a function of the brain/body
.
Thelema, one could say would still be Philosophical Dualism (as defined by philosophy, not thelemites) because Thelema of course does have allowances for spirits and indeed credits it's existence as a preternatural spirit as it's author.This gets interesting, I promise
As defined by Crowley (can't find the reference), the Aeon of Isis could be understood simply as the aeon where 'the material denies the spiritual'. The Aeon of Osiris could be defined as 'the spiritual denies the material'. Distinguished by our modern Aeon that is the child Horus, product of Isis and Osiris - 'both material and spiritual, at once' (my words).
This suggests to me that actually the idea of a Thelemic Materialism is quite an interesting 'concunction' to ponder. What happens to the union with the spiritual in a purely physical philosophy that for all states and purposes, is Thelemic? How does the physical transform enough to allow for all things spiritual, and how does the spiritual transform to become all things material?
What this would suggest to me is that a very pivotal point in the evolution of Western Science is on the horizon and we can find evidence of this emergence in academic progress now currently just outside of mainstream.
The reemergence of Pan Psychism'en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism as a mainstream theory. The discovery that the material universe is 'alive', having an experience with various levels of intelligence. (this idea is still not taken seriously amongst mainstream outspoken proponents of materialism, but at least it's now an accepted 'debate' academically philpapers.org/rec/HOLPPN).
Where does Materialism begin to 'touch' it's opposite and find a transcendent in the New Aeon?
Daniel Dennet and Ray Kurzweil famously assert that 'computers' can be conscious, and have conscious experience. Kurzweil's 'The Age of Spiritual Machines'. One favorite quote of mine by Kurzweil is "People ask me if I believe God exists, I always reply 'not yet' "
Coupled with the discovery that the universe, too, is a giant quantum computer. www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/03/the-universe-is-a-quantum-computer.html Seth Lloyd makes it clear that he is not saying the universe is like a quantum computer, it actually IS a quantum computer.
So to summarize - Materialism may be the least explored and possibly most relevant candidate for synthesis with Thelema that may do more to establish the 'aeon of the crowned and conquering child' than any other body of religious thought.
And while I often disagree with Los's conclusions, I do think his explorations of a purely material Thelema is something that is worthwhile and needs the support of the thelemic community.
Would love to hear some thoughts or feedback. Apologies if I have bastardized any one's knowledge or understanding and please correct me where you feel I have.
That information can be transmitted in ways other than the experiment prevented. It could demonstrate telepathy, precognition, or something else.
Regardless, it ain't chance.
We just don't know.
-
A few discussions on this forum stimulated this thinking process for me recently (Thanks Los!) and I find it actually quite interesting. Wondering if the community here would not mind if I run it by to get a little feedback or edit/augmentation.
One of the appeals of Thelema to me historically was the idea of how compatible Thelema is with other religious, esoteric, or mystical traditions, and in principle, any religious or mystical tradition is 'upgradeable' to Aeon 3.0 so to speak.
Thelema, I think most here would agree, is a combination of a philosophy and a religion. Putting the religious component aside, how compatible is Thelema with modern western philosophy, primarily Materialism or Physicalism?
There is no question that Philosophical Materialism is the dominant 'belief system' of academic and educated western society. What does it look like if combined with Thelema?
This is where, to be honest, I found Los' posts absolutely fascinating because at face value, to me at least, I did not see compatibility between Philosophical Materialism with Philosophical Thelema (unless of course one is uniting philosophical materialism and combining it with it's opposite to produce a new child or synthesis).
Materialism is a monism - meaning it assumes there is only the measurable physical reality and provides no allowances for spirits or a mysterious dimension to consciousness and any activity must be a function of the brain/body
.
