How to start someone on Enochian?
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@Avshalom Binyamin said
"If it's impossible to measure a persons progress, then you're just making a blind appeal to faith based fanaticism."
It is indeed "impossible to measure [another] person[']s progress" in the sense that one person can never know another person's "level of attainment," for lack of a better term. That is to say, in terms of Thelema, one person can never know if another person is acting in accordance with his or her True Will or not.
Of course, a thelemite can know if he himself is acting in accord with his True Will. He's the only one who can ever detect or know that. No one else can.
But the mere fact that one individual's True Will isn't knowable to anyone else doesn't mean that we can never make any claims at all about what a True Will is, in general, and how we go about discovering it, in general.
It's not a "blind appeal to faith" to say, "Here's the definition of True Will, and certain things necessarily follow from that definition."
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So your claims about the effectiveness of the teaching methods here aren't evidence based.
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Los continues to sidestep Takamba's (and mine) points about the semantic nature of his argumentation - which I find a little interesting.
In that vein...
@chioa khan said
"
Do you, Takamba, believe in non-corporeal spirits that exist beyond the mind, which can affect material reality and various outcomes? Do you believe in reincarnation of an eternal spirit into another body after death, or in an afterlife of some kind? Do you believe that people possess magic powers? Do you believe that the book of the law is a dictation from a spiritual source?If yes to any of these things, please give an explanation as to why Los' perspective is flawed.
Forgive me as well if I disagree and think you give people too much credit. Just read through some of the stuff on here."
Now I'm not Takamba, but there's two ways to answer these questions, the short answer and the long answer.
The short answer is "yes", but the long answer, while being a better one and more useful, needs a long preamble and a back and forth discussion about what we mean by those things. Sometimes a simple "yes" is better for the flow of discussion, so that we don't need to go through the accepted ground every single time.
For example, for the long answer I would need to know what exactly you mean by "spirit"? I would suggest that most people have only a very surface understanding of the subject matter implied by the word in this context and there is a difference between people saying spirits to refer to purely imaginative creatures from fictional stories and to those implied by the occult context. The same word being used is certainly grounds for confusion, but the correspondence is there to teach us as well. It is not entirely coincidence the same word is used after all. Confusion and illumination can come in the same package. It's what you do with it, after all.
The same applies to "gods" as well and I know well the usual atheist retort to this: that I am merely switching the meaning of words around and I don't, for example, really believe in God even when I say I do. It is certainly true that I do not believe in "god" as meant by Christian fundamentalists or - funnily enough - by atheists, for example. But I would say that I am not simply switching meanings around (any more than everyone employing a word or symbol is actually doing that), but that most people are uneducated in the matter. Education in this subject means having had the type of experience which is classified as religious (which might only be a chemical reaction in the brain, or might be that and something else that we dont' yet understand fully). Yet, while I do not subscribe to all the notions of divinity espoused by the typical Christian, I can sometimes see that they are talking about the same experiential ground. Thus, the word god works well.
Now.. a question that I can agree is worth asking is that do these archaic terms have more worth than they prove a hindrance. If their use in these systems promotes utter confusion, mental health problems, invites the wrong kind of people into the practices and the like, which I think they certainly sometimes do, I can agree it is worth considering. I can't help but think that the hurdle is there for a reason though and that the esoteric side of wisdom is not really ever (in the immediately foreseeable future) going to be commonly accepted so it takes a mind that is able to see past the confusion. We could substitute the old words for new words, but the fact would remain that the keen mind would still be required to see past them.
Also, this thread has gone on a tangent, which I apologize for my part, but the discussion is certainly interesting.
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@Avshalom Binyamin said
"So your claims about the effectiveness of the teaching methods here aren't evidence based."
Well, that's not entirely true -- they're supported by the evidence of my own Work, but that's obviously hearsay to anyone who's not me, so I don't rely on that specific evidence for my argument when I have these kinds of discussions.
