Goetic "Demons"
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@Froclown said
"I think you do not understand my view of the goetia at all.
I have no problem with the term demon or spirit as a jargon, I simply define these as physical effects of the brain. "
So, I did understand you to begin with. Everything you've said after this little intro I have expressed in statements 1-3 above. Point out anything specifically that doesn't seem to be included in these ideas and I will be glad to explain how they were included in these 3 points.
Now, if you don't mind, what is your interpretation of the Book of Lies comment I posted?
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And, by the way, this is totally unscientific nonsense:
@Froclown said
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Astrology is a system that helps us make decisions, if we are confuzzled. There is no real power in the stars, we attribute certain qualities to them, and use their orderly yet complex relations as a vague signposts, a way of letting the stars do part of ones thinking.A spell, in basically getting results like in goetia, but circumventing the spirit. See Sigil casting in Chaos magic.
Tarot, same as astrology only with cards. only it also relates to the tree of life and the wheel of time. Thus it is part of the Hermetic system, which is to build a total brain overhaul where the human tendency to accept correlations as linked in an almost causal way is exploited and mapped onto the tree of life. Thus creating a new way of precessing and perceiving information. "
How does the physical brain get results, scientifically speaking, through sigil casting in Chaos magic? Are you going to quote RAWilson, Phil Hine and Peter Carroll to me at great length now, pretending this is science? Your description of astrology and tarot are theoretical, not experiential. Experience blows such a theory out of the water without a larger over-arching concept behind it; yes, the cards and stars are helpful to analysis, but that certainly doesn't explain the whole of it. Pattern-finding brains can't alter physical reality unless there is a link between pattern-finding and pattern-making, which would necessarily mean that the mind has control over the physical, which leads back to the conclusion that everything physical is a construct of the mind.
Now, if you don't mind, what is your interpretation of the Book of Lies comment I posted?
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I never made the claim that magick can cause changes in reality, it can cause changes in perception, cognition, and behavior.
Picking up on subtle clues can seem like clairvoyance, if one developed this to the degree of Shurlock Holmes, then hunches could cause changes in behavior that may be subtle, but bring about the desired result, as if the world made it happen for you.
If this possibility is ruled out, then one can start theorizing about Quantum effects such as does the mind have an active role in state vector collapse. A definite link between the brains activity and the results of measurements on quantum scale probability has not been established, but there is some evidence for this. That too is a physical science, one not yet fully understood, but certainly not left to the action of immaterial spirits. We have a long way to go before jumping to that conclusion.
Now as for all this karma business, Karma just means causality nothing more. Past actions have an effect on present and future situations. Every thought and experience we have builds up our semantic network, thus each new experience is judged by the aggregate of all previous experience. With spoken and written language, that network expands via books, culture, media to include the learnings of other people, and even those long dead.
Thus oneself is part of a greater semantic network, which shapes the shared perspective of a culture or race. But the actual physical matter, the ink, the paper, the vibrating larynx, the brains, etc. Those are physical substances are not semantic entities. Magick has no direct effect on them, its effects are on the semantics systems, the information processed.
Magick does not change lead into gold, in stretches our definition of Gold to include lead. (If we are talking about chemical transmutation, rather than spiritual alchemy).
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Okay, great. Now I think everyone's pretty clear on where you're coming from.
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As for this "karma business," as you call it, again, you come from a limited perspective, that of the lower tantric vehicles which Crowley rejected and surpassed. (Duly noted, by the way, that you failed to actually address what Crowley wrote. Instead, you gave your little spiel about what karma means to you.)
A little passage from Primordial Experience which you can compare to the whole Book of Lies and Fool's Knot in particular, especially in regards to this one comment about "frying your [karmic] seeds"...
@Primordial Experience by Manjusrimitra said
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"By imagining a self, one has completely obscured one's own existence and been divorced from the lineage of the Noble Ones.
By imagining entities, a variety of frustrations arises, and so one will be reborn in the lower realms.
Since perception, moreover, seizes on different identifiable qualities out of the spectrum of conditioned events, it appears as eightfold due to these specific activities, although it is not manifold in its essential function.
