Mental Processes—Two Only are Possible
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From MWT: Chapter XXVI: Mental Processes—Two Only are Possible
I’d really like some help with teasing this concept apart, if anyone is game:
@Crowley said
There are two operations, and only two, possible to thought. However complex a statement may appear, it can always be reduced to a series of one or other of these. If not, it is a sham statement; nonsense masquerading as sense in the cloak of verbiage and verbosity.
Analysis, and Synthesis; or,
Subtraction, and Addition.- You can examine A, and find that it is composed of B and C. A = B + C.
- You can find out what happens to B when you add C to it. B + C = A.
As you notice, the two are identical, after all; but the process is different.
I think Crowley is referring to aspects of the Cup (synthesis) and the Sword (analysis). Or, aspects of the emotion and the particular thought-form that it is attached to. A memory (thought-form) is proven, by behaviorists and neurobiologists to be “stronger” (when influencing behavior patterns), when it is backed by strong emotion (norepinephrine, etc. released by the adrenal system).
Excerpts from Book 4, Part II (the “Cup” and “Sword” specifically):
It was the function of the Cup to interpret the perceptions by the tendencies; the Sword frees the perceptions from the Web of emotion.
The perceptions are meaningless in themselves; but the emotions are worse, for they delude their victim into supposing them significant and true.
The Magick Sword is the analytical faculty; directed against any demon it attacks his complexity.
Very many people go about nowadays who are exceedingly "well-informed," but who have not the slightest idea of the meaning of the facts they know. They have not developed the necessary higher part of the brain. Induction is impossible to them.
I believe induction is collected by the Cup, as elucidated here:
Every ray of the sun expands the flower.
The surface of the water in the Magick Cup is infinite; there is no point different from any other point.What does he mean by this, in your experience?
In this section from Magick without Tears, he goes into a lengthy discussion of disagreement over terms. I believe he is referring to aspects of analysis and synthesis:
This has been put in a sort of text, because the first stumbling-block to study is the one never has any certainty as to what the author means, or thinks he means, or is trying to persuade one that he means.
[…]
The fact is that very few of us know what words mean; fewer still take the trouble to enquire. We calmly, we carelessly assume that our minds are identical with that of the writer, at least on that point; and then we wonder that there should be misunderstandings!
[...]
The fact is (again!) that usually we don't really want to know; it is so very much easier to drift down the river of discourse, "lazily, lazily, drowsily, drowsily, In the noonday sun."
And then, he adds this little story at the end, when speaking about including what he considered the "essential" parts of a ritual:
@Crowley said
All right for most of it; one could show him the words typed on slips. But during part of the ceremony he was hoodwinked; one was reduced to the deaf-and-dumb alphabet devised for such occasions. I am as clumsy and stupid at that as I am at most things, and lazy, infernally lazy, on top of that. Well, when it came to the point, the communication of the words became abominably, intolerably tedious. And then! Then I found that about two-thirds of my "absolutely essential" ritual was not necessary at all!
Why does he do this? Crowley doesn’t seem to bring things up unless he finds them useful. What is he trying to say here about all this confusion about language and then juxtaposing this against talk of unessential parts of a ritual?
I’d appreciate anyone’s feedback on why they think he brought these two analogies up and devoted most of the letter to them…
Thanks!
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A good example is viewing multiplication and division as a process of addition:
5 x 5 = 5 + 5 + 5 +5 +5 = 25
5 / 5 = (1/5) + (1/5) + (1/5) + (1/5) + (1/5) = 1 -
@Uni_Verse said
"A good example is viewing multiplication and division as a process of addition:
5 x 5 = 5 + 5 + 5 +5 +5 = 25
5 / 5 = (1/5) + (1/5) + (1/5) + (1/5) + (1/5) = 1"Well, that's one way of looking at it.
I was considering more feedback from a philosophical POV, and how these thought processes relate to mysticism/magick and theory/practice (especially as it relates to inner and outer communication), as opposed to just the relations expressed by number...