Instead, the argument I present on here (and in other places) is a logical one, not an empirical one: it draws necessary conclusions from the definition we all (supposedly) accept.
To put it another way, if we take the definition of True Will that Crowley gave -- the one that, theoretically, all of us accept and that we can use as a starting point -- then I contend that certain conclusions logically and necessarily follow from that definition. Those conclusions are necessarily accurate if the original definition is accurate.
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@Deus Ex Machina said
"Los continues to sidestep Takamba's (and mine) points about the semantic nature of his argumentation - which I find a little interesting."
Feel free to repost anything that you think I haven't sufficiently addressed. I'm doing my best to address the substance of every post, but I admit it's possible I'll miss something that you think is important. So go ahead and draw my attention to any points you want me to talk about.
"Yet, while I do not subscribe to all the notions of divinity espoused by the typical Christian, I can sometimes see that they are talking about the same experiential ground. Thus, the word god works well."
No, it doesn't. In the example you gave, you clearly don't believe in the Christian god, but you do believe in an experience that Christians misinterpret as being their god (or sent by their god).
That's an important distinction, and it's not just "semantics" to insist on being clear on what we're talking about.
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@chioa khan said
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@Takamba said
"You aren't as smart as you perceive yourself to be, whether it is because you are misunderstanding us, or you are misrepresenting us."Maybe you could clear this up right now.
Do you, Takamba, believe in non-corporeal spirits that exist beyond the mind, which can affect material reality and various outcomes? Do you believe in reincarnation of an eternal spirit into another body after death, or in an afterlife of some kind? Do you believe that people possess magic powers? Do you believe that the book of the law is a dictation from a spiritual source?
If yes to any of these things, please give an explanation as to why Los' perspective is flawed.
Forgive me as well if I disagree and think you give people too much credit. Just read through some of the stuff on here."
I do not believe in non-corpoeal "spirits" in the sense that I am certain they aren't just parts of me projecting experience for myself or others when they believe they encounter them. In plainer words, I remain agnostic to the existence of Angels and Demons in the sense you describe, but do believe in there being something useful to the perceived experience of them.
I don't "believe" in reincarnation, I know it. My knowledge is not the style of Jim's, who claims to have a continuous memory of past lives equivalent to his memories of going to middle school, but based on natural law called the conservation of energy. Everything visible recycles. In this recycling, the core remains the same (molecular, atomic, sub-atomic - you pick and choose which you prefer). So I know this, I know that all things change and nothing is destroyed. I call that reincarnation. That's probably not the answer you expected. Also, I don't give much credence to it right now anyway - I live here now, not then there. And the laws that apply to the visible, based on something I was taught that I forget the name of, must most likely apply universally also to the invisible (mind, psychology, etc).
I believe that Crowley believed the Book of the Law was a dictation from a spiritual source. This is not by me, and I like to believe not by Crowley, defined as some may think it is defined. "Spiritual" is a contextual thing only relative to homo sapiens. We call it spiritual because any label will do. It's really a profound kind of psychology, the deep part of the right hemisphere of the human brain, the stuff that dreams are made of. I don't devalue it just because I don't understand it, I don't devalue it just because it doesn't easily fall under my conscious control, I also don't devalue it just because it is dependent on the same systems the rest of my body is dependent on. I value it and I suspect you don't. As far as Crowley's right brain creation of the book, regardless of how he intentionally or unintentionally came to it, it somehow seems to apply universally and effectively proves its own value to me in that regard. I question it constantly! It's the answers that you can't believe (and shouldn't, because they are my answers and I'm not bothering to waste my time telling you them).
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Points, lines, linear figures do not actually exist.
However, through their use we can come to certain conclusions and practical uses.
Gods, spirits, demons do not actually exist.
However, through their use we can come to certain conclusions and practical uses.All sciences, systems are based on axioms, which by definition are unprovable.
Thus all systems are false... ( ie unreal and unprovable)
Regardless some systems still have practical uses.
