Ch. 2: The Problem of "Deep Reality"

[Hannah]

“1. Let each member of the group classify each of the following propositions as meaningful or meaningless.
A. I hauled the garbage out this morning.
B. God appeared to me this morning.
C. I saw a UFO this morning.
D. This table top measures two feet by four feet.
E. Space becomes curved in the vicinity of heavy masses, such as stars.
F. Space does not become curved at all; light simply bends in the vicinity of heavy masses, such as stars.
G. Defendants are innocent until the jury pronounces them guilty.
H. The umpire's decision is binding.
I. "History is the march of God through the world." (Hegel)
J. In the act of conception, the male and female each contribute 23 chromosomes.
K. The devil made me do it.
L. My unconscious made me do it.
M. Conditioned reflexes made me do it.
N. A church is the house of God.
O. Anybody who criticizes the government is a traitor.
P. Abraham Lincoln served as President between 1960 and 1968

2. Where disagreements arise, attempt to avoid conflict (quarrel) and seek to understand why disagreements must arise in judging some of these propositions.”

[zeph]

Wilson wrote:

I limit "actuality" to that which humans or their instruments can detect, decode and transmit. "Deep reality" lies in another area entirely — the area of philosophy and/or "speculation."

By this definition, “actuality” increases as the human instrument develops its latent capacities — a subject which Wilson does not discuss, at least at this point in the book. In my experience a great many things that begin in the realm of speculation move into the realm of actuality as we proceed along the path. The invisible becomes visible.

For the present, actuality in this book means something that humans can experience and "deep reality" means something that we can only make noises about.

Wilson never really defines “deep reality”, which of course is one of his points – that it cannot be defined. Where he does “define” it, he says “’deep reality’ means something that we can only make noises about.”

Here’s some noise: All is One.

Wilson goes on to say that “we cannot produce nonverbal or phenomenological data to give meaning to our noises.”

I agree. I cannot give you meaning about that noise. I can, though, help teach the methodology known and refined over at least a couple of millennia so as to equip and empower you to detect, decode, and transmit that noise, which will have become for you an actuality. In other words, I cannot prove to you the existence of a spiritual power within and beyond the human personality which is the source of life and light and is the axle of the wheel of your existence — but I can teach you the methods of proving it for yourself. I can’t prove the existence of the Galilean moons to those unwilling to learn to use a telescope.

Wilson says the “scientific method cannot, by definition, answer certain questions.” Sure. Much as we talk about using the scientific method in our magical work, it remains for the most part a subjective operation, while the scientific method is normally thought of and used to produce objective results.[^1] Still, I am bothered that the text (so far, as I read it) seems to suggest that if the scientific method cannot answer certain questions, those questions shouldn’t even be asked. Of course they should.

Our inability to find one deep reality registers a demonstrable fact about scientific method and human neurology, while the statement "there 'is' no deep reality" offers a metaphysical opinion about something we cannot test scientifically or experience existentially.

We have no regular language to discuss deep reality, which is why we employ the magical language to discuss it, knowing even then that we are working with symbols in an effort to get at something deeper. I cannot fathom why Wilson thinks (as it seems to me) that just because we can’t speak about or test an experience scientifically (by which he and most people limit themselves to mean in a way that produces material results) that we cannot experience something existentially.

I think this sentence could be improved: “…a demonstrable fact about the limits of the scientific method and the average capacity of untrained human neurology….”

———
[^1]: Untrained participants attending public magical invocations routinely profess to feeling “the impact” or “a change in the atmosphere” and other such things, but these would probably fall into Wilson’s middle-ground, like his example “I feel like shit.”

[jjones]

@zeph I love how deeply you're pondering this chapter.

I'd like to provide my own interpretation of what RAW was saying about the linguistic attributes of describing an experience scientifically/objectively, how often it relies on Aristotelian logic, and the hang ups you mentioned in your response. I do not think that your ideas were in conflict with RAW at all, and instead illustrate that you have done precisely the work he is describing.

To give you context, I read this chapter and took away three things from it. First, that language is abused when people try to make statements about how things are for everyone when we can only know how things are for ourselves. Second, that any measurement of reality only seems to be true relative to the instrument measuring reality (including all of the strengths and weaknesses of the instrument and the units it measures in). Third, most of the statements we make about something using the verb "to be" (most commonly seen in the form of "is"), inherently imply a true/false dichotomy and fails to acknowledge that there are further states of indeterminism.

I found it interesting that you brought up feeling as if this meant RAW doesn't want us to ask questions we can't adequately use language to describe. I had not thought that far past what he was saying, and instead believed that he was emphasizing the idea of relativism. Naturally, to an initiate of Thelema, relativism might seem like a given, but to someone who has not initiated, this might seem novel.