Therefore, in the first moment of experience, one's body and all configurations of events and meanings are present.
On account of thinking about and becoming obsessed with something, in a later moment that thought that has arisen in accord with the earlier moment makes itself felt.
Nothing exists for ordinary people and Noble Ones apart from the continuum of their own experiencing.
This variety of experience that exists for the six types of sentient beings appears through their own habitual mode of vision.
Since this continuum of experiencing is without any boundaries, to call it "one" is also without foundation.
Since that has no boundaries, all the limitless Buddha-fields are one's own body.
In that one's own body appears as the body of living beings and as limitless Buddha-fields, it is also difficult to postulate that the potential for experiencing and the habituating tendencies are either one or diverse.
One says, "All these configurations of events and meanings come about and disappear according to dependent originations." But, like a burnt seed, since a nonexistent result does not come about from a nonexistent cause, cause and effect do not exist.
Being obsessed with entities, one's experiencing itself, which discriminates each cause and effect, appears as if it were cause and condition.
Since these two (cause and effect) do not exist, origination and cessation do not exist.
Since origination and cessation do not exist, self and other do not exist. Since there is no transformation and death, eternity and annihilation do not exist.
Therefore, it is evident that deceptive samsara as well as nirvana do not exist.
The momentary site (ie. the fundamental structuring) is never separate from the habituating tendencies. They are really the same phenomenon and if one does not exist, the other does not exist.
Since they are produced by trying to grasp experience with thought, which is completely mistaken, the habituating tendencies do not exist, and since there does not exist a sphere of operation for the fundamental structuring, the fundamental structuring of all experience as well as perceptual and cognitive activities do not exist.
Since boundaries do not exist in experience, an objective support or a site for its operation do not exist. How then can perceptual and cognitive activities arise?
Therefore, experiencing is beyond the limiting conceptions of existence and nonexistence, and is neither a unity or a plurality."
"Crowley has identified the Eye of Horus as that which "does not breed, unless a Messiah." He continues, "Death implies resurrection; the illusion is reborn, as the Scythe of Death in the Tarot has a crosspiece. This is in connection with the Hindu doctrine, expressed in their injunction, 'Fry your seeds'. Act so as to balance your past Karma, and create no new, so that, as it were, the books are balanced. While you have either a credit or a debit, you are still in account with the universe."
He is referring to "the Eye of Horus" as beyond cause and effect, obviously, since it "does not breed" unless creating a "Messiah" (ie. someone who has awakened and can liberate others, therefore, "the savior of the world" as Crowley referred to himself) and he is advising us to "fry our seeds" (making them sterile) by balancing our karma and "create no new karma" (how do you imagine you do that, mr. cause-effect? Sit very still and don't make a peep?) ...which is precisely in-line with the Vision of Primordial Experience, along with "all is joy" and "rejection causes hurt" and Samantabhadra/dri = Nuit /Hadit. The Crowned and Conquering Child = The Victorious One. ... Where does The Bornless One fit into cause/effect?
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how do I propose to what?
This frying your seeds, means to remove thoughts and worries that manifest them self.
It means to seek not to achieve anything in the future and to remove guilt and concerns of the past.
This is a method of quieting the mind, that is a means to attain Samadhi.
And this totally quiet mind Crowley called the eye of Horus, it breeds no thoughts, except that Crowley's theory is that "christs" or "genius" is born from this total withdraw from the world into the silence of the quiet mind.
It has nothing to do with the actual physical changes in the world, and is not an escape from it into some other world, it is a change in the mind of the magician. A state of awareness, that transcends normal linguistic concepts and instinctual/cultural attitudes.
A new way of using the brain.
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@Froclown said
"how do I propose to what?
This frying your seeds, means to remove thoughts and worries that manifest them self.
It means to seek not to achieve anything in the future and to remove guilt and concerns of the past.
This is a method of quieting the mind, that is a means to attain Samadhi.
And this totally quiet mind Crowley called the eye of Horus, it breeds no thoughts, except that Crowley's theory is that "christs" or "genius" is born from this total withdraw from the world into the silence of the quiet mind.