It is the Aspirants task to determine which systems are useful to them. -
In complete agreement here as well.
@Takamba said
"
I do not believe in non-corpoeal "spirits" in the sense that I am certain they aren't just parts of me projecting experience for myself or others when they believe they encounter them. In plainer words, I remain agnostic to the existence of Angels and Demons in the sense you describe, but do believe in there being something useful to the perceived experience of them.I don't "believe" in reincarnation, I know it. My knowledge is not the style of Jim's, who claims to have a continuous memory of past lives equivalent to his memories of going to middle school, but based on natural law called the conservation of energy. Everything visible recycles. In this recycling, the core remains the same (molecular, atomic, sub-atomic - you pick and choose which you prefer). So I know this, I know that all things change and nothing is destroyed. I call that reincarnation. That's probably not the answer you expected. Also, I don't give much credence to it right now anyway - I live here now, not then there. And the laws that apply to the visible, based on something I was taught that I forget the name of, must most likely apply universally also to the invisible (mind, psychology, etc).
I believe that Crowley believed the Book of the Law was a dictation from a spiritual source. This is not by me, and I like to believe not by Crowley, defined as some may think it is defined. "Spiritual" is a contextual thing only relative to homo sapiens. We call it spiritual because any label will do. It's really a profound kind of psychology, the deep part of the right hemisphere of the human brain, the stuff that dreams are made of. I don't devalue it just because I don't understand it, I don't devalue it just because it doesn't easily fall under my conscious control, I also don't devalue it just because it is dependent on the same systems the rest of my body is dependent on. I value it and I suspect you don't. As far as Crowley's right brain creation of the book, regardless of how he intentionally or unintentionally came to it, it somehow seems to apply universally and effectively proves its own value to me in that regard. I question it constantly! It's the answers that you can't believe (and shouldn't, because they are my answers and I'm not bothering to waste my time telling you them)."
Oddly that's pretty much my thinking. Definitely agreed on reincarnation. The physical stuff gets recycled across reality (starstuff and all that), but also mental contents get recycled. Our ideas are those of earlier generations. Reincarnation.
@Uni_Verse said
"Points, lines, linear figures do not actually exist.
However, through their use we can come to certain conclusions and practical uses.
Gods, spirits, demons do not actually exist.
However, through their use we can come to certain conclusions and practical uses.All sciences, systems are based on axioms, which by definition are unprovable.
Thus all systems are false... ( ie unreal and unprovable)
Regardless some systems still have practical uses.
It is the Aspirants task to determine which systems are useful to them."Exactly.
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@Takamba said
" I remain agnostic to the existence of Angels and Demons in the sense you describe, but do believe in there being something useful to the perceived experience of them."
In my experience, a lot of people say that they are "agnostic" about supernatural claims as a kind of public position to satisfy any skeptics so that they can privately accept these claims and act as if they are true.
I'm happy to take you at your word, however, that you are "agnostic," which means that you do not accept the claims as true (it also means you don't accept them to be false, but on the question of whether you are a "believer," the answer would be "no," apparently. Which makes you a non-believer)
"I don't "believe" in reincarnation, I know it. My knowledge is not the style of Jim's, who claims to have a continuous memory of past lives equivalent to his memories of going to middle school, but based on natural law called the conservation of energy. Everything visible recycles. In this recycling, the core remains the same (molecular, atomic, sub-atomic - you pick and choose which you prefer). So I know this, I know that all things change and nothing is destroyed. I call that reincarnation. That's probably not the answer you expected."
Of course it's not what I expected because you disingenuously changed the topic of discussion. We're talking about reincarnation in the commonly-accepted sense of the term, the transmigration of souls, metempsychosis ("met him pike horses," for you fellow Joyceans out there). Instead of addressing that question, you redefined the word "reincarnation" to mean something else entirely and talked about that instead.
