First, to the OP:
@ThelemicMage said
"...what is the premise and suffix in relation to disillusion from learning?"
Please define "premise" and "suffix" as you mean them here.
@ThelemicMage said
"I know everything is a metaphor for everything else...."
According to Kant, you can't predicate existence. Assuming he was right, this doesn't make any sense. As Crowley asked:
"What is Existence? The question is so fundamental that it finds no answer. The most profound meditation only leads to an exasperating sense of impotence. There is, it seems, no simple rational idea in the mind which corresponds to the word. (III, see the next link below)"
@ThelemicMage said
"...and dejavu is when the brain becomes aware of itself moving something from short term memory to long term, or instinctual memory. Sometimes when going through a certain lesson, (taking days, weeks, or years,) of my Angel, there are points of extreme disillusionment. When the lesson is truly over, there is no more disillusion, however I feel a pattern of disillusion from lesson to lesson."
Perhaps the lesson is that the Holy Guardian Angel/Higher "Self"/"True Self" concept (HGA hereafter) is not a dogma, as way too many practitioners act like it is. Perhaps a related lesson is that Crowley was human, and by definition, imperfect, and that it probably would have been better if he'd not been so emphatic about the HGA. And how can you be so sure about memory? As Crowley asked in The Soldier and the Hunchback: ! and ?:
"The relation between the two ideas is unthinkable; causality is itself unthinkable; it depends, for one thing, upon experience --- and what, in God's name, is experience? Experience is impossible without memory. What is memory? The mortar of the temple of the ego, whose bricks are the impressions. And the ego? The sum of our experience, may be. (I doubt it!) Anyhow, we have got values of "y" and "z" for "x", and the values of "x" and "z" for "y" --- all our equations are indeterminate; all our knowledge is relative, even in a narrower sense than is usually implied by the statement. Under the whip of the clown God, our performing donkeys the philosophers and mn of science run round and round in the ring; they have amusing tricks: they are cleverly trained; but they get nowhere.
I don't seem to be getting anywhere myself. (I)"
@ThelemicMage said
"Might this be proof of us, at our stage, casing some sort of illusion upon the Angel itself...."
Perhaps it's illustrative of the deficiency of the HGA concept.
Let me explain.
This thread is a good example of why Thelema is, on the one hand, an improvement on Magick before Crowley, but, on the other hand, why his improvements need to be--if we desire the get the most out of Magick--continually improved upon. In various ways throughout his writings he acknowledged--despite his frequent outbursts of anger towards those who disagreed with him or opposed him--that Magick, like any science, is iterative, non-dogmatic, and self-correcting. This goes to what has been said in this thread about "mistakes" not only in terms of individuals but also in terms of Magick and science.
I don't find much value in concepts like True Will, the HGA, etc..., but understand why others do (Somewhere in his Confessions he speaks of us having multiple selves, echoing William James' chapters on The Self in his Principles. He would have done better to use that terminology instead of the HGA, etc... motifs which have bogged Magick down in metaphysical quagmires ever since. Cf., e.g., James' chapter in Principles: The Stream of Thought and especially The Consciousness of Self). Many threads here are mere conflicts over what the hell they even mean. I think Crowley could have found betters ways to fulfil what he believed to be his mission to spread Thelema and actualize his charge to help humanity see that "the Law is for all." Thelema itself suffers from many inadequacies, and needs improvement. This probably agitates many here. But being settled on Crowley's views about Magick was not something Crowley himself was for. The note he dictated to Mary d'Este Sturges and approved publication in Book IV of confirms as much:
"May the whole Path now be plain to all!
Frater Perdurabo is the most honest of all the great religious teachers. Others have said: "Believe me!" He says: "Don't believe me!" He does not ask for followers; would despise and refuse them. He wants an independent and self-reliant body of students to follow out their own methods of research. If he can save them time and trouble by giving a few useful "tips," his work will have been done to his own satisfaction.
Those who have wished men to believe in them were absurd (my bold/underline)."