RAW's background, as you may already know, was in Catholicism. In other books, he describes Catholicism as the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas relied heavily on Aristotle to justify and fill out Christian doctrine. Aristotle, and by extension Aristotelian logic, relies heavily on "True/False" dichotomies. It does not even consider the idea of a third, or synthesis of the two terms, much less a fourth, indeterminate/unknown term. Jung has also written about how Christian doctrine largely encourages this kind of thinking, hence his emphasis on the "Union of Opposites."

Of course, to someone who is initiated, this third, synthetic term is not entirely new. Needless to say, in my own experiences in life, most of my encounters are with people who largely have not pondered the idea of a third term, the opposites seemingly impossible to reconcile in their minds. I imagine that those are the people that RAW is largely trying to address, which leads me to my next point.

RAW is emphasizing that language cannot describe a "deep reality" in the Old Aeon sense that what I see and am describing is objectively and ontologically correct for absolutely everyone. I am sure you have heard the old joke, If you want to kill an idea, send it to a committee? Whatever I say about reality is ultimately just describing my own experience about reality. I would be abusing language to assert to you that I somehow know better than you about what your reality is supposedly structured as, no? This flies in the face of Thelemic teaching.

He also describes two forms of unknown variables in addition to true and false: Indeterminate (Not Yet Testable), and Meaningless (Untestable). I bring this up to mean that if Indeterminate means Not Yet Testable, then this provides ample reason to use language to describe things we cannot adequately symbolize in language yet. We simply have not yet developed the symbols necessary to test such a thing. This brings up a further point, how do we differentiate between Not Yet Testable and Untestable given that we cannot test either one yet? It seems like RAW is highlighting another issue within linguistics and the philosophy of language.

Your statement, "All is One," is fascinating in relation to this chapter. I agree that by his definition of "noise" (noise being that which is untestable by scientific standards), it certainly can be interpreted as noise. I don't think RAW would disagree with the semantic meaning of your statement, especially given that it is not hard to conceive of creating a single symbol that collapses all of creation down into it (in this case, the word, "One"). However, I am led to believe that you are using the verb "to be" in this statement to assert that you've collected enough evidence to confirm that for yourself. I also know from your response that you recognize it is just a symbol trying to describe something but it is not the thing in and of itself. I think RAW would've been just fine with your formulation, given that you are a skillful perceiver who has been collecting data over a period of time and have found a consistent pattern.

"All is One," also, is not the statement he specifically calls into question. Instead, it's, "My boss is a male chauvinist drunk, and this is making me sick." He seems to be illustrating that a statement like, "My boss is a male chauvinist drunk, and this is
making me sick," does not seem to be formulated properly because it doesn't acknowledge relativism. If this statement is true, then maybe this person's boss did act this way. But we can only know that this person's boss acted that way based on this person's measurements. I have not met this boss. Depending on how well I trust the person making this statement, I might decide that this statement "is not" true. Even when I make this statement that it "is not" true, I am only making this statement for myself, based on my own information and data I've collected from my experience of this situation. Therefore, both the "is true" and "is not true" statements exist, neither fully describe the reality of the situation, and yet both appear true to each individual?

This highlights a significant term he has coined, but I realize was not heavily emphasized in this chapter. We can only perceive what is within our own "Reality Tunnel." In other words, I can only perceive what I am capable of perceiving. The bandwidth of my perception is my reality tunnel, and it describes my view of the All that is One. Like I said above, I cannot tell you your True Will because I do not occupy your reality tunnel, just the same as you mine, and therefore we cannot adequately make statements about a "deep reality" that I can somehow make my reality tunnel see everyone else's and then make ontologically correct statements about the All for everyone. If I did that, it would just seem like I have a really big ego.

Ultimately, he is trying to describe how the ego protects itself by creating these ontological statements through the verb "to be" while embracing irrelevant measurements. He implies to me that we often phrases things in this way to give up responsibility, instead giving in to, "This is just how things are!" Rarely do people say that when things are going well!

Specifically, he is trying to illustrate how much our minds create how we perceive reality. Not, create our own reality, as that implies that one could effectively remove that unknown element out of their lives. Rather, we can craft the model we use to perceive the Universe. I think that if we take this to the logical extreme, he would completely agree with your statement that a human who has been trained to be a skillful perceiver can make much more accurate ontological statements than someone who has not. In fact, I'd venture to guess that part of what makes that person a skillful perceiver is that they have become aware of the ways in which the instrument that is our body misfires and gives us faulty or irrelevant information.

All of this is to say that I do not think RAW would've disagreed with your perspective, instead, I think he would've pointed out that you have done a lot of the work he is pointing to. Nonetheless, I am biased towards RAW, so my own perceptions are equally faulty!