"And the laws that apply to the visible, based on something I was taught that I forget the name of, must most likely apply universally also to the invisible (mind, psychology, etc)."
This is highly dubious. The mere fact that matter transforms into other matter does not in any way suggest that mind must necessarily transform into other mind (especially since mind appears to be an emergent property of matter when it's in some particular states).
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@Uni_Verse said
"Gods, spirits, demons do not actually exist."
A lot of people around these parts would disagree with you. To give two examples from this very thread, David S. believes in these goblins, as does Jim (who claims to have received "communications" from some of them, apparently).
"All sciences, systems are based on axioms, which by definition are unprovable.
Thus all systems are false..."Depends on what you mean. What "axioms" do you have in mind? For example, I start from the axiom that there's a real world outside of my head that my senses really do connect me to. That I can't strictly "prove" that axiom doesn't therefore make everything I conclude "false."
Within the discursive system set up by that axiom, there are definitely positions that are confirmaby true (like the claim that my car is parked outside) and positions for which there is no good evidence at all (like the claim that goblins are sending me messages through tea leaves and daydreams).
"It is the Aspirants task to determine which systems are useful to them."
I would suggest that deciding "usefulness" by subjective appeals to what seems "invigorating" or "cool" is an exceedingly poor way to go about doing it, despite what the lucrative New Age movement would want you to think.
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How interesting Los, I thought I was talking to chioa khan. Since you are a face changer, I have trust in you at all. You and I and any other face you wear are done talking. Also, you demonstrated that no matter what agreement we may have, you only want to argue. Civil as you pretend to be, you've duped Jim into believing you are to be valued at all. You can reply to this, but for me my ears are deaf to you.
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Los, I think you have two conflicting goals.
Your stated goal is to help people progress in their discovery of True Will.
But your actions (repeatedly beating this dead straw horse about whether people may or may not believe in goblins) are clearly just a ploy to disparage someone else's efforts as often as possible.
You're simultaneously criticizing people for stating things that are "unjustifiable" from an empirical stance, and engaging in the same behavior yourself.
And for the record, we can measure your hypothesis. If, as you suggest, a person is only capable of knowing their own True Will, then we can just survey people for the success rates of their endeavors.
Please tell me, what are the numbers (percentage and raw) of people that believe that you have has assisted them in discovering their True Wills using your system? That way, we can evaluate the data for ourselves, instead of just relying on your unfounded claims.
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This incessant arguing strikes me as egotistical and immature. It is like atheists through the aeons reasoning that God can't exist and materialists denying the supernatural. Some argue just for the gratification of being right and making others wrong. And, between the two sides here, these arguments will go around and around and around incessantly without ever moving forward, because the dialogue is ultimately chasing a priori starting points as if they were necessary conclusions of reason.
Regarding the unknown, all beliefs are hypothetical, willed and as independent of necessary cause as the subatomic is free of being either a particle or a wave. I, for one, presume that the real is more splendid and expansive than we can know. That's where I start from. Apparently, you don't.
Given my premise of the ultraviolet and infrared, so to speak, I have found it best to maintain some humility regarding the ability of my mind to grasp every hue and shade. I have found this flexibility to be an important part of knowing, of appreciating the analogue, continuous, silent nature of things. From my vantage of an immensely sweet yet transcendentally approachable universe, I find the acceptance of spirits and higher intelligences to be useful, but not necessary. It reflects a poetic and aesthetic appreciation of the how and why, which brings me greater joy and a deeper integration with my experience than the narrowly fact-based worldview that you (and Mr. Gradgrind) so enthusiastically espouse.
Time will tell how magick will work for me. But I've already found that the various qabalistic, archetypical, alchemical, Enochian and mystical correspondences that go into it--the stuff of 777 and 776 1/2--resonate deeply for me. They awaken a kind of awareness I've not had before. To delve deeper into these things, I accept, admittedly on faith, the possibility that the thousands of mystics and magicians who have walked these paths before me, who have perceived these potentialities and powers, and who have shared their gnosis over time *might *have been onto something, and *might not *just be a bunch of charlatans and nuts, as you presume.
