when things get slow...(long post)

[nabraxas]

...have a go at this

"Philosophy often seems like a dead issue to most people, and even Wittgenstein reportedly quipped that 'philosophy leaves everything as it is', after spending a lifetime on it. Metaphysics, a branch of philosophy that studies 'being' and what we can know in principle, often attracts the greatest derision as mere empty speculation. In theory, metaphysics stands above mere physics (the study of the material world) and thus it structures what we can know through physics. In practice, physics has achieved astonishing things whilst metaphysics has gone nowhere. However I will argue that we have ignored metaphysics only because we have not needed to change it for several centuries but that now we approach a revolution in the subject.

Philo-sophy means word-wisdom in Greek, however very few philosophers have dared to question the assumptions built into the words they use. Words fail to express some types of thoughts, but worse, some words allow invalid concepts to exist. In using words as the units of thought philosophers have overlooked something quite astonishing. What they missed showed up in mathematics. Specifically it showed up in the maths which describe the quantum physics on which this universe runs. Basically this shows that nothing 'is' anything else, and nothing 'is' even itself. It means nothing for example, to say that an electron 'is' a particle or that an electron 'is' a wave The entire category of 'being' has no actual reality at all, it just arises out of poor observation and sloppy thinking. No-'thing' stands still in a state of 'being'. Reality consists of dynamic events only.

Whenever we say that something 'is' anything else, we really mean that an event exhibits a behavior in particular circumstances or frames of reference. In every case a statement of 'is-ness' represents a kind of useful shorthand, although it always conceals a loss of information. We can never actually observe anything in a state of 'being'. Even an apparently immobile object consists of a maelstrom of internal activity and energy exchanges with its environment. Stopping this activity would actually obliterate the event and the 'object' would cease to exist.

Now we pay an enormous price for the convenience of having the verb 'being' in our languages. It makes it too easy to believe things which have no basis in our actual experience. It more or less forces us to believe that we ourselves have a 'being' somehow separate in some way from the body and its doings, or, even more nonsensically, that we 'are a being'. This leads to the silly questions of what happens to 'beings' when they cease to do, (i.e., die), where does 'being' come from, and what about possible 'higher' or more powerful 'beings'? Most traditional occultism depends on the idea that you can interact with the 'being' or 'essence' in all sorts of animate and inanimate phenomena. From a simple fault in language, mighty stupidities have grown to confuse us.

Language though, only accounts for half of the main illusion under which we labour.

Neuroscience can now demonstrate quite simply and convincingly what the philosopher Hume first articulated in the west, what many Buddhists have known for millennia, and what some have seen on heroic doses of LSD. The 'self' of which we think we consist, and which we regard as the font of our 'being' and our thoughts and acts, does not really fulfill such a role at all. We think and act quite automatically on the basis of acquired or innate patterns of thought and behavior (or sometimes just randomly), and then within a measurable fraction of a second of having done so, a particular part of the brain usually identifies with the action and claims responsibility for it. In other words, the 'me' or the 'I' that we subjectively feel that we consist of, does not actually initiate thought or action at all! This sometimes becomes apparent as a result of meditation, but with a few carefully placed electrodes it becomes disturbingly obvious.

Perceptive Buddhists priests have, in the main, kept pretty quiet about the enlightenment of no-self. The doctrine has proved understandably unpopular and tends to lead to widespread unauthorized suicide. Despite that the realisation of the illusory nature of the 'self' forms a core part of the original Buddhist enlightenment, the majority of popular sects have marginalised or disguised this doctrine. Many Buddhist sects even have elaborate doctrines of reincarnation, although the specification of exactly what reincarnates remains suspiciously vague.

So why do virtually all humans have a false but overwhelmingly strong subjective sense of 'self'? Well it has a huge survival value for a start. Few people can hold any sort of a life together without the illusion that they consist of some sort of unity despite the multiplicity and unpredictability of much of their actual thought and behavior. Thus the hardwired neuroprogram of 'self' acts in a very similar way to the software linguistic program of the verb 'being'. Both act as convenient shorthand, but both impose false preconditions upon our understanding of reality. The subjective experience of the 'self' leads all too easily to the theory of the soul, especially when mixed with the concept of 'being'. This opens the floodgates to any desired amount of irreality and wishful thinking.

In discarding the concepts of 'being' and 'self' we also dispose of the theory of spirits and immaterial 'beings' and the Neoplatonic/Animist ideas of 'essence' which underlie so much of religious and occult thought and practice. We also have to abandon the idea of free will. To some people this does not look like a very promising start for a New Magical Paradigm. However, a closer look reveals that it can lead to a much leaner, fitter, meaner, more interesting, and more credible magical paradigm which has acquired the name of Chaos Magic.