This quote, as my emphases highlight, indicates that Crowley was not a proponent of what Paul K. Feyerabend calls "methodological uniformism" in science. Scientific Illuminism was in Crowley’s time neither very "scientific" nor all that illuminating, and it is even less so on both accounts now. To date, it is a failure because neither Crowley nor practitioners following his death have kept up with advancements (they are much more than mere “trends”) in the philosophy science. His early quandaries over how to formulate and implement Scientific Illuminism are still with us, especially in terms of the limitations of the taxonomic approaches of the Maudsleyan natural science he imitated. As he put it in The Herb Dangerous:
@Crowley said
"
In other of my philosophical writings I have endeavoured to show that the ratiocinative faculty was in its nature unable to solve any single problem of the universe.
Its reductio ad absurdum is clear enough in the gorgeous first section of Herbert Spencer's First Principles. Kant demonstrated the Dualism and inherent Self-contradiction well enough in the Prolegomena and its four theses and their...antitheses (Section 51); and Hegel's Logic, if properly understood, would have brought the whole thing into contempt.
But unfortunately the "common sense" of mankind retorted that after all the interior angles of every triangle are together equal to two right-angles; and that a mental process which deduced this so accurately from a few simple axioms and definitions must be trustworthy; adding something uncomplimentary about Germans and Metaphysics.
Both are right, and both are wrong. In the world of common sense, reason works; in the world of philosophy, it doesn't. The metaphysical deadlock is a real and not a verbal one. The inner nature of things is not rational, at least so long as we are asked to define "rational" as "rationalistic." Why should it be? Why should the rules of golf govern the mechanics of the flight of a golf-ball?
It is this fact that has made it possible for the faith-mongers to make head against the stream of philosophy. Fichte is really and truly just as right and as wrong as Schelling; Hume is quite as impregnable as Berkeley.
Let us not try to shirk the truth of it, either by the "common-sense" folly, or the "faith" folly, or the Hegelian folly.
It may, I think, be readily conceded that the reasoning faculty is not apodeictally absolute. It represents a stage in human thought, no more.
You cannot convince a savage of the truth of the Binomial Theorem; should we then be surprised if a mystic fails to convert a philosopher?
Yet must he try....
[T]o the consideration of Scientific Illuminism[:] We have had, you may say, a poor half-pennyworth of Science to an intolerable deal of Illuminism. Well, that is what I wanted you to say. Were it not so, I would not have spent these two nights over this paper, when I want to be fresh every morning to go to the Prado and gloat over Velasquez!
Here, gentlemen, are a number of genuine mystic states; some home-grown, some imported. Please tell us what they are! (You are fond of telling us what things are.)
It is useless to label the whole lot as insane: nor are they unimportant.
In my view, most of the great men of the world have known them; themselves attributed their greatness to these experiences, and I really do not see why admittedly lesser men should contradict them. I hope to argue this point at greater length when I am better documented; but at the very least, these states are of the most extraordinary interest. Even as insanities, they would demand the strictest investigation from the light they throw upon the working of the brain. But as it is! All the sacred literature of the world is full of them; all the art and poetry of all time is inspired by them; and, by the Lord Harry! we know nothing about them. Nothing but what vague and troubled reflections the minds...of the mystics themselves, untrained in accuracy of observation, bring back from the fountains of light; nothing but what quacks exploit, and dotards drivel of.
Think of what we claim! That concentration and its results can open the Closed Palace of the King, and answer the Riddle of the Sphinx. All science only brings us up to a blind wall, the wall of Philosophy; here is your great Ram to batter a breach and let in the forlorn hope of the Children of the Curse to storm the heights of heaven.
One single trained observer with five years' work, less money than would build a bakehouse, and no more help than his dozen of volunteer students could give him, would earn himself a fame loftier than the stars, and set mankind on the royal road to the solution of the One great problem. Scientific Illuminism would have deserved its name, or mysticism would have received a blow which would save another young fool like myself from wasting his whole life on so senseless a study and enable him to engage in the nobler career of cheating and duping his fellows in the accredited spheres of commerce and politics, to say nothing of the grosser knaveries of the liberal professions.
