VVVVV
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@bryan said
"VVVVV is a character also occuring in Liber 65, which was written before he had attained 8=3. My guess is VVVVV is the name for his supernal being, which he eventually attained."
Vi Ver Vniversum Vivus Vici (VVVVV) is Crowley's 8=3 motto. Liber LXV was received in 1907, several months after he was offered the grade while in China in 1906.
Dan
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Dan, is that the G.'.D.'. 8=3, or the A.'.A.'. 8=3?
According to Jim (heruraha.net/viewtopic.php?t=3221&highlight=crowley+++1909), Crowley's 8=3 experience was in 1909, which is described in The Vision and the Voice, and that 1906 was when he achieved 5=6.
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@bryan said
"Dan, is that the G.'.D.'. 8=3, or the A.'.A.'. 8=3?"
That's a very insightful question, and, I think, holds the key to much confusion about AC and that grade.
In 1906, he regarded it as 8=3 ... which would have been a G.D. type level. But when you look at the work he was actually doing, he had recently finished what the A.'.A.'. now regards as Dominus Liminis work, and he was performing the work of a 5=6: Doing (what was later called) Liber Samekh while marching across China, later reenacting the G.D. 5=6 ceremony with D.D.S., and havingt the breakthrough within months of full 5=6 consciousness.
But, at the time, they had no reference for it other than the G.D. standard. Had a real 5=6 ever appeared in G.D. times, they would have been seen as an 8=3.
Crowley seemed to emerge into this understanding gradually. The John St. John working in 1908 was consciously understood as his self-initiation into 6=5. He then assumed a 7=4 function as he started the Equinox, had a crisis in consciousness with the ski incident at summer solstice that probably marked his commencement of Babe of the Abyss, and did the Vision & Voice work in November-December 1909 completing his initiation into 8=3 as presently understood.
But, with all of this, he did think he was going to 8=3 in late 1906, and his thoughts about this emerged in the Holy Books that were received about a year later. (In case nobody noticed, the two large clusters of Class A document reception Liber L.] were about a year after his 1906 5=6 working, and about a year after his 1909 8=3 working.)
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"had a crisis in consciousness with the ski incident at summer solstice "
Would you expand on this crisis in consciousness (I can't recall that incident which seems important)... or maybe point me to a source where I can learn more about it?
Thanks
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Look in Confessions and elsewhere for the story of losing Liber L, then finding it by accident while looking for skis.
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Thanks for the launching pad =>
From Confessions of Alesiter Crowley, Chapter 65:
"To my annoyance I could not find the elemental Watch Towers anywhere in the house. I daresay I gave up looking rather easily. I had got into a state of disgusted indifference about such things. Rose might have destroyed them in a drunken fit, just as she might have pawned them if they had possessed any commercial value. I shrugged my shoulders accordingly and gave up the search. The skis that I had promised Ward were not to be found any more than the Watch Towers. After putting Neuburg through this initiation, we repaired to London. I had let the house and my tenant was coming in on the first of July. We had four days in which to amuse ourselves; and we let ourselves go for a thorough good time. Thus like a thunderbolt comes the incident of June 28th, thus described in my diary:
Glory be to Nuit, Hadit, Ra-Hoor-Khuit in the highest! A little before midday I was impelled mysteriously (though exhausted by playing fives, billiards, etc. till nearly six this morning) to make a final search for the Elemental Tablets. And lo! when I had at last abandoned the search, I cast mine eyes upon a hole in the loft where were ski, etc., and there, O Holy, Holy, Holy! were not only all that I sought, but the manuscript of Liber Legis!
The ground was completely cut away from under my feet. I remained for two whole days meditating on the situation --- in performing, in fact, a sort of supplementary Sammasati to that of 1905. Having the knack of it, I reached a very clear conclusion without too much difficulty. The essence of the situation was that the Secret Chiefs meant to hold me to my obligation. I understood that the disaster and misery of the last three years were due to my attempt to evade my duty. I surrendered unconditionally, as appears from the entry of July 1st."
I had to look up Sammasati and found this:
"Mindfulness The practice whereby a person is intentionally aware of his or her thoughts and actions in the present moment, non-judgmentally. The 7th step of the Noble Eightfold Path"
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@Scarecrow said
"
I had to look up Sammasati and found this:"Mindfulness The practice whereby a person is intentionally aware of his or her thoughts and actions in the present moment, non-judgmentally. The 7th step of the Noble Eightfold Path"
"Hmm, that's odd, because what he's talking about sounds like the "recollection"/"life review" type of meditation
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I am confused by the term Sammasati and am looking for other insight into this word. I've gather a list of quotes from AC and others and the two seem somewhat at odds. I believe it is the difference between "Right Mindfulness and Right Recollection" that has me stumped.