I think your denial there is any possibility of magical efficacy is boring. It seems to me that a mind determined to deny the unseen will also inevitably reject beauty and love. In a word, I think I am willing to give it a go and you are not. And I see that as a difference in courage and creativity, not smarts.
Anyway, this quote from Magick Without Tears, Chapter XVII, seems a fitting place to end.
"The human apparatus is the best instrument of which we are, at present, aware in our normal consciousness; but when you come to experience the Conversation of the higher intelligences, you will understand how imperfect are your faculties. It is true that you can project these intelligences as parts of yourself, or you can suppose that certain human vehicles may be temporally employed by them for various purposes; but these speculations tend to be idle. The important thing is to make contact with beings, whatever their nature, who are superior to yourself, not merely in degree but it kind. That is to say, not merely different as a Great Dane differs from a Chihuahua, but as a buffalo differs from either. "
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@Takamba said
"How interesting Los, I thought I was talking to chioa khan. Since you are a face changer, I have [no] trust in you at all. You and I and any other face you wear are done talking."
If the implication is that you think I have multiple screen names, this is false. I'm assuming that Jim can see the IP addresses of posters, so he can probably confirm for you that chioa khan and I post from separate places in the world.
Anyway, I don't care who you were talking to -- I respond to whatever comments on these threads I feel like.
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@Avshalom Binyamin said
"You're simultaneously criticizing people for stating things that are "unjustifiable" from an empirical stance, and engaging in the same behavior yourself."
No, I don't. I justified all the claims I made in this thread, for example. For example, I justified the claim we were talking about earlier by arguing that it necessarily follows from the way that Crowley defined True Will. Therefore, if a person accepts that definition -- which we all supposedly do -- then a person must accept the conclusions that follow from it (if that person wishes to be consistent).
You haven't responded sensibly to that point yet.
"And for the record, we can measure your hypothesis. If, as you suggest, a person is only capable of knowing their own True Will, then we can just survey people for the success rates of their endeavors."
This is a profoundly stupid idea, for the precise reason that people can talk themselves into thinking that they've "succeeded" at this subject when they are doing nothing more than building elaborate fantasy worlds.
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@David S said
"I think your denial there is any possibility of magical efficacy is boring."
And there we have it. You're interested in things that strike you as exciting and "immensely sweet"; I'm interested in what's true, regardless of whether I like what I find.
does work -- not even "to them."]
"It seems to me that a mind determined to deny the unseen will also inevitably reject beauty and love."
Does not follow.
"In a word, I think I am willing to give it a go and you are not. And I see that as a difference in courage and creativity, not smarts."
This is an example of the kind of self-image nonsense I'm often talking about: you're building up this image of me and yourself in your mind, and you're feeling all special thinking about how "creative" and "brave" you are, in contrast to those blasted atheists who are so "boring" and, by implication, "cowardly."
This is the sort of thing you have to learn to look beneath, if you're ever going to succeed at Thelema.
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@David S said
"I, for one, presume that the real is more splendid and expansive than we can know. That's where I start from. Apparently, you don't. "
That's essentially my view; though I usually phrase it differently. Based on all sorts of things (only some of which are the limitations of physical senses, the immeasurable number of data points vs. the cognitive limitations of the human brain, the multiple layers of filters people put in place, and the average rainfall rate six miles southwest of San Juan) - I am certain that nobody can perceive even a tiny percentage of what's before them. Therefore, everybody is making everything up all the time. How we make it up is our dearest message to ourselves and others about who we actually are (or, at least, which story we're living at the moment).
