Hego
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@Heg said
"Isn't Crowley's encounter with Aiwass in a distant land with no witness or whatsoever sounds suspicious to you?"
He's a witness. If there were other witnesses, they could also be lying. Also, distance is relative.
"From the posts I've read here it occured to me that he is not considered as a holy being alas, a human being just a vessel for the holy one."
There isn't really a difference until you begin to understand the nuances of the Self.
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I count him as a witness. My point was that a few witnesses wouldn't be that much better than a single witness — there would still be suspicion from those who suspect Crowley alone.
As for how I believe it... (I didn't say I do, but you got it right.) The main thing is that the text couldn't have been written by a human being. Certainly not 1904 Crowley. (Or 1947 Crowley, for that matter.)
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By the way, I do not doubt Crowley alone, I doubt all the religions and holy encounters. I am not even sure if the world we experience is the entire manifestation of the universe after reading Plato's "Allegory of the Cave".
When will I be certain that the "Great Work" will lead me to understand myself and the universe, will I be able to feel or see HGA? How come you can be sure that it is can not be written by a human?
One of my atheist friends once said "muhammad did not lie about the encounter with the Gabriel, he already did it in his mind because he was a mad man." In psychiatric department you can always see people who thinks they speak to god or that they are holy men.
All of the the things I say, I don't mean as an insult to Crowley, only I want to know
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@Heg said
"By the way, I do not doubt Crowley alone, I doubt all the religions and holy encounters."
Very reasonable. Do you think they didn't experience anything at all or that they misinterpreted their experiences?
"I am not even sure if the world we experience is the entire manifestation of the universe after reading Plato's "Allegory of the Cave"."
That's one of the main points. It isn't. Many of the experiences we are talking about are about getting out of the cave.
"When will I be certain that the "Great Work" will lead me to understand myself and the universe, will I be able to feel or see HGA?"
At first (and possibly for a substantial period of time) it does involve a certain degree of "alright, I don't know if there's anything to all this stuff, but I might as well go ahead" or something similar. It also depends on the person; everyone's circumstances are different. Believing certain things will obviously make it far, far easier to resist the earlier pressures and carry on. That's just logical. Would you give all of yourself to something you don't even believe in? It's a complicated subject.
"How come you can be sure that it is can not be written by a human?"
Liber Legis expounds flawlessly a worldview that solves all of humanity's problems and contains knowledge that no human had up to that point.
"One of my atheist friend once said "muhammad did not lie about the encounter with the Gabriel, he already did it in his mind because he was a mad man." In psychiatric department you can always see people who thinks they speak to god or that they are holy men."
Yes, one can go mad from this stuff. And sometimes the line between that and initiatic success can seem blurry.
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@Patrick Ossoski said
" Do you think they didn't experience anything at all or that they misinterpreted their experiences?
"My personal belief is that almost entire religions are both true and lie. I sense that the consciousness of the universe is in constant touch with humanity, there is a broadcast like radio signals in the atmosphere and it takes an intelligent mind to decipher that message. Known prophets heard that signal and comprehended that, but due to the nature of human beings, some of them misled humans in the course of history. Or they explained that correctly but we know the altered version of the religions. In both ways my mind simply can not accept that god and satan are in a pissing contest for our souls. I'm sorry if that sounds little vulgar but I can not think of a better analogy.
That is my personal belief of course. I hope to understand the broadcasting by myself without any prophet or religious scholar.
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@Heg said
"In both ways my mind simply can not accept that god and satan are in a pissing contest for our souls."
You will certainly not find that among Thelemites.
"I hope to understand the broadcasting by myself without any prophet or religious scholar."
I don't know what you mean by that, since (a) you admitted that the prophets did receive the "broadcast" and (b) you will be using concepts and practices given by them in order do achieve the same.
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I was referring to prophets of old religions such as islam and christainity. According to them I won't see the creator until I die, and I don't believe in the afterlife, so I only have a life time to understand the universe.
And I said they misled humans or someone altered the prophet's explanation on that "broadcast".
My english might not be sufficient, my apologies, I'll try to write more carefully.
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For the most part, Patrick's got you headed in the right direction. However, since I got the ball rolling with my "I Love Questions!!!" I figure I should probably throw a few thoughts into the discussion:
"My english might not be sufficient, my apologies, I'll try to write more carefully."
Your English is better than many Americans who post on the internet. Don't worry yourself on this point.
"First of all since this is the introduce yourself part, I feel like I need to give more information about myself. I'm 25 years old and I've been researching about religions since I was 16. My family belongs to a different sect of islam, however they were very open minded about my choice, so I wanted to find it myself. I've been to mosque and church, never had a chance to be in a synagogue, and read many books about mythology. Of all the ones I've encountered, they all asked me to be witness to something that I have not witnessed and blindly believe the events happened millennias ago. They all had great stories about creation, heaven and hell etc, but, as I said, they had great stories. "
I had a similar experience but with two parents of opposing sects within Christianity. Seeing the silliness of the points of contradiction between their two versions of pseudo-historical events clued me in at a very young age that they were no more historical or infallible than the Greek and Egyptian myths and legends that spoke much more viscerally to my inner self.