If all the gods and spirits and daemons do not exist as the 'gaseous vertebrates' that previous generations seem to have imagined, then the phenomena which they cause must arise from something else instead. We know that the mind consists of many more or less autonomous systems including the 'self' and that in extreme cases it can create multiple personalities with selective amnesia about each other. We also know that parapsychology can occur occasionally. Thus it seems more logical and more fun to conclude the obvious, that humanity has always made its gods and daemons and spirits whilst pretending that it didn't. So from now on we can actually manufacture deities and daemons and spirit servitors to our own designs, tastes and needs, by the requisite investment of belief.

(For technical details see my books and CDs).

If free will does not exist, then our thoughts and actions must arise from all the capabilities that we have either inherited at birth or have acquired as skills during life. When we think or act in ways unpredicated by either, then we have acted randomly.

The illusion of free will works like this, when humans find themselves in a situation in which all the innate and acquired logical and emotional reasons for acting on one of two or more alternatives balance out, then pure chance decides the resulting action. However once the action has occurred, the 'self' identifies with it and claims it as its own. Well this usually happens, but if the outcome proves too disagreeable the 'self' may attempt to dissociate itself from itself. And yes that makes no sense, and it often causes strange malfunctions.

Personally I do not miss having a belief in free will. My 'self' has learned to enjoy the surprises that my capacity to act randomly throws up. When thinking, I often combine ideas randomly to see if anything interesting comes out of it, if it does, my 'self' tends to feel elated, but as a number of frequent thinkers have realised, ones 'self' does not actually do the thinking. The realisation that ideas and inspiration do not come from within the 'self' or the 'I' or the 'Me' or whatever you want to call it, has led virtually all mystics and many schizophrenics to assume the existence of spirits. It has also fooled most occultists.

Now in the absence of free will, the exercise of intent in life and in magic in particular becomes a much more sophisticated activity both in theory and on a practical level. We never actually act out of Will. The subjective experience of will or willpower arises merely out of conflicts between various fears and desires and real or imagined limitations. It has nothing to do with what we actually end up doing. Most of our apparently chosen actions result from trickery; they arise because one set of mental programs has tricked another set into submission. Hypnosis provides a rather extreme example of this process at work, but we all spend a lot of time having various parts of our minds hypnotising other parts. As social animals we also spend a lot of time trying to hypnotise other people into believing us, or agreeing with us, or complying with our wishes.

What we call 'will' actually means achieving a unity of desire, and we achieve that through the learned skills of Sleight of Mind. Those people who have a strong 'will' have simply acquired a lot of skill at deceiving conflicting fears and desires into submission. They often achieve much but the process can get out of hand and end up negating basic survival programs. 'Weak willed' people have simply not acquired this skill, so one whim or fear or desire just takes over from another in rapid succession and they fail to maintain any course of action for long, but this often keeps them out of serious trouble.

Magicians use enhanced Sleight of Mind techniques on themselves as a deliberate cheat. Successful magicians have always done this but in a rather haphazard fashion without really understanding why. Chaos Magic provides the theory and the technology to systematically exploit it. For extended practical suggestions see my books, but the trick works something like this: Take a whim, any whim, and I say 'whim' disparagingly because nobody ever has an entirely wholehearted desire completely unfettered by doubt or conflicting thoughts. Symbolise the whim somehow, and then use physiological techniques to either whip up the whole mind and body into an extraordinary frenzy or to plunge the mind and body into deep trance. Having achieved that, concentrate upon the pre-prepared symbol and you may achieve a parapsychological or a deep psychological effect out of all proportion to what ordinary wishing or 'willing' can achieve.

Enhanced Sleight of Mind has many advantages over more traditional methods involving the so-called 'Will'. With sleight of mind you can even conjure successfully for things that you have no particular personal commitment to, without first spending a lot of time trying to summon the commitment by a tedious process of repeated small sleights of mind.

Now nobody yet has a cast iron theory of exactly how unity of desire translates from a mental state into a parapsychological effect on the outside world. On the other hand nobody yet has a cast iron theory about how the so-called physical laws of the universe get enforced over time and distance either. However I strongly suspect that a breakthrough on a metaphysical level could supply an answer in both cases. In discarding the concept of 'being' we should also replace the idea of all tenses of it with something more dynamic.

The ideas that anything 'was' in the past, and that anything 'will be' in the future now begin to look very questionable. Most people now accept a probabilistic future but they still cling to the idea that there really 'was' a singular past. Quantum physics now confirms suspicions aroused by retroactive enchantment. The past has no more of a fixed nature than does the future. In fact with quantum optics you can actually do small scale retroactive enchantment reliably every time. You can change the pasts. Here we encounter profound metaphysical implications, for probabilistic pasts and futures strongly suggest that time has three dimensions rather than just one. Multiple pasts and futures lie sideways in time.

