Death & Rebirth
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The ego may be disintegrated by the influence of the unconscious potencies at play but the Self remains and it may reconstitute the ego along more suitable lines: this is the source of all the death & rebirth myths of antiquity. Thus also why it is written, "all the sorrows are but as shadows; they pass & are done; but there is that which remains." The ego can be (must be!) disintegrated (which is also shown in Atu XVI: The Tower in the Tarot) and reconstituted, and this is also the formula of IAO. I = The initial life of the ego, A = the destruction/annihilation of the ego, O = The reconstitution/rebirth of the ego 'on a higher arc,' or in a fuller sense. And this is also what is meant by "Die Daily."
Really, the 'next step' of humanity is for the ego-centric self to realize it is not the king in the kingdom; the Self - that point in between the conscious and unconscious which contains but transcends both - is the new king (actually, it always was; we are merely realizing this fact more clearly now). This is the Great Work of all humanity and also the Knowledge & Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel as shown in another essay/thread. The image of this self in Liber AL vel Legis - and Thelema in general therefore - is Horus, especially under the name Ra-Hoor-Khuit (and Heru-Ra-Ha, etc etc). In the last (or first) Aethyr, Horus proclaims:
*"There is nothing that I have not trampled beneath my feet. There is nothing that I have not set a garland on my brow. I have wound all things about my waist as a girdle. I have hidden all things in the cave of my heart. I have slain all things because I am Innocence. I have lain with all things because I am Untouched Virginity. I have given birth to all things because I am Death.
Stainless are my lips, for they are redder than the purple of the vine, and of the blood wherewith I am intoxicated. Stainless is my forehead, for it is whiter than the wind and the dew that cooleth it.
I am light, and I am night, and I am that which is beyond them.
I am speech, and I am silence, and I am that which is beyond them.
I am life, and I am death, and I am that which is beyond them.
I am war, and I am peace, and I am that which is beyond them.
I am weakness, and I am strength, and I am that which is beyond them.
Yet by none of these can man reach up to me. Yet by each of them must man reach up to me..."*
http://www.claasvommars.de/aeon.gif
The complementary opposites and the trascendence thereof is evident in the symbol of the Crowned & Conquering Child, Horus (at least in Thelema). All images really work, for "Everything that lives is holy," "Every image is a true symbol of Substance," and also Ra-Hoor-Khuit says himself in Liber AL that, "The other images group around me to support me: let all be worshipped, for they shall cluster to exalt me." (III:22) Our work then is to 'usurp' the throne of king that has wrongly fallen to the conscious ego, and the image of the Self will take its place as the rightful heir. Just as Horus is, we are each emissaries of both life and death even as our heart beats with both systole and diastole and our lungs absorb life with each inhalation only to release it with each exhalation.
The general problem is that each individual is really not 'in-dividual' - they are divided, they are fragmented. The unconscious is sectioned off from the conscious sphere of awareness. By releasing the unconscious potencies we may form a union of conscious & unconscious into the Self on a a higher arc.
The term 'unconscious' (implying simply "that which is not conscious") is much more accurate than 'subconscious,' for the latter implies "that which is below consciousness;" it carries with it all the psychic associations of inferiority. But if the subconscious explains those things that come from below, what about that which seems to come from "above" - that which some call "divine"? They too are from the unconscious, and this is why it is written "I reveal unto you a great mystery. Ye stand between the abyss of height and the abyss of depth. In either awaits you a Companion; and that Companion is Yourself. Ye can have no other Companion." The unconscious surrounds the conscious on all sides like the ocean to an island or space to a star. Both Companions must be united with for to deny any part is to deny a part of ourselves, really. That is why it is also said that "My adepts stand upright; their head above the heavens, their feet below the hells." This must be so. A tree grows tall and strong by virtue of its roots deep underground. The human psyche even more so.
Forms of consciously releasing these unconscious potencies include religious practices, magick, yoga, etc. and also hallucinogenic substances are known to do similar things (though they are not endorsed..............) Through these practices we "extend the dominion of our consciousness, and its control of all forces alien to it, to the utmost. We must "do this by the ever stronger and more skilful application of your faculties to the finer, clearer, fuller, and more accurate perception, the better understanding, and the more wisely ordered government" of the internal & external Universe.
65 & 210,
111-418 -
I find it a very bleak notion of reincarnation, that because you are part of the physical cosmos and when you die the cosmos still remains and some new totally other child may be born somewhere, that mean the cosmos itself was re-born.
I mean sure that is true, but this deepest self that is one with all things, has no thoughts, emotions, memories, identity, perspective, etc. So the fact that other beings percipitate out of the cosmos, does not mean that I retain my identity after death.
That is rather like saying because other computers are build in the future, then the information I lost on my smashed computer, comes back is some new computer somewhere. That is not so the new computer is not my old smashed system come back to me, it dose not have the photos I saved, the programs I wrote, or the configuration that I set up. Indeed this is a new totally different system, with no relation to the one I lost.