AC on Sammasati:
From The Confessions, chapter 54:
"The conversation, nevertheless, turned to considerations of what my Kamma had in store for me. "This might be discovered," he said, "by acquiring the Magical Memory." This is equivalent to Sammasati, Right Recollection, the seventh step on the Noble Eightfold Path. I must explain what this means."
From The Magical Diaries of AC 1923:
"Sammasati is right recollection, the seventh step of the Buddhist eight fold path that is the regaining of the memory of past incarnations"
From AHA:
"Sammasati--the trance wherein the adept perceives his causal connection with the Universe; past, present, and future."
From Chapter XVI of The Psychology of Hashish:
"Here, too, is the result of Sammasati, a comprehension of one’s own self and its relation to, and identity with, everything. "
From Chapter XXVII of MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS:
"So, if you don't mind, we will look a little into this matter of Sammasati: what is it when it's at home?
It may be no more than a personal fancy, but I think Allan Bennett's translation of the term, "Recollection," is as near as one can get in English. One can strain the meaning slightly to include Re-collection, to imply the ranging of one's facts, and the fitting of them into an organized structure. The term "sati" suggests an identification of Being with Knowledge—see The Soldier and the Hunchback: ! and ? (Equinox I, 1). So far as it applies to the Magical Memory, it lays stress on some such expedient, very much as is explained in Liber Thisarb (Magick, pp. 415 - 422)."
And other references:
Sammasati." "See" "The training of the Mind," Equinox V, and "The Temple
of Solomon," Equinox VIII. "Also" "Science and Buddhism," Crowley
Coll. Works, Vol. IIOTHER SOURCES:
Do what Thou Wilt By Lawrence Sutin has:
Sammasati as the backwards memory technique..."A variety of buddhist websites explain "Right Mindfulness" in similar ways to the following from (www.thebigview.com/buddhism/eightfoldpath.html#Right_Mindfulne
"Right mindfulness is the controlled and perfected faculty of cognition. It is the mental ability to see things as they are, with clear consciousness. Usually, the cognitive process begins with an impression induced by perception, or by a thought, but then it does not stay with the mere impression. Instead, we almost always conceptualise sense impressions and thoughts immediately. We interpret them and set them in relation to other thoughts and experiences, which naturally go beyond the facticity of the original impression. The mind then posits concepts, joins concepts into constructs, and weaves those constructs into complex interpretative schemes. All this happens only half consciously, and as a result we often see things obscured. Right mindfulness is anchored in clear perception and it penetrates impressions without getting carried away. Right mindfulness enables us to be aware of the process of conceptualisation in a way that we actively observe and control the way our thoughts go. Buddha accounted for this as the four foundations of mindfulness: 1. contemplation of the body, 2. contemplation of feeling (repulsive, attractive, or neutral), 3. contemplation of the state of mind, and 4. contemplation of the phenomena."
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"Science & Buddhism" is probably the best Crowley source for this (because it puts it in context of the other stages), and, outside of that, look at standard Buddhist literature.
Perhaps an integrating step: It is especially the natural state of the A.'.A.'. 7=4. If you have my book on the subject, that may help you see how all of these different remarks fit together.
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a brief extract from Science and Buddhism:
"And this power being gained by its use he is enabled to concentrate all his thoughts and hold them always upon one object—waking or sleeping, he remembers who he is and what his high aim in life—and this constant recollection and keeping in mind of holy things, is the Seventh Stage, Sammasati."
Jim your own book which a friend picked up for me in New York at your signing has a lot to say too on the subject of the Magical Memory... perhaps the sentence that sticks out is:
"The Adept's powers of meditation then are applied to the analysis of what has been learned, to the end of identifying who she is and what service she is able to offer to the Third Order, or Silver Star."
So it seems to me that by Sammasati, what we mean (by the first part, Right Recollection) is to experience the full effect of who we are, why we are here, discovering our purpose, what we are individually equipped to do, our True Will (?) and then also (the second part - Right Mindfullness) to fill our life, thoughts, and actions with that 1 fixed goal or will, so that it is with us constantly (I suppose saying Will at meals helps us keep this Right Mindfullness in place).
Is this close to what your understanding of that term is?
Thanks
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V.V.V.V.V. appeared as a camel-charecter in The Book of Lies. And it was the symbol of the path of Gimel, leading from sephirah Tipheret to sephirah Kether in cabbalistic Tree of life.
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It might be worth reviewing what Buddhist literature was available at the time. Most westerners had a very narrow view of Buddhism, even the converts, and regarded Hinayana/Theravada as the "true" path - which would have corresponded to Crowley's own training. However, Theravada monastic practice had largely decayed, and it took a Westerner to reintroduce Vipassana, which was taken nack to Sri Lanka from Thailand (I think). Crowley's understanding of the seventh stage may have been flawed by inadequate teaching, or it may have been a particular sectarian interpretation given as being universal to Buddhism.
Reminds me of my fervent wish that Crowley had studied Zen.