Three dimensional time explains a great deal about how magical/parapsychological events can occur and it also solves many of the conceptual problems in quantum physics. It also changes our ideas about 'being' completely and it sets new horizons to what we can in principle know about reality.

Metaphysical assumptions underlie all attempts to understand reality. Most physicists derisively ignore metaphysics precisely because they already have a fixed metaphysic and they do not want to alter it. Three-dimensional time would mean a new metaphysic that might just explain a whole raft of mysteries in science and in magic, and it might just unify both subjects.

For more on these topics see my books, CDs and my website, http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/specularium/

Peter J. Carroll is one of founders of the Magical Pact of the Illuminates of Thanateros (IOT) which he led for a decade. He has spent twenty-five years in research and experiment and is the author of PsyberMagick, Liber Null & Psychonaut and Liber Kaos: The Psychonomicon"

[ 30. June 2003, 07:05: Message edited by: nabraxas ]

[t st tantra]

what do you think of the quote from illuminatus?

'nothing is true.

everything is permissable.'

hassan i sabbah

have you read 'sexual occultism' by john mumford?

i reject the model of 'god back to god',in favour of the more optimistic 'god to gods'.everything is holy and has the 'right' to evolve to it's own godhead.[kundalini serpent rises,cobra like,my god-hood cloths my head].

t s t .

[nabraxas]

tst- hassan was a man way ahead ov his time. have you read any ov the Hakim Bey/Peter Lambourne Wilson stuff about him?- there's also a rather cool CD "Hashisheen- the end of law" featuring william burroughs, iggy pop, patti smith, jah wobble & genisis p.orridge, to name a few. Sub Rosa-sr154.

mumford rings a bell, but i can't say for sure.

not sure if i agree that everything has the nature ov holiness- not that i disagree, just that i think good/evil, holy/unholy are man made creations w/no basis outside a persons particular viewpoint. eg: cows are sacred in india, but little more than burger filling in australia.

[t st tantra]

who's to say burger filling isnt holy,if seen as part of gods creation.

i wonder if even an action can evolve into 'a god'.

these ideas seeds though uncle al,quoting his uncle will blake,from memory maybe in 'magick without tears'.

people talk of a multiverse of parallell universes,this is where modeling reality has evolved to,my many gods thinking is analogous to this.

i reccommend 'the quantum gods' by jeff love if you haven't seen it,it certainly contains things i've seen no where else.

t s t .

[Daevorn]

How i see it.

Good and Evil are of the same thing.

Its whats in between that is nothing to do with any of the them ,but the wisdom of them and everything. Everything is illusory and ephemeral.

Some good books that i read and recommend are on this site, this is the most ancient wisdom.

However, this is my opinion and may be difficult to understand.

http://www.geocities.com/gnosis4you

Hope it helps at looking at things from the angle of creation.

daevorn

[nabraxas]

some food for thought there, but hold the burgers

"' What you are internally attracts the diverse circumstances of life.'"- i totally agree w/that, it seems everyone puts themselves in the position they want/will to be in, & i mean everyone.

that's an interesting view ov good & evil, daevorn, i haven't been to the link you posted yet, but gnosticism is illuminating as a way ov percieving the nature ov good & evil, have you looked at zoarastrianism(sp?), which i think shares the same basic idea?

[Daevorn]

Nabraxas, yes i have read zoarastrianism.

It's quite interesting isnt it. But there is a few things that arent that well defined. But it is a great source.

See what i have found with gnosticism is that there are two types, the later one is more profound.

Written by an author and Master Samael Aun Weor.

There's not one mistake you can pick from it.

It's a type of writting which grabs hold of the inner wisdom not just the intellectual understanding.

Don't mean to sound impeding on peoples views but there is a few interesting quotes also; but many more.

'..It is a question of cells , not of age. It is a question of phenomena...'

'The subconscious is the ego itself. Annihilate this ego and the consciousness will awaken.'

'The subconscious elements are infrahuman elements that each person carries within; destroy them and all possibility of dreaming will end.'

'Dreams are projections of the ego, and therefore useless.'

'The ego is mind.' 'The being is the one thing that isnt touched, it has always remained the same. And always will remain the same.'

'Dreams are, consequently, projections of the mind.'

See what i've found out is that throughout the day , we are also identifying with everything we look at and therefore we forget ourselves,.

- Fear comes from the mind, it is created by the mind, so is time. Thought and time are the same thing.

- Passion comes from sorrow. Passion is pain.

This is how is see things and greatlt does it help in inner discovery . Everything is cause by a polarity and an opposing force.

eg./ female/male, Negative/positive, But there is also a force in between that is untouched always.

There is also an old play written by a poet, which gives a good view of universe/cosmos.

Divine Comedy of Dante.

Hope this has been informative, and help in the search.