Likewise If I die, I am gone never to return, all that I am rots in the ground, the end. If later a child is born, there is nothing of me in that child. It is a whole new, fresh from the factory child, a blank slate, and I am gone forever. I might as well never have been in the first place. I shall rot to dust and be scattered to the winds. There is no soul or spirit left over, only the dust I once was, and that dispersed into oblivion.
(That is unless prior to my death I can find a new physical body to house the information stored in my current bodies nervous system, so that my mind and memories, thoughts, emotions, etc. live on wile my old body is molted off and left behind like a cicada's shell.
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@Froclown said
"If I die, I am gone never to return, all that I am rots in the ground, the end."
I agree with this statement as far as it goes, with the following clarification. All that you believe yourself to be rots in the ground. The reality is that you are something very different than you believe yourself to be.
I hear a lot of despair in your comments in this post. It's only natural, after all. How can consciousness survive death? It goes away every time we sleep, how can it possibly survive the death of the brain, right? It can't. But the consciousness that we experience every day is no part of the entities we actually are. It is a construct, like our bodies (though of a different type). It is a tool that we use. It is no more a part of our real selves than the clothes we wear.
Let it go when you die. You'll acquire another when you are born again.
Dan
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The funny thing is that I didn't think Aum418's post had anything at all to do with these beliefs (or lack thereof) in reincarnation or the objective existence of the soul! I'm all for the idea of Thelema being about what we can get done in this life. Whether the Neshamah or the Yechidah is "really real" or if it's a psychological construct -- or if both statements are true in a way -- seems to be secondary to the fact that these concepts are pretty darned useful in the here and now.
If you "paste the sheets" of the manuscript of the Book of the Law in a 13 by 5 grid, the following verse is at the exact center of the Book:
"Aye! feast! rejoice! there is no dread hereafter. There is the dissolution, and eternal ecstasy in the kisses of Nu."
There's room for everyone to interpret this as they Will, no?
Steve
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Yes, but that which is not you consciousness, that is not the function of you brain is nothing but the material universe.
Everything that exists is built out of atoms, and everything on earth is in a dynamic equilibrium with everything else. That is "I" my body and brain are intermeshed with the air I breath, made up of the food I eat, cleansed by the water I drink, and my waste goes back into the earth. The am effected by the tides which are shaped by the moon. and so on.
So in a sense all of nature is one entity and I am just one cell that makes up the multi-cellular cosmos.
Thus it is true that in a sense I am nature itself, and when "I" die nature does not die, just as when my skin cell dies and falls to the floor, I do continue to live on.
However, just because the higher order being of which I an a constituent lives on, that does not mean that I myself live on.
I am a machine, made of matter. When I an taken apart, a new machine may be made of the same substance, but I am gone.
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Froclown -
I suspect you of being deliberately obtuse in regard to what constitutes your actual Being, but I cannot prove it. I believe I have explained my view of the issue adequately, so I will say no more.
Dan
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Unless I can look at you and see your "spirit" or whatever non-material being waft out of you float across the room and animate a corpse or other body, then I see no reason to believe you are anything but an organic robot, like everyone else.
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@Steven Cranmer said
"The funny thing is that I didn't think Aum418's post had anything at all to do with these beliefs (or lack thereof) in reincarnation or the objective existence of the soul! I'm all for the idea of Thelema being about what we can get done in this life. Whether the Neshamah or the Yechidah is "really real" or if it's a psychological construct -- or if both statements are true in a way -- seems to be secondary to the fact that these concepts are pretty darned useful in the here and now.
If you "paste the sheets" of the manuscript of the Book of the Law in a 13 by 5 grid, the following verse is at the exact center of the Book:
"Aye! feast! rejoice! there is no dread hereafter. There is the dissolution, and eternal ecstasy in the kisses of Nu."
There's room for everyone to interpret this as they Will, no?
Steve"
That is correct.
I was not referring to physical death but psychological death. I specifically referred to death of the ego, never of the body - that is a bad misinterpretation on the part of Froclown.
On his ideas of the death of the body, though, I cant help but agree - Buddhists believe the 5 skandhas/aggregates are impermanent and this includes the body, sensory appartuses, sensory objects, the thinking, and consciousness itself.