But I have no doubts. Let the investigator study his own brain on the lines I have laid down, possibly in the first place with the aid of hashish or some better physical expedient, to overcome the dull scepticism which is begotten of idleness upon ignorance; it is useless to study the no-brain of another, on the strength of a reputation for fraud, as the spiritualist investigators seem to do. Your own brain is the best; next, the trained and vigorous brains of clever and educated men, in perfect health, honest and wary. {88}
You will get more from them than you will from some maudlin hysteric professional mountebank. All talk to the contrary is the merest froth; Mohammed was a great lawgiver and a great fighter; try your experiment with the sane, and not with the crazy!
True, you will get hallucinations more easily with the unsound; but you will never, never, never find a woman or a degenerate who is capable of any trance of type higher than Vedana. Take my word for it!
No! take my word for nothing: try all things; hold fast that which is good! (VIII, XX; my bold, underline)."
Neither science nor Magick has ceased to develop. Yet in this thread, and the many others I've made similar points in, most of you act not only as if the development of Magick and his synthesis of Magick with science ceased in 1947 (when he died), but you also act as if the models of science he employed were finalizations of the relationship of Magick to science. Yet, it is a mistake to take Crowley's formulations of Magick and Thelema as special or supramundane.
@Crowley said
"From the nature of things, therefore, life is a sacrament; in other words, all our acts are magical acts. Our spiritual consciousness acts through the will and its instruments upon material objects, in order to produce changes which will result in the establishment of the new conditions of consciousness which we wish. That is the definition of Magick." (Confessions, Ch.14, my italics)"
No doubt, Crowley effected a Reformation in Magick but it is a mistake to make a dogma out of any part of it or out of any of his views. For example, while bound by oaths (which he didn't always keep--see below) and his dedication to some of aspects of the esoteric, and therefore secretive, traditions of Magick, he was also deeply motivated to expose many of the aspects of those traditions he believed should be made public (despite the fact that it led to events like his his former mentor, MacGregor Mathers, suing him for revealing secrets of the R.C. in the "Equinox"--cf. Perdurabo, pp. 205-8; & cf. Dion Fortune: "Much of what was once common knowledge has been gathered up and confined under the initiate's oath of secrecy. It is Crowley's jibe at his teachers that they bound him to secrecy with terrible oaths and then confided the Hebrew alphabet to his safekeeping....' So much for secrecy!" [The Mystical Qabalah, pp. 25, 98; 1998]). Attempting to privilege Magick as special or supramundane only compounds the errors of assuming that Crowley's writings and death were the last and final words on Magickal theory and practice, and that they forever carved in stone the relationship of Magick to science. But such errors are similar to if not identical with the errors involved with making a dogma out of science, like Los does ad nauseam. Dion Fortune gets at the heart of this when she says (for now, ignoring her linguistic lapses into scientific methodological uniformism):
"31. It will be seen, then, that if we classify mundane affairs and phenomena in terms of the Four Elements, we shall immediately see their relationship to astrology and the Tarot. Now classification is the stage that immediately follows observation in scientific method. A very great deal of scientific work simply consists in these two processes; in fact, for the rank and file of science these represent the total range of their activities. If science is limited to these two activities, as it would be if we listened to our more pedestrian scientists, it would be no more than a compiling of lists of natural phenomena, as if the brokers were in on the universe. But the imaginative scientist, who alone is worthy of the name of research worker, uses classification not so much as a means of putting things away tidily, but to enable him to recognise relationships [compare this to William James' Radical Empiricism and what I say about his thoughts on "truth" below].
From the imaginative scientist who perceives to the philosophic scientist who
interprets is but a step; and from the philosophical scientist who interprets in terms of causation to the esoteric scientist who interprets in terms of purpose, and so links science to ethics, is but another step. It is the tragedy of Esoteric Science that its exponents have nearly always been inadequately equipped upon the plane of Malkuth, and consequently unable to co-ordinate their results with those obtained by workers in other fields. As long as we rest content with this state of affairs we shall continue to have muddle-headed thinking and credulous assumptions as our inalienable lot. Esoteric Science needs to observe the rule of the yacht race, and make each magical operation round the marking-buoy of Malkuth before it is reckoned to have achieved completion. (The Mystical Qabalah, p. 256, 1998; my italics, bolds.)"