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93,
You can either break all the pieces down, analyse each one and realise they are all part of one, or start with a base and add everything to it until it becomes one.
All things are unified in the cup, everything is separated by the sword and analysed.
Of course this is just me poking at Crowley's words and making a guess, which is what I do at the best of times when it comes to magick without tears
From the same chapter of book 4-
"And here again we find difficulty with our thoughts. The grossness and stupidity of "simple impressions" cloud the waters; "emotions" trouble it; "perceptions" are still far from the perfect purity of truth; they cause reflections; while the "tendencies" alter the refractive index, and break up the light. Even "consciousness" itself is that which distinguishes between the lower and the higher, the waters which are below the firmament from the waters which are above the firmament, that appalling stage in the great curse of creation.
"
The problem with analyzing each part separately is that you don't get to know the whole truth, but merely each part of the truth. The problem with having the whole is that we do not know the intricate innermost nature which it is composed of.
"The surface of the water in the Magick Cup is infinite; there is no point different from any other point."
We are later informed that Crowley views Nuit as a troubled reflection of Binah, and of course Binah is associated with the cup. Therefore view this statement as relating to nuit, every pint in Nuit is Hadit.
It's the same as saying
"Every man and every woman is a star, every number is inifinite there is no difference".Nuit and Hadit conjoined is the manifested whole, this is our starting point. Everything else is merely another part of this starting point, we can either say that by adding everything together we will get this idea of Nuit and Hadit. Or by separating parts of Nuit and Hadit we will get everything else.
At least that's my very bad interpretation, in all honesty who knows what Crowley meant? You'd have to ask him and that option isn't available as far as I know....
93, 93/93.
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I think you bring up a good point:
@mark0987 said
"All things are unified in the cup, everything is separated by the sword and analysed."
Then, in your opinion, in the context of communication, when is it useful to use the Cup and when would it be useful to use the Sword?
@mark0987 said
"At least that's my very bad interpretation, in all honesty who knows what Crowley meant? You'd have to ask him and that option isn't available as far as I know...."
Haha! True. Although, I think he brought up these difficulties, when it comes to communicating with others (in the context of that letter), because sometimes we think what makes sense to us is so essential to the "ritual" of another person's path...
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Frater639,
I'm taking the last bit to mean that he found about 2/3 of all the words spoken to a candidate unnecessary.
Speaking as someone who really pours over the meaning of words and as someone who is definitely not an auditory learner, I can tell you that for me, less is more in most cases.
Give me a few clear interesting words, and I'll be taking them apart and putting them back together quite intensely, especially in the context of a ritual. Try to do all that analysis and synthesis for me (instead of me) by adding more and more words, and what will really happen is that I'll just tune you out and stick with what really stood out anyway.
But there are certain one-sentence principles that I've found myself remembering and working on for years. For me, that's the kind of thing that really gets inside and sticks.
And if you want to make sure that both analysis and synthesis occur, maybe one function being dominant during the ritual while the other gets more emphasis later, then a wall of words is just no good.
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@Legis said
"Try to do all that analysis and synthesis for me (instead of me) by adding more and more words, and what will really happen is that I'll just tune you out and stick with what really stood out anyway. "
Oh, me too...absolutely...
Going further, I think there is a natural backlash that happens when one person tells the other person what the priorities should be. Evolution is evolution -- each along their own lines.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt.
In communication, I would consider analysis of concepts to be using the Sword. How about the Cup? Examples? I'm actually thinking about what you've referred to as Mind in other posts...
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This is also related to the way the right brain and the left brain processes information*. The right brain sees wholes (Cup) and the left brain sees parts (Sword). The Sword being largely free of emotions and the Cup subject to tendencies, as in Crowley's quote, fits very neatly, though perhaps calling the function of the right here B + C = A might be a little misapplied, as math has been classically labelled a left brain function
@Crowley said
"The surface of the water in the Magick Cup is infinite; there is no point different from any other point."
The above very strongly reminds me of Jill Bolte Taylor's TED talk My Stroke of Insight, where she describes a right brain forward view of the world, which certainly rings in general support of the Cup = right brain theory.