Interestingly enough, it was my trip to Turkey when I was 24 that really allowed the theories in my head to find an experiential truth in my core being. Over the course of a week and a half: I wandered through the Aya Sofia and had to internalize the various faiths and versions of those faiths which have called it home; I stood in the middle of the Constantinople hippodrome surrounded my monuments of the Roman, Egyptian, Byzantine, and Ottomon empires and the scars of destruction caused by the Crusades; I sat in the rear windowsill of Eyüp Sultan Camii for Friday noontime prayers, the only non-Muslim in a sea of the devout; I stood in the Greek temple of Artemis of Ephesus, a wonder of the ancient world, looking up at the legendary final abode of Mary, mother of Jesus, on the hill above me; I swam in the waters of Hierapolis at Pamukkale, banging my head on sunken columns of the millennia-old resort. The externals of all of these experiences were extremely varied and completely incompatible. However, by looking just a little bit closer at each of them -- by sitting with them and allowing them to penetrate my consciousness a bit deeper -- connections started to form which have been growing and diversifying ever since.
"I just can't seem to accept anything that someone had done something and some other guy wrote about it and it came all the way to nowadays, and somehow we should live our lives according to it, I am extremely skeptical and want evidence or reference to something I hear or read, so no sir I will not accept those dogmas."
With that, I'm in 110% agreement. Use them as tools, not as life-guiding beliefs.
"As the question, I have read in the thelema.org that one must have a degree to be accepted to Arcanum Arcanorum, and from the posts here it is very obvious that you all have high level intellectuality and deep knowledge about religions."
If you want to jump directly into Probation for the A.'.A.'., then yes, you do need to show a pretty solid education and intellectual development. From what I understand, this is because there is a large amount to learn and integrate in the process of doing the work of the A.'.A.'. so it requires that someone is up to the task. However, getting a college degree is not the only way to gain admittance. The proof is in the pudding, as the Brits say. If you can demonstrate your capacity to do the work, a paper from some college or university isn't going to make one bit of difference.
"Isn't Crowley's encounter with Aiwass in a distant land with no witness or whatsoever sounds suspicious to you?"
Yep. But, after quite a few years of tossing over his work, I've come to the conclusion that the guy really knew what he was talking about. Where the book came from is less important to me, for now, than what it says and how I can use it. It's possible that every word of The Equinox of the Gods is historically accurate. It's possible that it's all a mythical fabrication by a guy who understood how all holy books of the past have found and kept their audience. It's possible that it's a combination of the two. It's possible that it's something else entirely.
"Do what thou wilt" is a clear and concise statement of the core truth of the Great Work that is and has always been true. The rest of the book presents a sometimes elegant, sometimes mind-bendingly frustrating mythos to support and illustrate that core truth. This is what I see to be the book's greatest strength: it forces you to use your mind, often in completely new ways, to uncover truths about yourself. Some people resonate with the poetry, some with the qabalah, some with the mythos, some with the eroticism, some with the practical ethics, most with a combination of them all. But, for me at least, none of these are nearly as important as the exercise your mind must perform in order to try to comprehend the book itself.
"From the posts I've read here it occured to me that he is not considered as a holy being alas, a human being just a vessel for the holy one. Please correct me if I am mistaken."
There are about as many answers to that question as there are people to ask it. At the end of the day, the only thing that matters (I think) is how you do the Work. Crowley/Aiwass came up with new technical terminology for the Work but the Work remains the same:
- Remove the delusions that you have built up around yourself and believe to by yourSelf. (dissolve your personality)
- Discover the core Truth that exists underneath those delusions. (the True Will)
- Do that True Will and nothing else.
- Unite with your True Self. (Knowledge & Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel)
- Allow that experience to guide you to the next stage of your Work.
"By the way, I do not doubt Crowley alone, I doubt all the religions and holy encounters. I am not even sure if the world we experience is the entire manifestation of the universe after reading Plato's "Allegory of the Cave".
When will I be certain that the "Great Work" will lead me to understand myself and the universe, will I be able to feel or see HGA? How come you can be sure that it is can not be written by a human?"
If you can find a copy, I might recommend reading Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson. In my opinion, your doubt is an excellent place to start as long as you don't allow the doubt to become a de facto truth. Just because something seems "less likely" does not make it necessarily untrue. Wilson sets up an excellent method of looking at the world by doubting everything so that no version of the world is allowed to be entirely true. Everything is a "maybe". Always. Even this statement.
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Gnosomai, thank you for your answer, it takes time to write a post like that so thank you for the time you spent to widen my knowledge.
It was really enlightening to have a Question & Answer session with Patrick, and after that, your post helped me to understand that I am truly in the right place. I guess seeing multiple religions in the same time helps you to understand the similarities between them, that actually they are upgraded versions of each other, and they all have the same faults, same dogmas. If you ever had a chance, I recommend you to visit Hatay, it's a province near Syrian border. You might see the first church in the world, as they say, ancient armenian villages, Tree of Moses, Alawite shrines and many more.
Everything is a maybe? I think yes, this way learning is quite faster, and Patrick helped me to understand that everyone can be lying but I should focus on the work, not the person. I will definitely do that. Your perspective and attitude is really magical, I never had completely logical answers in these subjects from any scholar, cleric or imam!
I will definitely read the "Prometheus Rising" after a few book on my reading list.
My sincere gratitudes for your time,
Hego.