Crowley was of a similar opinion:
"It has been said by some that the Law of Thelema appeals only to the élite of humanity. No doubt here is this much in that assertion, that only the highest can take full advantage of the extraordinary opportunities which it offers. At the same time, "the Law is for all." Each in his degree, every man may learn to realise the nature of his own being, and to develop it in freedom (Magic Without Tears, Ch. VIII).
"
It follows form all this that belonging to a Magickal order, the A.'. A.'. included, is not necessary for "adepthood," "attainment," etc.... And in many cases, it is less than ideal. Magick, like science, does not deserve a privileged status. Or, as Dion Fortune put it:
"Life is the real initiator.... The adept has use of all things, but is dependent upon nothing. It is now becoming normal for the average man to do what only the initiates do. (The Mystical Qabalah, pp. 229, 254; my bold "
And she said that in 1935! How much more true is it now, in 2014?
It is vitally important--again, if we care to make the most out of Crowley's Magickal Reformation--to keep in mind Crowley's influences. For example, take the great extent to which Crowley was influenced by the pragmatism of William James. Look at James' conclusion in his Pragmatism's Conception of Truth:
"It is quite evident that our obligation to acknowledge truth, so far from being unconditional, is tremendously conditioned. Truth with a big T, and in the singular, claims abstractly to be recognized, of course; but concrete truths in the plural need be recognized only when their recognition is expedient. A truth must always be preferred to a falsehood when both relate to the situation; but when neither does, truth is as little of a duty as falsehood.... With this admission that there are conditions that limit the application of the abstract imperative, the pragmatist treatment of truth sweeps back upon us in its fulness. Our duty to agree with reality is seen to be grounded in a perfect jungle of concrete expediencies. (my bold)"
Now, compare this to what has been said about "truth" in this thread.
@Frater 639 said
"
@Jim Eshelman said
"I agree - try not to make mistakes. But then accept whatever you stumble into. It's what the Angel put there. It's just life."
I agree with this. Knowledge and Conversation is the Truth that "stumbling into" a circumstance/phenomenon is no longer arbitrary, it is the Path. And the Truth of the Path is the Truth of Self.
It necessarily includes Reason, but more as a controlled analytic/perspective, and definitely not as a sole impetus/determinant.
@Little Essays Towards Truth said
"Truth is our Path, and Truth is our Goal; ay! there shall came to all a moment of great Light when the Path is seen to be itself the Goal; and in that hour every one of us shall exclaim:
"I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life!""
"
Here we have a relating of James’ capital T "truths" to such lofty notions as Reason, The Path, The Self, and by implication, The Will. But this is justifiable neither by James’ pragmatism nor by Crowley's philosophies. If we put Frater 639's quote in greater context, we will see why.
"What is Truth? It is absurd to attempt to define it, for when we say that S is P, rather than S is Q or S is R, we assume that we already know the meaning of Truth. This is really why all the discussions as to whether Truth depends on external correspondence, internal coherence, or what not, neither produce conviction, nor withstand analysis. Briefly, Truth is an idea of a supra-rational order, pertaining to Neschamah, not to Ruach. That all rational conceptions imply that we know Truth, and that Truth is in their propositions, only shows that these so-called rational ideas are not really rational at all. Truth is by no means the only idea that resists rational analysis. There are very many ideas that remain indefinable: all simple ideas do so. At the back of all our efforts is the dead wall that we must already know what we are pretending to find our....
Do we not all assume a perfectly illogical conception of Truth as an entity of "the supra-mundane order, whence a whirling flame and flying Light subsist?" Do we not instinctively assimilate these ideas of Truth and Light, though there is no rational nexus? Is it not clear, then, that we do understand each other perfectly, so far as we can understand each other at all, in a sphere such as Zoroaster calls "Intelligible," which "subsisteth beyond Mind' but which we should "seek to grasp with the Flower of Mind"...? (Little Essays Towards Truth; my bolds)
"
Frater 639 continues, quoting the comment on Liber V then extends his analysis of "truth" to involve "True Will" but stops short, leaving us with an inadequate impression:
@Frater 639 said
"The Reason becomes perfectly balanced with the Cone.