It has nothing to do with the actual physical changes in the world, and is not an escape from it into some other world, it is a change in the mind of the magician. A state of awareness, that transcends normal linguistic concepts and instinctual/cultural attitudes.
A new way of using the brain."
Great answer and one I would agree with very much except for the fact that you haven't integrated Samadhi with everyday experience. Don't project ideas about "escaping into some other world." Self-liberation means everything changes but nothing has changed. It is wholly different from lower vehicle concepts of liberation. "Fry your seeds" goes beyond merely "quieting the mind." The Fool's Knot overtly references emptiness via "sacrifice of the ego to the Absolute" and the "destruction of the Universe," both of which lay the groundwork for experiencing everything as "'God' dealing directly with the soul," which exactly parallels the "Vision of the total field of events of the Primordial State," once the illusion of the self and all concepts (the universe) has fallen away. And what is the illusion you imagine the Fool's Knot refers to?
"The word Naught-y suggests not only that the problem is sexual, but does not really exist." = the union of experience which is illusion. This is Hadit/Nuit or Samantabhadra/Samantabhadri. See how they get it on.
"A fool's knot is a kind of knot which, although it has the appearance of a knot, is not really a knot, but pulls out immediately." - Hmm, "pulls out"? Could this be another Crowley sex joke?
And the Bornless One?
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I know all of these experiences, I did not take the oath of magister in ignorance.
But, I still say that all experiences are is the mind, and outside the mind is the physical reality.
God and soul, can just as easily be taken to mean the physical brain as a whole and the limited subset of information that is present in the Ego or conscious mind.
But beyond "God", is the physical word of which both God and Soul are constituents.
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"But beyond "God", is the physical word of which both God and Soul are constituents."
I am certain this conversation is going somewhere, but I must say for all the words, I feel that I am only seeing a spinning wheel in which have been placed two handsome ideas. [smile]
There is a yes and there is a no...choose ye well!
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@King of the Wolves said
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"But beyond "God", is the physical word of which both God and Soul are constituents."I am certain this conversation is going somewhere, but I must say for all the words, I feel that I am only seeing a spinning wheel in which have been placed two handsome ideas. [smile]
There is a yes and there is a no...choose ye well!"
Speaking of wheels (... and phenomena ... and ideas... )
"The title of this chapter is a pun of the phrase "weal and woe". It means motion and rest. The moral is the conventional mystic one; stop thought at its source!
... treat the sequence of the [tarot] as cause and effect. Thence, to discover the cause behind all causes. Success in this practice qualifies for the grade of Master of the Temple.
...the universe is not to be contemplated as a phenomenon in time."
(... and duality...)
"I am He" asserts the destruction of the sense of separateness between self and Self. It affirms existence, but of the third person only. "The Bornless Spirit" is free of all space... The "Immortal Fire" is the creative Self; impersonal energy cannot perish, no matter what forms it assumes. Combustion is Love.
"Truth" is the necessary relation of any two things; therefore, although it implies duality, it enables us to conceive of two things as being one thing such that it demands to be defined by complementals. Thus, an hyperbola is a simple idea, but its construction exacts two curves.
The Angel, as the adept knows him, is a being Tiphereth, which obscures Kether. The Adept is not officially aware of the higher Sephiroth. He cannot perceive, like the Ipsissimus, that all things soever are equally illusion and equally Absolute.
(... and supernatural phenomena...)
...This rapture is accompanied by a tempest of brilliant light, almost always, and also in many cases by an outburst of sound, stupendous and sublime in all cases, though its character may vary within wide limits. Note: These phenomena are not wholly subjective; they may be perceived, though often under other forms, by even the ordinary man.
(... and falsehood of identity...)
... The mind is called "wind", because of its nature; as has been frequently explained, the ideas and words are identical.
... True life, the life which has no consciousness of "I", is said to be choked by this false ego, or rather by the thoughts which its explosions produce.
... The Masters of the Temple are not introduced; they are inhabitants, not of this desert; their abode is not this universe.