Now obviously in life you need both functions. In magickal terms, to give one example, ritual is going to tap the right brain function to get your imagination cooking. Interestingly, meditation practice will train you to focus both sides of the brain on the same type of activity, calling up more processor power to the task at hand. Otherwise, as in everyday regular consciousness, there may be discordant or even contrary activity between the brains. This offers a fascinating alternative - and physical - view on the Middle Pillar.
- And yes, science has come to the point where it now thinks a lot of classically right/left brain functions actually happen in both at the same time, but there is still meat left to the division - it's perhaps just not as absolute as believed in the past. See Psychology Today deal with the topic here
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Frater639,
Maybe this is something that was on Crowley's mind when he wrote that, but using words to create synthesis instead of analysis can be quite difficult. Seems like there has to be some kind of knot to force them back together. Don't know if it's really a good example, but this one has been with me today due to another thread:
"The Devil is God as [He] is misunderstood by the wicked."
There's one you can't break apart without it putting itself back together. The knot is in the word "wicked." How can you say "The Devil is God" and ultimately relativize it all and then call someone "wicked" at the end? But then you have the word "misunderstood" in there to put some spin on "wicked" and tie it back together to the falsely perceived duality at the beginning. Their impulse to see "wickedness" in what they do not understand must arise from within a misunderstood and rejected-as-wicked part of themselves. In other words: "The problem with this analysis is the analyst's lack of synthesis." But for all these analytical words, the reader will still have to go back and think on it for themselves. I've just made more words to analyze in addition to the rather powerful little sentence itself.
Does that get at what you're asking? Not sure.
Another thought I had regards a dream from not too long ago. There was a powerful voice heard speaking as if before some sort of Council. He was making his case arguing against something on the grounds that it was immoral. But what he actually said was that the particular thing was morally "irreprehensible," which literally means the direct the opposite of the emotion and direction of the case he made.
I wondered for a while if my subconscious just shared my own sometimes blurry vocabulariazationism.
But after a while, I crunched it as an intentional "knot." I myself could see the argument both ways, and the message of the argument wasn't the focus of the dream. The dream focused on the passion of the speaker, the speaker's True Will, if you will, not the particular manifestation in that moment.
So, in that case, there was a synthesis that went beyond the particular expression and pointed more to the flavor of the Will instead of its expression at that particular point in "history."
Is this the kind of thing you're asking?
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I guess what I'm trying to say is that if one is going to attempt to use words (whose nature are distinctive and separative) to promote synthesis, then it has to be in a way that aids in short-circuiting analysis while still expecting to be analyzed.
0=2
You know?
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@Legis said
"I guess what I'm trying to say is that if one is going to attempt to use words (whose nature are distinctive and separative) to promote synthesis, then it has to be in a way that aids in short-circuiting analysis while still expecting to be analyzed.
0=2
You know?"
To wrap that idea around my earlier point, language is indeed a left brain function (and considered so post the general critique of the left/right brain paradigm), so in that manner if we take synthesis to be a largely right brain function it is indeed created in different hemispheres, so the way to one is not the way to the other.
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@Deus Ex Machina said
"... so the way to one is not the way to the other."
Yes, it can only try to point in the other direction. But all the pointing itself may be analyzed without synthesis.