(my bold below)
@Liber V commen said
"...for the True Will has no goal; its nature being To Go. Similarly, a parabola is bound by one law which fixes its relations with two straight lines at every point; yet it has no end short of infinity, and it continually changes its direction. The Initiate who is aware Who he is, can always check his conduct by reference to the determinants of his curve, and calculate his past, his future, his bearings, and his proper course at any assigned moment; he can even comprehend himself as a simple idea. He may attain to measure fellow-parabolas, ellipses that cross his path, hyperbolas that span all space with their twin wings. Perhaps he may come at long last, leaping beyond the limits of his own law, to conceive that sublimely stupendous outrage to Reason, the Cone! Utterly inscrutable to him, he is yet well aware that he exists in the nature thereof, that he is necessary thereto, that he is ordered thereby, and that therefrom he is sprung, from the loins of so fearful a Father! His own infinity becomes zero in relation to that of the least fragment of the solid. He hardly exists at all. Trillions multiplies by trillions of trillions of such as he could not cross the frontier even of breadth, the idea which he came to guess at only because he felt himself bound by some mysterious power. Yet breadth is equally a nothing in the presence of the Cone. His first conception must evidently be a frantic spasm, formless, insane, not to be classed as an articulate thought. Yet, if he develops the faculties of his mind, the more he knows of it the more he sees that its nature is identical with his own whenever comparison is possible."
"
But Crowley goes on to qualify this:
"We know one thing only. Absolute existence, absolute motion, absolute direction, absolute simultaneity, absolute truth, all such ideas: they have not, and never can have, any real meaning. If a man in delirium tremens fell into the Hudson River, he might remember the proverb and clutch at an imaginary straw. Words such as "truth" are like that straw. Confusion of thought is concealed, and its impotence denied, by the invention. This paragraph opened with "We know": yet, questioned, "we" make haste to deny the possibility of possessing, or even of defining, knowledge. (Liber V)"
Crowley made a genuinely good faith attempt to make Magick more respectable and popular by attempting to, much like social scientists having been doing since their inceptions, scientificate Magick. This is laudable, but by no means perfect, and in several regards erroneous, and these attempts are one of the many ways his human imperfections are revealed. He issued hits and misses. Yet, his desires were humanitarian. His belief in himself as the prophet of the new aeon led him to a certain course of action in which he acknowledged his own mistakes repetitively (if you've read his diaries you know what I mean), but it also did us who have been inspired by his efforts much benefits.
But we diminish those benefits if we think that Crowley wanted us to stop with his views of science. For his time, he had a good starting point, but the empiricism he was partial to was rooted in the natural science of Maudsley and the radical empiricism of William James. The former is basically taxonomical, and Crowley's contributions following this method are too great to be denied. The latter involves a rejection of what James called "medical materialism" (basically, what we now call reductionism, and which, unfortunately is experiencing a revival in the mindless field of neuroscience), and he was right to use it, for it helped the Magickal community avoid the criticisms that scientific materialists like Los are subject to. The problem, however, is the taxonomy has devolved to mere record keeping of "experiments" performed by individuals. Record keeping is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the practice of science. But in the case of testing personal religious/spiritual experience (scientific illuminism) it is usually overdone at the cost of actual practice. Because of his Maudsleyan influences, Crowley spent way too much time on this, as most practitioners of Thelema still do. One of the most silly things I've seen in writing from Crowley is in Magick Without Tears, Ch. XXVII, where he attributes record keeping to the Buddha, a man who in all likelihood didn't even know how to write!