Hmmm... I'm sure there is a completely different explanation for all of that, but...
"All generally visible measureless phenomena elements are the display of self-secret divisionless unobstructed Wisdom Mind. The nature of mirror-like Wisdom Mind is that everything arises with infinite obstructed and unobstructed potential.
Whenever we do not recognize the pure nature of the manifestation of wisdom display, we cling to unobstructed mind's uncatchable self-arising reflection, obscuring its inseparable emptiness and luminosity, and separating the divisionless phenomena elements into subject and object. As soon as there is division, there is impurity and obstruction.
With this division, "I" becomes the subject and what this "I" perceives becomes the object, whether one or many, lifeless or lively, inanimate or animate. With this division, there is constant moving back and forth between subject and object which is the beginning of direction and time (see Crowley's comments above), between root circumstances and and contributing circumstances, between rejecting and accepting unpleasant and pleasant phenomena, between good and bad intentions and between doubting and hoping. We call this divided mind dualistic mind which is the cause of bad and good karma. (fry your seeds, create no karma)
Whenever we recognize the pure nature of the manifestation of self-secret invisible wisdom display, we are aware of the pure secret essence of the elements. With this recognition there is no subject and no object, no beginning and no end, no direction and no time, no root circumstances and no contributing circumstances, so there is no karma (fry your seeds). With this recognition, absolute truth and relative truth become inseparable, non-dualistic, clear awareness space (see Crowley's comments above: "all things soever are equally illusion and equally Absolute"). In this space, phenomena arise freely and this display of Wisdom Mind is not nothingness. The enlightened mind dances unobstructedly with phenomena yet has the potential to obstruct phenomena at will like choosing to eat or not to eat.
Enlightened mind reflects all the five wisdoms in equanimity. But through ignorance, over countless lifetimes we have created conceptions and karmic habits which obscure our Wisdom Mind's lively, unobstructed, mirror-like quality (fry your seeds). Because of our obscured ordinary mind, our ego makes categories out of equanimity ("chokes True life," see Crowley's comments above). With ego and categories come substance, with the birth of substance comes its death and with death comes suffering (Let there be no difference made among you between any one thing & any other thing; for thereby there cometh hurt). Our inert and stale karmic body and all other substances are the gross element result of our inability in previous lives to recognize the invisible secret essence of all substance (fry your seeds). We are lost and suffering because of external staleness and internal ignorance (fry your seeds). But even though we cannot recognize our invisible secret essence immediately, it is not necessary to think that it is far away. Our secret essence is always within the gross and subtle elements. (This is the Primordial State which is pure joy. None of our relative distractions affect the Primordial State in any way other than to obscure it from our experience.)" â Magic Dance, Thinley Norbu (parenthetical notations mine)
So, what do you think the Bornless One refers to?
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"I am not concerned to deny the objective reality of all "magical" phenomena; if they are illusions, they are at least as real as many unquestioned facts of daily life; and...they are at least evidence of some cause." -- from the goetia
Nor am I out to dispute subjective reality of "magical' phenomena.
What I am saying is that their is an objective reality, that when we say a statement is true or that one perceives the truth, we mean that ones subjective awareness hits the mark, as when an arrow is true to its target.
If we lend ourselves to pure subjectivist theory, such as Chaos magick and it's motto' nothing is true, everything is permissible, then we enter into a problem.
If there is no objective reality, there is no mark to hit, and yes truth becomes meaningless. A blind archer flinging arrows at random is indifferent to where they land and it does not bother him if the allow stays true in its course, as it has no course. Being blind the archer can just as easily imagine the arrow hit its target as missed, and his target might as well be a bullseye or the queen of Spain, he will never know the difference.
Now let us deprive this archer of all his senses, say he is a brain in a virtual reality, anything he imagines seems to be the case, yet he knows that its an illusion and thus not the case. He has no need to survive, or any other bodily needs because he is mind free to create worlds at will.
This may seem liberating, to those of us who are used to the limits of the body, but he was always this way. But even we will get bored, of all these things that seem to be but are not really.