To be the least bit enlightened, all we can really do, then, is have a bit of humility (that is, reality on our own personal smallness) and embrace the mystery, i.e., live standing before the face of something vaster and more incomprehensible than our faculties can ever hope to conceive. Just as orgasm is nature's way of terminating pleasure when it reaches a throw-the-circuit-breaker threshold, our ideas about a thing are reflections of the point where we weaken and fall away from the experience of it all. That is, our opinions mark the spot we falter, the last obsession that hooked us before we gave up, took our marbles and opinions, and headed home.
Oh, and we can recognize that there is really no separation between us except in where we draw the perimeter. We're all part of the same chaos dance.
Given the scope of things, there isn't much I can rule out as true, except narrowness. It would be small and shameful of me not to own the full scope of possibilities.
@MWT said
"The human apparatus is the best instrument of which we are, at present, aware in our normal consciousness; but when you come to experience the Conversation of the higher intelligences, you will understand how imperfect are your faculties. It is true that you can project these intelligences as parts of yourself, or you can suppose that certain human vehicles may be temporally employed by them for various purposes; but these speculations tend to be idle. The important thing is to make contact with beings, whatever their nature, who are superior to yourself, not merely in degree but it kind. That is to say, not merely different as a Great Dane differs from a Chihuahua, but as a buffalo differs from either. "
PS - It's easy to get caught in polarities, and then to polarize. One of the ironies of these recent discussions is that, historically, I've usually been the one who has responded to people stuck in occult-only explanations by grounding them. The person who writes with a physical ailment and wonders if they are under magical attack, having the great fortune to have a bad kundalini experience, crossing the Abyss, or sharing their bed and dirty underwear with elementals - these people I usually send to the doctor, tell them to physically relax, suggest a bit of objective counseling, and suggest they could banish their concern about the elementals by laundering the underwear.
Those who are in a metaphysical-only state of mind, I redirect to the physical; and those who are in a physical-only state of mind, I direct to the metaphysical. The biggest error is in the one-sidedness. And one virtue that the metaphysical-only mentality has is that it can usually be convinced to also include the physical in their perspective. Regrettably, it is harder to take the physical-only mentality and persuade it to include the metaphysical.
The sin - the error - is in the one-sidedness and consequent narrowness.
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@Jim Eshelman said
"
@David S said
"I, for one, presume that the real is more splendid and expansive than we can know. That's where I start from. Apparently, you don't. "That's essentially my view"
"Splendid" and "expansive" are also subjective judgments that arise from our limited perspective.
Obviously, we only are able to perceive a small fraction of the universe, and obviously there's still plenty more about the universe that we don't know, but that doesn't give us justification to just accept any claim, just for the hell of it.
"To be the least bit enlightened, all we can really do, then, is have a bit of humility (that is, reality on our own personal smallness) and embrace the mystery, i.e., live standing before the face of something vaster and more incomprehensible than our faculties can ever hope to conceive."
I'm all for experiencing wonder at the universe, but that's no justification to think that there are goblins or that your daydreams are goblin-communications.
"Given the scope of things, there isn't much I can rule out as true, except narrowness. It would be small and shameful of me not to own the full scope of possibilities."
Anything could be possible -- in the most theoretical sense of "possible." But that doesn't mean that any of those things is true or that we currently have reason to accept them.
It's possible -- theoretically -- that pixies live in my XBox and come out at night to party. But just because it's possible doesn't mean it's true. Certainly, I have no reason to accept that as true.
The same goes with these goblin-communication claims.
"Those who are in a metaphysical-only state of mind, I redirect to the physical; and those who are in a physical-only state of mind, I direct to the metaphysical. The biggest error is in the one-sidedness."
I've seen plenty of Thelemites advocate for a similar misunderstanding of "balance." The problem is that a "balance" between sensible, well-supported ideas and stupid, unsupported ideas isn't actually balance at all. It's one of the ways to become imbalanced.
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It's an issue of balance if both points of view are accepted as valid. For reasons stated, I accept both as valid parts of a larger truth and IIRC you do not; so I understand how your last paragraph is true within your modeling of things.