As part of his definition of Magick Crowley consistently conceptualized it not only as a science but also as an art. And in Magic Without Tears, “Ch. LXVII,” he says that, "Science is co-terminous with Magick." So, by implication, science is an art. It's worth noting that Paul K. Feyerbend started his career as an artist (an opera singer, and, of course, Crowley didn’t hide his aspirations to become a famous poet) and that his "epistemological anarchism" was inspired by Dadaism. His "anything goes" rule for science is often similarly misunderstood as "Do What Thou Wilt" is, in the sense that both are assumed to be nihilistic instead of the affirmations of freedom they are. Yet, as the esteemed philosopher of science Ian Hacking put it in the Introduction to the fourth edition of Feyerabend's Against Method:
"Feyerabend will forever be cursed by a statement of his own making, and for which he is fully responsible, the notorious aphorism 'anything goes'. In the Chinese preface, he says it is 'the terrified exclamation of a rationalist who takes a closer look at history.... Since the aphorism is often taken to be anti-science, a sort of New Age waffle, we must emphasize the Feyerabend never meant for one minute that anything except the scientific method (whatever that is) 'goes.' He meant that lots of ways of getting on, including the innumerable methods of the diverse sciences , 'go'. He also meant that an anti-rationalist, like himself, was perfectly entitled to discomfit the rationalists whom he opposed. What he disliked was any kind of intellectual or ideological hegemony. His favoured text was Mill's On Liberty, even if his preferred style was Dada. Single mindedness in pursuit of any goal, including truth and understanding, yields great rewards. But single vision is folly if it makes you see (or even glimpse) the truth, the one and only truth. Hence the need for the counter-irritant maxim 'anything goes'. (pp. xii-xiii; Hacking's italics, my underlines/bolds)"
Sounds a lot like Crowley, doesn't it?
As I have argued in my blog post, Science Is Dumb (or, We’re All Scientists), science is the art of critical thinking, and when it fails to be so, it is dogma, or scientism. Combine this with what I've said about the ordinary status of Magick and science, and you can see why Crowley can write things like "the Law is for all" while elsewhere writing things like:
""Occult" science is the most difficult of them all. For one thing, its subject-matter includes the whole of philosophy, from ontology and metaphysics down to natural history. More, the most rarefied and recondite of these has a direct bearing upon the conduct of life in its most material details, and the simplest study of such apparently earthbound matters as botany and mineralogy leads to the most abstruse calculations of the imponderables.
With what weapons, then, are we to attack so formidable a fortress?
The first essential is clear thinking. (Magick Without Tears, Ch. XXIV; my bold/underline)"
Is Crowley contradicting himself? All the damn time. After clear/critical thinking (for false sceptics [Cf. The Soldier and the Hunchback] like Los, this is the culmination of practice--recall his "trivial truth" and "lucid correctness"; for true sceptics, like myself, it is simply a necessary--but not sufficient--first step):
"The nature of Knowledge, the culmination and stasis of the Intellectual faculties...implies a contradiction in terms. Understanding is the resolution of this antinomy.... The only correct and adequate mode of the Attainment of Understanding is to shut off and to inhibit the rational mind altogether, thus leaving a Tabula rasa upon which the entirely alien faculty—de novo and sui generis—can write its first word.
But then (it will surely be said) what is more unintelligent than this supposed Intelligence? than this formless, even delirious Ecstasy which sweeps away all shapes of thought? No sane man would deny this premiss: but the explanation is that this Ecstasy is (so to say) the throe of Birth of the new faculty. It is surely natural for an observer to be startled, for the moment, by the discovery of a new Universe. Ananda must be mastered manfully, not indulged as a vice in the manner of the Mystic! Samadhi must be clarified by Sila, by the stern virtue of constraint: and then appears the paradox that the new Law of the Mind has "come not to destroy but to fulfil" the old. The Understanding takes full cognizance of all that vast material which the Reason was unable to build into any coherent structure. The contradictions have disappeared by absorption; they have been accepted as essential factors in the nature of Truth, which without them were a mere congeries of Facts.
It will be clear from all these considerations that there need be no surprise at this primordial paradox: that Scepticism, absolute in every dimension, is the sole possible basis of true Attainment. (Little Essays Towards Truth, "Understanding")"