Inverencial Peace.

daevorn

[nabraxas]

i'm very happy to see you put your ideas out, i'm sure no-one here will be offended.

i agree that zoarastrianism seems sketchy, do you think that could be because it was virtually wiped from it's homeland, & as an organised religeon it pays to occlude?

what ov the cathars?

i agree w/the notion ov dreams as ego projection, but would that make lucid dreaming useless, or usefull as a psychoanalytical tool?

[t st tantra]

if dreaming is useless i wonder why it happens?

and that should have been 'liber aleph' pge 119 not magick without tears.does anyone know why he refers to william blake as william o'neill,see page 114 too?

t s t .

[Daevorn]

What i've found out is the mind is very deep, we've been letting the mind take control of everything for a very long time and so we rely on the mind to make us happy and so forth.

Many of times ,people must of had thoughts come in that they didnt know they had. What is a thought what are we grabbing when we think of something. The mind just chucks the first thing at us that is related with the current emotion.

That's why many of times we get things wrong. Instead of allowing nature and the universe to speak through us, we block the universe to only listen to ourselves (the mind).

I see lucid dreaming as a connection between the ether and the dream world.

When we do an astral projection because we still carry all the ego's.

They project around us, because of fear we might see a monster. But there is also monsters from the lower regions.

Say there is the Evolution and Involution , something that expands must go back to its original form, in the physical world anyway. The higher dimensions are left untouched because time isnt a factor.

Lets say everything starts as a mineral/vegitable, there is a spirit in everything, (which is also stated by the alchemists). Then we progress to the animal kingdom. Then to the human existence. Which it has been said by the tibetans and many others we have 108 lives to attain liberation from the ego.

(Also on there necklace they have 108 beads.). If we dont the universe finds us a chaotic matter which cannot reach perfection so the universe must do it by another alternative which is involution. Back down to the animal kingdom of an animal which is not very good for anything and/or go's through much pain. Then to a useless mineral (like sand and so forth.) .When we have been cleaned of the ego of sin ,then we return back to the father (the creator, the male force in the universe.

There is so much ,much more but i would be going on forever and get lost ,in between. The books on the url i suggest ,give a good example. Seeing i am not an liberated being , i cannot explain as well as others might. But its the way i see it and the must profound way i have found which fills in every corner.

It is possible to astral project from an lucid dream, depending if you have full control or not.

Its also usefull for finding out the inner depth of the dream if you want to understand it further.

daevorn

[t st tantra]

i see things a bit differently,my occult studies ,modeled in particular in the shri yantra and the thoth deck the world card,lead me to sumise that the physical and spiritual worlds are both evolving,each affecting the others evolution.

a move down,a move up.crowley trying to hook up the fives.

t s t .

[Daevorn]

Sorry ,t st tantra i didnt explain myself properly ,What i meant to say is the great father and mother knows everything, is perfect the only thing that changes is appearence and objectiveness ,you cant really accelerate what is already known. We are in evolution because we are not wanting to go on the path of revolution.

Everything must reach its highest peak but go down again, which is the law of pendulum, explained by many people in the past like plato and tristismegistis.

But the father and mother is perfect everything has been told the future,present and past are one.

So there really isnt really anything to evolute into only really physical appearances and the lower dimensions. Which have there connection with physical things. (the movement of the holy trinity) everything must be made in the supersensible worlds before it can be done in the physical.

But then again this is just me talking of work of great masters which i really cant talk in depth about.

The main thing is to read the ancient texts with the being and not the intellect and the wisdom is gained instantaneously.

H.P. Blavatsky and Master Huiracocha talk of this also if you can find the texts or books.

(Isis unveiled / or Secret Doctrine)

Hope this helps in someway or another.

Everything is illusory...

Inv Peace

daevorn

[nabraxas]

that 108 thing crops up again & again in hinduism & tibetan buddhism, it's 9x9, & 'co-incidently' many things are ritually done 9x in both religeons.

[t st tantra]

what i'm suggesting is analagous to big bang theory,that if the universe is large enough it will not collapse but expand forever.

if god creates the universe to learn about himself,then the god at the end is not the same as the god at the beggining as he has now learnt about himself.god/spirit evolves too.

i[my ego i guess] is not happy with the 'all back to buddah' veiw,frankly its terrifying to the individual,and i search for a more optimistic outcome.

t s t .

[Daevorn]

I like the terribly frightening path, for me anyway because you get to learn so much from pain.

Pain is the greatest teacher.

Another good quote i follow is 'The more fear you have ,the further away from the being you are.'

I was drawn to this type of work through great pain and sacrifice, and the work has made me amazingly happy to what i used to be and is impossible to turn away from the truth.

The classes i used to go to there would be a new season of about 50 people and in 4 weeks drop down to less than 10 and in the end maybe 1 or 2 left. You must suffer alot ,but just one bit of happiness from the being makes up for a lifetime of unhappiness.

daevorn