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@Deus Ex Machina said
"* And yes, science has come to the point where it now thinks a lot of classically right/left brain functions actually happen in both at the same time, but there is still meat left to the division - it's perhaps just not as absolute as believed in the past. See Psychology Today deal with the topic here"
Yes! Very interesting response. I find the same thing, there is some correlation....I think you'll like this:
@Frontiers in Human Neuroscience said
"Human experiences can be broadly divided into those that are external and related to interaction with the environment, and experiences that are internal and self-related. The cerebral cortex appears to be divided into two corresponding systems: an “extrinsic” system composed of brain areas that respond more to external stimuli and tasks and an “intrinsic” system composed of brain areas that respond less to external stimuli and tasks. These two broad brain systems seem to compete with each other, such that their activity levels over time is usually anti-correlated, even when subjects are “at rest” and not performing any task. This study used meditation as an experimental manipulation to test whether this competition (anti-correlation) can be modulated by cognitive strategy. Participants either fixated without meditation (fixation), or engaged in non-dual awareness (NDA) or focused attention (FA) meditations. We computed inter-area correlations (“functional connectivity”) between pairs of brain regions within each system, and between the entire extrinsic and intrinsic systems. Anti-correlation between extrinsic vs. intrinsic systems was stronger during FA meditation and weaker during NDA meditation in comparison to fixation (without mediation). However, correlation between areas within each system did not change across conditions. These results suggest that the anti-correlation found between extrinsic and intrinsic systems is not an immutable property of brain organization and that practicing different forms of meditation can modulate this gross functional organization in profoundly different ways. "
NDA=means "no difference" between exterior and interior roughly...I see this as very relatable to the Cup.
Every ray of the sun expands the flower.
The surface of the water in the Magick Cup is infinite; there is no point different from any other point.further reading:
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3250078/ -
Try this one in the spirit of the other quote I mentioned:
Matter is Mind as it is perceived by other Matter.
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@Legis said
"I guess what I'm trying to say is that if one is going to attempt to use words (whose nature are distinctive and separative) to promote synthesis, then it has to be in a way that aids in short-circuiting analysis while still expecting to be analyzed.
0=2
You know?"
Absolutely. Someone explained this to me once as the Sword trying to explain the Cup, inherently and inevitably mixing the planes.
As far as promoting synthesis...to me, the questions are just as important as the answers when it comes to "growing together" and exchanging ideas.
I think questions are a great method -- there are no answers other than our own.
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"One must learn to think well before learning to think; afterward it proves too difficult." (Anatole France)
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@Legis said
"So, in that case, there was a synthesis that went beyond the particular expression and pointed more to the flavor of the Will instead of its expression at that particular point in "history." Is this the kind of thing you're asking?"
Not exactly. I'm trying to ask about practical examples about how you think the Cup may be used to receive the Will...especially in the context of these lines about the Cup from Book 4, Part II:
@Crowley said
"His Will errs actively by opposing itself to the Universal Will.
His Understanding errs passively when it receives influence from that which is not the ultimate truth.
In the beginning the Cup of the student is almost empty; and even such truth as he receives may leak away, and be lost.
They say that the Venetians made glasses which changed colour if poison was put into them; of such a glass must the student make his Cup.
Very little experience on the mystic path will show him that of all the impressions he receives none is true. Either they are false in themselves, or they are wrongly interpreted in his mind.
There is one truth, and only one. All other thoughts are false.
And as he advances in the knowledge of his mind he will come to understand that its whole structure is so faulty that it is quite incapable, even in its most exalted moods, of truth.
He will recognize that any thought merely establishes a relation between the Ego and the non-Ego."Sometimes, I tend to look at the Ego as the statement and the non-Ego as what we aspire to with the question...
What do you think he means about there is only one truth? What does this mean in our day to day path practically? Especially in light of the Universal Will. What does he mean by that?
That's really what I'm trying to delve into...
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@Avshalom Binyamin said
""One must learn to think well before learning to think; afterward it proves too difficult." (Anatole France)"
"Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art."
"You've got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail."