Now a major component of WILL is that is harmonizes one to the whole of ones surroundings, the biological needs, the social games, the cultural norms, the sexual persona, etc.
Your pure subject mind, is not part of a system, it is deprived of all possible aims or goals. Its WILL is free, but it can not be TRUE, as there is nothing for the WILL to be true to.
Now we say the WILL is free, that is one can will to do or anything, omnipotence in every dimension. However this power comes with a cost, that being, one can do anything, but has no impetus to do anything whatsoever. why this rather than that, why pain over pleasure, they are all subjective, that is non-physical. There is no mark of truth.
This is not that all is a lie, but that there is no truth or false, as there is nothing to aim for. No "physical" or objective reality, This is the epitome of "Nothing is TRUE"
It is also the total dispersion of the WILL in all directions, dispersed into so many possibilities that it is diluted away completely. This is the Abyss and the work of Choronzon.
But, in the silence of the abyss once the images and potentials fade away, once one no longer seeks manifestation of desires. All this fades away, and something "speaks" from the depths, something that one wants do deny like all other manifestations, its just more images, Nothing is TRUE, not even this, repeats the mantra.
And Yet it turns out this is not true, as it does not symbolize anything, it is not about anything. This is that which true statements aim to hit, but all miss the mark. "there is a factor infinite and unknown, all statements are skew-wise".
Indeed, all impressions originate from this source, this is the TRUE WILL, the HGA in its purest and highest form. All reality is but the ripples in the still waters of the abyss, but this is the source of those ripples. My task is at an end, glory and behold Nothing is true, but this is the point where illusion rings forth, the found of all knowledge.
Hark, but behold, the center point of these ripples, there is something else, it is a stone, each ring of ripples surrounds a stone, and each stone unique, with it each pattern of ripples unique. Yes the source of knowledge is the abyss the ripples in the serenity, by low and behold each an expression of a hidden stone, a source beyond the abyss.
I still my mind, to udder calm to await a single stone, it manifests in the abyss, I grok the stone, absorb it fully, become one with it and at last I understand. Yea I hath attained to Understanding.
From what process is each stone, each physical (objective) object forged, I can not say.
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Like Atiyoga encapsulates that of all the lower teachings to the extent that the interpretation almost seems to be the exact opposite of what the lowest vehicle seems to imply, Crowley's writings have different layers of meaning depending on your perspective.
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By preparing the mind to receive the stones in different ways, the ripples of phenomenal awareness are expressed differently. Thus a the ritual is a means of preparing the mind, The cup is prepared by alchemical processes, the other weapons come into play as well, the dagger prepares the reason, the wand works on the focus, the intend, that is it sets the goal, the stone to be analyzed. The disk is the medium in which the result is made tangible, the smoke and mirrors or whatever feed back works.
The spirit is an effect in the mind, it is as real as the ego self and the semantic value of anything, as it springs from the same process. Just as the Ego self is an illusion in that it is a process that occurs in the mind not an object in its own right. So too is the spirit not a being in its own right, it is a process in the mind that represents a complex event that occurs in the world or some aspect of the mind that is not part of the ego complex.
These spirits can be usurped into the ego in the Jungian sense of accepting the dark side or rejected archetypes of self. The egos awareness of itself clears up once all these rogue spirits are joined with the ego, these trouble making angels given a place in the heavenly choir as it were. This is the white brother method of ego transcendence.
The other way is to deny more and mare of oneself, to break up tho ego self, as I described with the abyss. This is schizophrenia, and leads ultimately to death or catatonia
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irregardless is correct spell check didn't underline it.
Besides I was raised during the renaissance.
Well actually it was a renaissance fair. but my uncle Vince, thats not his real name, he was just some guy who dressed like Leonardo Di Vinci. Anyway he used to say irregardless all the time, and I would say Irregardless uncle Vince.
He was always teasing my with modern technology I had never seen before. one day he showed me a light bulb, I thought it was full of devils, it did scare me so. But Uncle Vince just laughed and said "irregardless".