Thelema, one could say would still be Philosophical Dualism (as defined by philosophy, not thelemites) because Thelema of course does have allowances for spirits and indeed credits it's existence as a preternatural spirit as it's author.This gets interesting, I promise
As defined by Crowley (can't find the reference), the Aeon of Isis could be understood simply as the aeon where 'the material denies the spiritual'. The Aeon of Osiris could be defined as 'the spiritual denies the material'. Distinguished by our modern Aeon that is the child Horus, product of Isis and Osiris - 'both material and spiritual, at once' (my words).
This suggests to me that actually the idea of a Thelemic Materialism is quite an interesting 'concunction' to ponder. What happens to the union with the spiritual in a purely physical philosophy that for all states and purposes, is Thelemic? How does the physical transform enough to allow for all things spiritual, and how does the spiritual transform to become all things material?
What this would suggest to me is that a very pivotal point in the evolution of Western Science is on the horizon and we can find evidence of this emergence in academic progress now currently just outside of mainstream.
The reemergence of Pan Psychism'en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism as a mainstream theory. The discovery that the material universe is 'alive', having an experience with various levels of intelligence. (this idea is still not taken seriously amongst mainstream outspoken proponents of materialism, but at least it's now an accepted 'debate' academically philpapers.org/rec/HOLPPN).
Where does Materialism begin to 'touch' it's opposite and find a transcendent in the New Aeon?
Daniel Dennet and Ray Kurzweil famously assert that 'computers' can be conscious, and have conscious experience. Kurzweil's 'The Age of Spiritual Machines'. One favorite quote of mine by Kurzweil is "People ask me if I believe God exists, I always reply 'not yet' "
Coupled with the discovery that the universe, too, is a giant quantum computer. www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/03/the-universe-is-a-quantum-computer.html Seth Lloyd makes it clear that he is not saying the universe is like a quantum computer, it actually IS a quantum computer.
So to summarize - Materialism may be the least explored and possibly most relevant candidate for synthesis with Thelema that may do more to establish the 'aeon of the crowned and conquering child' than any other body of religious thought.
And while I often disagree with Los's conclusions, I do think his explorations of a purely material Thelema is something that is worthwhile and needs the support of the thelemic community.
Would love to hear some thoughts or feedback. Apologies if I have bastardized any one's knowledge or understanding and please correct me where you feel I have.
@Avshalom Binyamin said
"We just don't know."
Correct. Even if the experiments actually indicate what some readings of the data might suggest -- and it's a big if -- the most that they would demonstrate is "we just don't know" what's actually going on.
It doesn't make any supernatural claims even slightly more likely to be true.
In logic, this kind of fallacy is called an "argument from ignorance." Just because we don't know something, it doesn't support any particular claim. Witness, for example, Creationists who try to find things that evolution can't explain, thinking that if they can demonstrate the existence of something that cannot be currently explained, it supports their supernatural ideas.
But "we just don't know" can never support a claim. Just like not being able to explain something in biology doesn't make creationism any more likely to be true, not being able to explain some statistical anomaly (which may or may not exist) in guessing games doesn't make any supernatural claims any more likely to be true.
-
A few discussions on this forum stimulated this thinking process for me recently (Thanks Los!) and I find it actually quite interesting. Wondering if the community here would not mind if I run it by to get a little feedback or edit/augmentation.
One of the appeals of Thelema to me historically was the idea of how compatible Thelema is with other religious, esoteric, or mystical traditions, and in principle, any religious or mystical tradition is 'upgradeable' to Aeon 3.0 so to speak.
Thelema, I think most here would agree, is a combination of a philosophy and a religion. Putting the religious component aside, how compatible is Thelema with modern western philosophy, primarily Materialism or Physicalism?
There is no question that Philosophical Materialism is the dominant 'belief system' of academic and educated western society. What does it look like if combined with Thelema?
This is where, to be honest, I found Los' posts absolutely fascinating because at face value, to me at least, I did not see compatibility between Philosophical Materialism with Philosophical Thelema (unless of course one is uniting philosophical materialism and combining it with it's opposite to produce a new child or synthesis).
