Goetic "Demons"
-
@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?
-
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.
-
"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!
-
@King of the Wolves said
"
"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.)" — Magic Dance, Thinley Norbu (parenthetical notations mine)
So, what do you think the Bornless One refers to?
-
"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.
-
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.
-
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
-
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".
-
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
-
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.
-
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.
-
Thank you both Redd Fezz and Froclown for this long discussion! I don't think I have to read philosophy after this. Amazing job, Redd!
@Froclown said
"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."
It seems detrimental to the progress of the TRUE WILL to not take into account that our observations of ourselves might be temporary and physical space only the model our minds make up. Especially if we're viewing a closed system, a holographic projection that is as much inside us as outside us. So to me this is not getting what Redd is trying to convey. And it's also not getting what Crowley meant according to the URL posted earlier in this thread:
"Now then, with regard to the explanation of the Law given elsewhere in The Book of the Law, "Love is the law, love under will", while will as above shown is of absolute logical and ethical validity, it can only be executed by the process of assimilation of all foreign elements; that is, by love. To refuse to unite oneself with any phenomenon soever is to deprive oneself of its value—even of life itself, as in the case of the Black Brothers, shut up in the Abyss, and doomed to conscious disintegration in the realm of disconnected ideas and experiences, to "perish with the dogs of Reason." This refusal is only enacted when one is convinced that the new phenomenon is hostile to the set of experiences already acquired and made part of oneself. But it is a serious mark of imperfection, of grave failure to realize the facts in the matter, to take this attitude. Even supposing, for one brief moment and for argument's sake alone, that the new idea under consideration is so incompatible with the experiences already acquired and assimilated that their destruction is necessitated if it is to be accepted, then one fact stands out vividly, showing clearly that the old set of experiences is so imperfect as to be actually unfitted to continue its erstwhile existence; its destruction would be an advantage to that being, enabling a reconstruction along totally different lines—a reconstruction which would lend itself more readily to the acquisition of new experiences and apparently contradictory ideas."
Once again, in other words, it's detrimental to the progress of the TRUE WILL to not include external stimuli such as the possibility that all we have observed so far might be completely wrong; so wrong, in fact, that we might not even be minds in bodies surrounded by physical space in the web of time.
-
@Froclown said
"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". "
No, that's exactly the point. Mind is not a thing at all and neither are the "workings of mind". We might refer to it as such for convenience, but in reality, there is no beginning or end to "mind," no quality to mind at all other than awareness and infinite potential. "The workings" arise in relation to the environment. Everything is in flux and impermanent. When thoroughly examined, there is nothing we can depend on (double meaning there). There is nothing to stand on (the earth is my witness). Since mind is beyond all concepts of thingness, it can't be considered a thing in any real sense. This is utterly tied in with the concepts of overcoming ego and da'ath.
EDIT: Yeah, what Malaclypse said.
-
even a hologram is something.
even non-local implicit information is something.
If there is a mind, then it clearly is something, or else it would be nothing with no potential. Potential is something.
The fact that we can mean the mind and not something other than the mind means it is something. The fact that we can mean my mind or your mind means that there are multiple minds.
If there is mind an then there is environment, those are both things.
Yes tho sort of thing that they are is not the thing they seem to be. Everything we see, think, and experience in mind stuff. It is temporary and changing. Because the environment which is not mind, has an effect on they mind, and this creates the appearance of all the ephemeral things the mind experiences.
If there isn't anything going on, then what is experienced by the mind, in what way can the mind come to produce appearances if not via some process.
Haw can a non-thing undergo a process?
If the mind has no set way about it, then how come it tends to see only one version of reality, why don't the things we see flicker and morph into all sorts of other things, space-time collapse into all manor of non-euclidean possibilities,
If all there is, is an infinite sea of possible worlds, then their is no reason the mind would be able to stick to ane particular word, or even why one particular mind could manifest rather than other minds.
There would be nothing but dim flickering images with to substance, no self to tie those images down, no WILL to this or that. Just a sea of images floating in and out of focus randomly like the answers in an 8 ball.
This is the abyss, it is the workings or the mind deprived of its external stimulation, unlocked from reality, it has no real object to portray is image, so if cycles its whole library or possible thoughts and perceptions to fill the space.
but REALITY is what it is, not what the mind can see. The TRUE REALITY is what that which the mind harmonizes its library of images in attempts to approximate.
-
Yeah, I made the same exact argument about a hologram before a few years back. But, no, it isn't. Why? Because if nothing is actually a thing-in-itself, then a hologram is, like everything else, not a thing. This is why we reduce the idea of "things" to the idea of 'experiences'. You can argue that an experience is a thing if you like, but it's just more playing with words... because it's not, really, a "thing."