On the subject of death in Thelema as treated from a psychological point, there is a chapter in my Psychological Commentary to Liber AL vel Legis called "A new perspective on death." One quote from it (from Carl Jung) is:
“The fact that we are totally unable to imagine a form of existence without space and time by no means proves that such an existence is in itself impossible. And therefore, just as we cannot draw, from an appearance of space-timelessness, any absolute conclusion about a space-timeless form of existence, so we are not entitled to conclude from the apparent space-time quality of our perception that there is no form of existence without space and time. It is not only permissible to doubt the absolute validity of space-time perception; it is, in view of the available facts, even imperative to do so. The hypothetical possibility that the psyche touches on a form of existence outside space and time presents a scientific question-mark that merits serious consideration for a long time to come.”
and also:
*"“Beginning and end are unavoidable aspects of all processes. Yet on closer examination it is extremely difficult to see where on process ends and another begins, since events and processes, beginnings and endings, merge into each other and form, strictly speaking, an indivisible continuum. We divide the processes from one another for the sake of discrimination and understanding, knowing full well that at bottom every division is arbitrary and conventional. This procedure in no way infringes the continuum of the world processes, for ‘beginning’ and ‘end’ are primarily necessities of conscious cognition. We may establish with reasonable certainty that an individual consciousness as it relates to ourselves has come to an end. But whether this means that the continuity of the psychic process is also interrupted remains doubtful, since the psyche’s attachment to the brain can be affirmed with far less certitude today than it could fifty years ago.” *
65 & 210,
111-418 -
Well this sert of psychological death, though it i often traumatic, it is not actually a death but a reorganization of the mind.
The sense of self and in fact all conscious awareness is only one small duty that the brain as a physical organ performs.
Most of what the brain does is automatic and sectioned off from conscious awareness. Magick practices can change where the walls are and bring elements normally handled by the automatic brain, into relation with the conscious mind, sometimes personified and granted language to facilitate reason and logical inquiry or the kind the conscious mind uses. This we call evocation. Or it can build conscious models and impress them into the unconscious, this we call invocation.
And in deep trance states the conscious mind can be snuffed partially, mostly or entirely out. OR the opposite can happen where the floodgates are open and the unconscious fills into and expands the conscious mind such that the wall between conscious and unconscious is removed and the conscious mind overloaded. This could happen with over stimulation, like Crowley's erotic exhaustion, high stress or chaotic situations like initiations, and with ingestion of certain psychotropic drugs. This state no matter the cause can cause undesired as well as desired changes in base level psychology, and in thus reserved for high level adepts.
However, death of the rational conscious self, is not death of the organic brain, in any of these states. Just a seeming loss of control.
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The whole is perceived in illusory fragments by the human mind. To children, the whole is apparent. Infants do not immediately detect a line between themselves and their mothers. As they become toddlers, the whole is still broken into much larger parts for them, as when all four-legged creatures are called "dog", or when all things of a certain color are referred to only by the name of the color. Slowly the world is understood by way of fragmentation that lets the individual identify the parts of the whole, and in so doing recognizes itself as a part.
We focus on these parts in school. We focus on them constantly as we divide things into groups, categories, and name after name. Naming is powerful and important, but it is also an act of division.
Ultimately the whole itself may be illusory, but we can only work within the framework of the shared reality we are experiencing. That is, that part of nature residing in the realm of philosophy that cannot be fathomed by the human mind is not "supernatural", but it is beyond the ken of human experience. It is no less valid, or real, for that. But philosophies speaking to that fall into the realm of the unfalsifiable.
So working with what we do have, and utilizing the scientific method as a means of understanding the material, we see great similarities between diverse species at the genetic level. We are left to marvel at the similarities between energy and matter at the quantum level. We see patterns in nature that can be described by science, but not explained. Science has nearly innumerable practical applications, and it provides a world view free of unfalsifiable bias, but it does not speak to the spirit, nor can it even satisfactorily define such.
While this does not validate proclamations of the ineffable as the work of a sapient divine being or beings, it does hint at the limitations of the rational mind. There are connections between all things that are not as yet identifiable through science, but are nonetheless felt by many beings. The biological imperative can explain a great deal of human behavior, but it cannot explain the biology itself.
As for that, when we look to what are arguably two of the most important moments in this reality as we know it, science is at something of a loss although it gives us important hints as to how things may have happened and plenty of facts in terms of what followed. These two moments are the birth of the universe and the birth of life on Earth.
In both cases, we can look back to an ocean of nothing, devoid of matter, or an ocean of water devoid of life. There is then a proposed singularity in both cases, and a universe of matter and a world of life follow quickly. It is. Life is. Things regenerate. We are a flickering instant in a great pattern, a cycle whose end and beginning, if such terms can even be applied, are unknown to us. This alone, however, is not satisfactory to most human minds.
The poet Edna St. Vincent Millay addresses this in her poem "Spring" when she writes, "Life in itself / Is nothing, / An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs. / It is not enough that yearly, down this hill, / April / Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers."
So we are down to meaning. Is meaning inherent or ascribed? In practical terms, it doesn't much matter, so long as we are able to provide said meaning in accordance with true will. Symbol sets allow us to navigate the realm of the unknown and the unknowable, and as such as exceedingly important. These symbols exist in words, in metaphor, in images, and in the embodiments of truth seated in deific forms.
We are not are memories of a bad day in the third grade or the moment we first defied authority or the litany of things we've done or wish to do. We are the love we experience and we are the expression of love. I can't run tests on that in a lab. But it is what I believe.
Looking to the now is always important. Wondering about the cosmos and all of its mysteries is only important in so far as it aids one in the pursuit of will in this life, in this now.