Materialism is a monism - meaning it assumes there is only the measurable physical reality and provides no allowances for spirits or a mysterious dimension to consciousness and any activity must be a function of the brain/body
.
Thelema, one could say would still be Philosophical Dualism (as defined by philosophy, not thelemites) because Thelema of course does have allowances for spirits and indeed credits it's existence as a preternatural spirit as it's author.This gets interesting, I promise
As defined by Crowley (can't find the reference), the Aeon of Isis could be understood simply as the aeon where 'the material denies the spiritual'. The Aeon of Osiris could be defined as 'the spiritual denies the material'. Distinguished by our modern Aeon that is the child Horus, product of Isis and Osiris - 'both material and spiritual, at once' (my words).
This suggests to me that actually the idea of a Thelemic Materialism is quite an interesting 'concunction' to ponder. What happens to the union with the spiritual in a purely physical philosophy that for all states and purposes, is Thelemic? How does the physical transform enough to allow for all things spiritual, and how does the spiritual transform to become all things material?
What this would suggest to me is that a very pivotal point in the evolution of Western Science is on the horizon and we can find evidence of this emergence in academic progress now currently just outside of mainstream.
The reemergence of Pan Psychism'en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism as a mainstream theory. The discovery that the material universe is 'alive', having an experience with various levels of intelligence. (this idea is still not taken seriously amongst mainstream outspoken proponents of materialism, but at least it's now an accepted 'debate' academically philpapers.org/rec/HOLPPN).
Where does Materialism begin to 'touch' it's opposite and find a transcendent in the New Aeon?
Daniel Dennet and Ray Kurzweil famously assert that 'computers' can be conscious, and have conscious experience. Kurzweil's 'The Age of Spiritual Machines'. One favorite quote of mine by Kurzweil is "People ask me if I believe God exists, I always reply 'not yet' "
Coupled with the discovery that the universe, too, is a giant quantum computer. www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/03/the-universe-is-a-quantum-computer.html Seth Lloyd makes it clear that he is not saying the universe is like a quantum computer, it actually IS a quantum computer.
So to summarize - Materialism may be the least explored and possibly most relevant candidate for synthesis with Thelema that may do more to establish the 'aeon of the crowned and conquering child' than any other body of religious thought.
And while I often disagree with Los's conclusions, I do think his explorations of a purely material Thelema is something that is worthwhile and needs the support of the thelemic community.
Would love to hear some thoughts or feedback. Apologies if I have bastardized any one's knowledge or understanding and please correct me where you feel I have.
Well, I'm not trying to convince you to believe in something, so that's irrelevant.
Now, if you were alive between when Semmelweis and Pasteur did their main contributions, you would be correct to say:
We need more evidence
There's a statistical anomaly here
I haven't seen definitive proof of germsBut a Baffoon to say:
Germs do not exist
Nobody has good reason to believe in germsWhen you say the first things, you can have your mind changed. When you say the second things, you're being a fanatic.
The world will go on being what it is, regardless of you or my silly opinions. Skeptics and scientists are focused on discovering what that world is. Fanatics are busy worrying about making everyone believe the same as them.
You're a fanatic. Not a skeptic. And as long as you go around acting like one, I'm gonna keep pointing it out.
-
A few discussions on this forum stimulated this thinking process for me recently (Thanks Los!) and I find it actually quite interesting. Wondering if the community here would not mind if I run it by to get a little feedback or edit/augmentation.
One of the appeals of Thelema to me historically was the idea of how compatible Thelema is with other religious, esoteric, or mystical traditions, and in principle, any religious or mystical tradition is 'upgradeable' to Aeon 3.0 so to speak.
Thelema, I think most here would agree, is a combination of a philosophy and a religion. Putting the religious component aside, how compatible is Thelema with modern western philosophy, primarily Materialism or Physicalism?
There is no question that Philosophical Materialism is the dominant 'belief system' of academic and educated western society. What does it look like if combined with Thelema?