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93
I found portions of this essay by Uncle Aleister a pertinent meta-commentary on the ongoing discussion.
www.ashami.com/eidolons/On_Thelema
Call it an argument from authority
93 93/93
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Yeah, that's good.
I came here just to post these words from an aquaintance of mine:
"There is only one reality. If you move your finger that is reality.That means you are in the highest reality. Meditation is suspect! Once you get to a certain level, ego tries to creep in, and thats where you battle. The ultimate reality will try to make you insane. Thats where you cross the threshold. Will you be insane, or will you experience ultimate reality?"
Which, although not perfectly worded, is nice and simple. Clinging to the notion that all experience necessarily originates from the physical realm, which can be discovered and described bit by bit in an infinite regress misses the point, imo.
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Is the mind which is subject to the illusions of physical existing things not itself a thing.
What I mean is, are not the workings of the mind, not a something "mind" that is performing a function "workings".
Thus the physical objects one encounters are derived via the workings of the mind. Even if all things are derived from a "non-physical" source. It is the case that the way they represent themselves in the illusions of the mind is not as some plastic ever-changing propertyless clay, but as particular things which have a particular way about them. We encounter a tree and we know it is a tree and not a rocket-ship, a spoon, the feeling of sorrow, or the taste of cheese. A tree is a tree, it exists as what it is and has a way about it that is fairly consistently a trees way of being. A tree does not appear in the way of a tree and also not in the way of a tree. We never encounter something that is in a state of potentially appearing as a tree or not appearing as a tree. Nor de we encounter things that seem mostly to appear as a tree, but might potentially be something un-tree like.
Also we only seem to observe 3 dimensions of space, and the way of space is generally the same, we don't loose concentration and end up in some strange parallel universe, inhabited by objects and entitien unlike those we are familiar with.
So, the fact that things seem consistent and to have set ways of being about them, means that our minds must be rather fixed and limited as to how they take in the pure source and convert it into perceptual illusions.
That means even if the things we see are not things at all, but this potential non-physical essence, the mind itself must be a kind of rather solid actualized thing with a set way about it.
Now, if the mind is going to convert this source essence into things that seem to have a set way about them. Then the mind must be able to distinguish this bit of the source from that bit, it must be able to figure out how to convert it into different things. But this essence is not this or that, then the mind can only create the same illusions from it. Since we perceive different kinds of things, not just one kind of thing, there must be a way to split up the different kinds of essence, into different kinds of physical illusions.
We have determined that the mind is either not of the same pure potential without property and way of being, as it has the property of being able to create a certain type of illusion. If the mind is a kind of that essential substance, then perhaps there are other kinds. The kind that becomes space, the kind that becomes time, the kind that becomes trees, colors, etc. The mind detects these different kinds of this, and the mind creates maps of these detections. Those maps are the physical world, the map of the minds faculty to detect these types is the body. What become colors in the minds maps, are attributed to the eyes.
The point here being that the physical world, where things have specific ways about then, reflects the trans-physical world, that things are this way not that way. If there was no way about things, it would be constant chaos.
And sure, your mind in unique, its way of creating physical maps is unique, that unique make up, and unique relation to the absolute essence. in the TRUE WILL.
What you claim nullifies the TRUE WILL, its a would mean everything is a complete homogeneous mixture of every property and all opposite properties, but no actual properties. Everything would be the case and not be the case, in the same sense at the same time.
How do you plan if everything is equally as true as it is false. A bit called because is what that is. Its also the 0 in 0=2. The very limit of the rational mind, the point where the mind takes the pure essence and starts mapping sensory and logical categories to it. It is before these categories. The pure epistemic substance. And what comes before this 0. What is the world before the mind, the absolute which enters the mind and becomes the cosmos?
A riddle. If one can't help but project a bit of his own reflection in the world, what does does he find within.
SSSHHH! Be still.
GET OUT OF THE WAY!!!
just wait, calm, steady.
I SAID OUT OF THE WAY!
hush, wait wait, there it is!
Damn thats yourself again.
GET OUT!
Stand somewhere else
make a space for it.
look to the stars for clues.