-- Charlie Parker
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@Frater 639 said
"Yes! Very interesting response. I find the same thing, there is some correlation....I think you'll like this:
@Frontiers in Human Neuroscience said
"Human experiences can be broadly divided into those that are external and related to interaction with the environment, and experiences that are internal and self-related. The cerebral cortex appears to be divided into two corresponding systems: an “extrinsic” system composed of brain areas that respond more to external stimuli and tasks and an “intrinsic” system composed of brain areas that respond less to external stimuli and tasks. These two broad brain systems seem to compete with each other, such that their activity levels over time is usually anti-correlated, even when subjects are “at rest” and not performing any task. This study used meditation as an experimental manipulation to test whether this competition (anti-correlation) can be modulated by cognitive strategy. Participants either fixated without meditation (fixation), or engaged in non-dual awareness (NDA) or focused attention (FA) meditations. We computed inter-area correlations (“functional connectivity”) between pairs of brain regions within each system, and between the entire extrinsic and intrinsic systems. Anti-correlation between extrinsic vs. intrinsic systems was stronger during FA meditation and weaker during NDA meditation in comparison to fixation (without mediation). However, correlation between areas within each system did not change across conditions. These results suggest that the anti-correlation found between extrinsic and intrinsic systems is not an immutable property of brain organization and that practicing different forms of meditation can modulate this gross functional organization in profoundly different ways. "
NDA=means "no difference" between exterior and interior roughly...I see this as very relatable to the Cup.
Every ray of the sun expands the flower.
The surface of the water in the Magick Cup is infinite; there is no point different from any other point.further reading:
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3250078/"Oh, I like! That goes into my evolving notes on the subject.
Since we're all about quotations in this thread now.. this is what rings in my head:
@Crowley in Liber Tzaddi vel Hamus Hermeticus said
"33. I reveal unto you a great mystery. Ye stand between the abyss of height and the abyss of depth.
- In either awaits you a Companion; and that Companion is Yourself.
- Ye can have no other Companion.
- Many have arisen, being wise. They have said “Seek out the glittering Image in the place ever golden, and unite yourselves with It.”
- Many have arisen, being foolish. They have said, “Stoop down unto the darkly splendid world, and be wedded to that Blind Creature of the Slime.”
- I who am beyond Wisdom and Folly, arise and say unto you: achieve both weddings! Unite yourselves with both!
"
Edit - Oh, one more addition to the topic as well:
The Sword slices and slices until it finds the minutest constituent particle, ie. Hadit. The Cup joins and joins until it it joins all, ie. Nuit.
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@Deus Ex Machina said
"
Crowley in Liber Tzaddi vel Hamus Hermeticus wrote:- I reveal unto you a great mystery. Ye stand between the abyss of height and the abyss of depth.
- In either awaits you a Companion; and that Companion is Yourself.
- Ye can have no other Companion.
- Many have arisen, being wise. They have said “Seek out the glittering Image in the place ever golden, and unite yourselves with It.”
- Many have arisen, being foolish. They have said, “Stoop down unto the darkly splendid world, and be wedded to that Blind Creature of the Slime.”
- I who am beyond Wisdom and Folly, arise and say unto you: achieve both weddings! Unite yourselves with both!
Edit - Oh, one more addition to the topic as well:
The Sword slices and slices until it finds the minutest constituent particle, ie. Hadit. The Cup joins and joins until it it joins all, ie. Nuit."
Agreed! Ah, made me think of two more!
@Crowley, Chapter 15, Liber 333 said
"Mighty and erect is this Will of mine, this Pyramid of fire whose summit is lost in Heaven. Upon it have I burned the corpse of my desires.
Mighty and erect is this Φαλλοσ of my Will. The seed thereof is That which I have borne within me from Eternity; and it is lost within the Body of Our Lady of the Stars.
I am not I; I am but an hollow tube to bring down Fire from Heaven.
Mighty and marvellous is this Weakness, this Heaven which draweth me into Her Womb, this Dome which hideth, which absorbeth, Me.
This is The Night wherein I am lost, the Love through which I am no longer I."@Crowley, Chapter 8, Liber 333 said
"Mind is a disease of semen.
All that a man is or may be is hidden therein.
Bodily functions are parts of the machine; silent, unless in dis-ease.
But mind, never at ease, creaketh "I".
This I persisteth not, posteth not through generations, changeth momently, finally is dead.
Therefore is man only himself when lost to himself in The Charioting.
"But, still looking for the idea of the practical usefulness of the Sword and the Cup -- the Sword definitely can destroy, and the Cup can construct. What are we constructing with this synthesis in our Path, individually and collectively? Is this the point of the Cup and how it relates to the Universal Will and the Will of the individual?