This is where, to be honest, I found Los' posts absolutely fascinating because at face value, to me at least, I did not see compatibility between Philosophical Materialism with Philosophical Thelema (unless of course one is uniting philosophical materialism and combining it with it's opposite to produce a new child or synthesis).
Materialism is a monism - meaning it assumes there is only the measurable physical reality and provides no allowances for spirits or a mysterious dimension to consciousness and any activity must be a function of the brain/body
.
Thelema, one could say would still be Philosophical Dualism (as defined by philosophy, not thelemites) because Thelema of course does have allowances for spirits and indeed credits it's existence as a preternatural spirit as it's author.This gets interesting, I promise
As defined by Crowley (can't find the reference), the Aeon of Isis could be understood simply as the aeon where 'the material denies the spiritual'. The Aeon of Osiris could be defined as 'the spiritual denies the material'. Distinguished by our modern Aeon that is the child Horus, product of Isis and Osiris - 'both material and spiritual, at once' (my words).
This suggests to me that actually the idea of a Thelemic Materialism is quite an interesting 'concunction' to ponder. What happens to the union with the spiritual in a purely physical philosophy that for all states and purposes, is Thelemic? How does the physical transform enough to allow for all things spiritual, and how does the spiritual transform to become all things material?
What this would suggest to me is that a very pivotal point in the evolution of Western Science is on the horizon and we can find evidence of this emergence in academic progress now currently just outside of mainstream.
The reemergence of Pan Psychism'en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism as a mainstream theory. The discovery that the material universe is 'alive', having an experience with various levels of intelligence. (this idea is still not taken seriously amongst mainstream outspoken proponents of materialism, but at least it's now an accepted 'debate' academically philpapers.org/rec/HOLPPN).
Where does Materialism begin to 'touch' it's opposite and find a transcendent in the New Aeon?
Daniel Dennet and Ray Kurzweil famously assert that 'computers' can be conscious, and have conscious experience. Kurzweil's 'The Age of Spiritual Machines'. One favorite quote of mine by Kurzweil is "People ask me if I believe God exists, I always reply 'not yet' "
Coupled with the discovery that the universe, too, is a giant quantum computer. www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/03/the-universe-is-a-quantum-computer.html Seth Lloyd makes it clear that he is not saying the universe is like a quantum computer, it actually IS a quantum computer.
So to summarize - Materialism may be the least explored and possibly most relevant candidate for synthesis with Thelema that may do more to establish the 'aeon of the crowned and conquering child' than any other body of religious thought.
And while I often disagree with Los's conclusions, I do think his explorations of a purely material Thelema is something that is worthwhile and needs the support of the thelemic community.
Would love to hear some thoughts or feedback. Apologies if I have bastardized any one's knowledge or understanding and please correct me where you feel I have.
@Avshalom Binyamin said
"But a Baffoon to say:
Germs do not exist
Nobody has good reason to believe in germs"Before there was sufficient evidence for germs, nobody had good reason to believe that they existed. The time to believe a claim is when the evidence is there for it, and as you've adequately demonstrated over the last few posts, these guessing-game experiments aren't evidence for any claim.
EDIT: And to anticipate your likely next line, of course it's fine for people to do experiments to try to demonstrate the existence of germs or magic or whatever. But nobody -- including the people performing the experiments -- has sufficient reason to accept the claims until these experiments generate evidence for those claims.
"You're a fanatic."
Oh, please. It's not being "fanatical" to not accept outlandish claims on the basis of the flimsy crap you've been pointing to.
It's also not being "fanatical" to point out that nobody is justified in using the flimsy crap you've been pointing to as evidence of any of the wildly outlandish claims that are routinely discussed on this forum as if they were self-evident fact.
-
A few discussions on this forum stimulated this thinking process for me recently (Thanks Los!) and I find it actually quite interesting. Wondering if the community here would not mind if I run it by to get a little feedback or edit/augmentation.
One of the appeals of Thelema to me historically was the idea of how compatible Thelema is with other religious, esoteric, or mystical traditions, and in principle, any religious or mystical tradition is 'upgradeable' to Aeon 3.0 so to speak.
Thelema, I think most here would agree, is a combination of a philosophy and a religion. Putting the religious component aside, how compatible is Thelema with modern western philosophy, primarily Materialism or Physicalism?
There is no question that Philosophical Materialism is the dominant 'belief system' of academic and educated western society. What does it look like if combined with Thelema?
This is where, to be honest, I found Los' posts absolutely fascinating because at face value, to me at least, I did not see compatibility between Philosophical Materialism with Philosophical Thelema (unless of course one is uniting philosophical materialism and combining it with it's opposite to produce a new child or synthesis).
Materialism is a monism - meaning it assumes there is only the measurable physical reality and provides no allowances for spirits or a mysterious dimension to consciousness and any activity must be a function of the brain/body
.
Thelema, one could say would still be Philosophical Dualism (as defined by philosophy, not thelemites) because Thelema of course does have allowances for spirits and indeed credits it's existence as a preternatural spirit as it's author.This gets interesting, I promise
As defined by Crowley (can't find the reference), the Aeon of Isis could be understood simply as the aeon where 'the material denies the spiritual'. The Aeon of Osiris could be defined as 'the spiritual denies the material'. Distinguished by our modern Aeon that is the child Horus, product of Isis and Osiris - 'both material and spiritual, at once' (my words).
This suggests to me that actually the idea of a Thelemic Materialism is quite an interesting 'concunction' to ponder. What happens to the union with the spiritual in a purely physical philosophy that for all states and purposes, is Thelemic? How does the physical transform enough to allow for all things spiritual, and how does the spiritual transform to become all things material?
What this would suggest to me is that a very pivotal point in the evolution of Western Science is on the horizon and we can find evidence of this emergence in academic progress now currently just outside of mainstream.
The reemergence of Pan Psychism'en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism as a mainstream theory. The discovery that the material universe is 'alive', having an experience with various levels of intelligence. (this idea is still not taken seriously amongst mainstream outspoken proponents of materialism, but at least it's now an accepted 'debate' academically philpapers.org/rec/HOLPPN).
Where does Materialism begin to 'touch' it's opposite and find a transcendent in the New Aeon?
Daniel Dennet and Ray Kurzweil famously assert that 'computers' can be conscious, and have conscious experience. Kurzweil's 'The Age of Spiritual Machines'. One favorite quote of mine by Kurzweil is "People ask me if I believe God exists, I always reply 'not yet' "
Coupled with the discovery that the universe, too, is a giant quantum computer. www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/03/the-universe-is-a-quantum-computer.html Seth Lloyd makes it clear that he is not saying the universe is like a quantum computer, it actually IS a quantum computer.
So to summarize - Materialism may be the least explored and possibly most relevant candidate for synthesis with Thelema that may do more to establish the 'aeon of the crowned and conquering child' than any other body of religious thought.
And while I often disagree with Los's conclusions, I do think his explorations of a purely material Thelema is something that is worthwhile and needs the support of the thelemic community.
Would love to hear some thoughts or feedback. Apologies if I have bastardized any one's knowledge or understanding and please correct me where you feel I have.
"Before there was sufficient evidence for germs, nobody had good reason to believe that they existed. The time to believe a claim is when the evidence is there for it, and as you've adequately demonstrated over the last few posts, these guessing-game experiments aren't evidence for any claim."
There was always sufficient evidence for germs as long as germs existed. People just hadn't noticed the evidence yet. There's a difference between what is, and what we happen to notice.
Semmelweis noticed a statistical correlation. He ended up saving lots of lives at a hospital because of it. He had sufficient evidence. But the scientific community didn't consider it sufficient.
"Sufficient evidence" is therefore subjective.
"Oh, please. It's not being "fanatical" to not accept outlandish claims on the basis of the flimsy crap you've been pointing to."
You're entitled to your own opinion. You're free to not accept anything you don't personally have sufficient evidence for.
"It's also not being "fanatical" to point out that nobody is justified in using the flimsy crap you've been pointing to as evidence of any of the wildly outlandish claims that are routinely discussed on this forum as if they were self-evident fact."
You're right. A more accurate term would be "dogmatic".
You're peddling your own dogma.
-
A few discussions on this forum stimulated this thinking process for me recently (Thanks Los!) and I find it actually quite interesting. Wondering if the community here would not mind if I run it by to get a little feedback or edit/augmentation.
One of the appeals of Thelema to me historically was the idea of how compatible Thelema is with other religious, esoteric, or mystical traditions, and in principle, any religious or mystical tradition is 'upgradeable' to Aeon 3.0 so to speak.
Thelema, I think most here would agree, is a combination of a philosophy and a religion. Putting the religious component aside, how compatible is Thelema with modern western philosophy, primarily Materialism or Physicalism?
There is no question that Philosophical Materialism is the dominant 'belief system' of academic and educated western society. What does it look like if combined with Thelema?
This is where, to be honest, I found Los' posts absolutely fascinating because at face value, to me at least, I did not see compatibility between Philosophical Materialism with Philosophical Thelema (unless of course one is uniting philosophical materialism and combining it with it's opposite to produce a new child or synthesis).
Materialism is a monism - meaning it assumes there is only the measurable physical reality and provides no allowances for spirits or a mysterious dimension to consciousness and any activity must be a function of the brain/body
.
Thelema, one could say would still be Philosophical Dualism (as defined by philosophy, not thelemites) because Thelema of course does have allowances for spirits and indeed credits it's existence as a preternatural spirit as it's author.This gets interesting, I promise
As defined by Crowley (can't find the reference), the Aeon of Isis could be understood simply as the aeon where 'the material denies the spiritual'. The Aeon of Osiris could be defined as 'the spiritual denies the material'. Distinguished by our modern Aeon that is the child Horus, product of Isis and Osiris - 'both material and spiritual, at once' (my words).
This suggests to me that actually the idea of a Thelemic Materialism is quite an interesting 'concunction' to ponder. What happens to the union with the spiritual in a purely physical philosophy that for all states and purposes, is Thelemic? How does the physical transform enough to allow for all things spiritual, and how does the spiritual transform to become all things material?
What this would suggest to me is that a very pivotal point in the evolution of Western Science is on the horizon and we can find evidence of this emergence in academic progress now currently just outside of mainstream.
The reemergence of Pan Psychism'en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism as a mainstream theory. The discovery that the material universe is 'alive', having an experience with various levels of intelligence. (this idea is still not taken seriously amongst mainstream outspoken proponents of materialism, but at least it's now an accepted 'debate' academically philpapers.org/rec/HOLPPN).
Where does Materialism begin to 'touch' it's opposite and find a transcendent in the New Aeon?
Daniel Dennet and Ray Kurzweil famously assert that 'computers' can be conscious, and have conscious experience. Kurzweil's 'The Age of Spiritual Machines'. One favorite quote of mine by Kurzweil is "People ask me if I believe God exists, I always reply 'not yet' "
Coupled with the discovery that the universe, too, is a giant quantum computer. www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/03/the-universe-is-a-quantum-computer.html Seth Lloyd makes it clear that he is not saying the universe is like a quantum computer, it actually IS a quantum computer.
So to summarize - Materialism may be the least explored and possibly most relevant candidate for synthesis with Thelema that may do more to establish the 'aeon of the crowned and conquering child' than any other body of religious thought.
And while I often disagree with Los's conclusions, I do think his explorations of a purely material Thelema is something that is worthwhile and needs the support of the thelemic community.
Would love to hear some thoughts or feedback. Apologies if I have bastardized any one's knowledge or understanding and please correct me where you feel I have.