Death, & the Higher Self

Awareness of the immanency of Death is a spur to supraliminal consciousness, and a path to the Higher Self. Tho the Higher Self is free, it does not come free.

-Werbinox

Great? Or Not So Great?

A new round has begun in the culture war between "believers" and "non-believers" with the publishing of journalist Christopher Hitchens' book "God Is Not Great". A counter-attack by believers is already underway.

I could write a book on this subject, one that refutes both sides. But is another book what we really need? Will the problem be solved by books? Is "solving" it the real goal, or just the thrill of a good fight? As one who has written many an unkind word about religion, I also know that it will never be argued away, nor should it. Despite Mr. Hitchens assertion to the contrary, religion does not "poison everything". A lack of mental and emotional balance does.

Science is about power; the power to shape the material universe to our liking. All of science's attempts to "understand" the universe are a preliminary to trying to change it in some way. Examine the radioactive and carbon dioxide pollution of the earth, and you will see that science contributes plenty of poisoning of its own. Religion is also about power, whether the power to change your own life, or to control the agenda of government, and other people thru it. Power itself is ambiguous. It is neither good or evil, but, depending on the character of those who wield it, it can effect good or evil results. It is proverbial that power corrupts. History shows us that powerlessness corrupts also. It is Balance that is required.

Is electricity great? It is at running our gadgets, but don’t stand in its path, for then it is not so great. Is food great? Without it we are all dead, but without knowledge and moderation you can end up obese and miserable and in the hospital, because some of it is not great. Is rain great? We sure need it, but if you lose everything in a flood you wont think it is so great. Drugs are great, but addiction is not. Speaking of addiction, oil is great, but when it is gone and the hangover sets in, many will curse it.

Is intelligence great? You betcha! You wouldn’t be where you are right now without it. That may be good or bad. That's my point. It depends on the character that possesses it. A well-balanced person can wield intelligence for enormous benefit. An unstable person can wield it for destruction. Intelligence is power, and power in the right or wrong hands makes all the difference.

Is God great? What God are we talking about? There have been too many versions to count. Actually, it does not matter. A belief in itself is ambiguous. No theory of God can make a sane person become insane, or an irrational person become rational. Beliefs reflect the person who holds them. Good mental health refutes a violent approach to religion, and bad mental health can use any idea to justify mayhem and murder. Our culture does not so much face a choice between science or religion, but a choice between good and bad mental health.

What constitutes good mental health? With that question the debate can really begin. And as always, whether you work with science or religion or both, the primary directive remains the same: Know Thyself!

-Werbinox

Black Magic Paralells with Nietzschean Philosophy

In my recent post “Social Alchemy in Charleston”, I ended with the following paragraph:

“The Adept magician infuses his life with meaning. Most people will look at this sentence and immediately think that they do it, too. This is true, but they are not conscious of the extent to which they do it, nor of the extent to which they CAN do it. A Magician works to become more conscious of how exactly he infuses his life with meaning, and from this knowledge he works to gain a greater conscious control of how he purposefully does it. To recognize the interconnectedness of meaning in my life, to see how I create it, and to gain the control to extend it to greater depths and heights – to the point of becoming the conscious God of my own universe – is the true goal of magic.”

I have just today realized how this idea relates to a useful understanding of the Death of God, Nihilism, and the Ubermensch in Nietzschean philosophy. Furthermore, it touches upon an essential difference between the Right Hand and the Left Hand Path.

The Hebraic culture that has given us the Old Testament has left its mark on western history and culture in many ways, not the least of which is the idea that the world is “good” because God, the ostensible creator, said that it was. If God is good, then the world he created is good, too…but only because he created it. It is not always spoken of, but this view leaves us with a world and life whose meaning is entirely contingent upon its “singular” creator and his supposedly “good” nature. If you remove the creator from this equation, you remove the basis of value the world previously obtained from it…and the only basis of value many people have ever consciously known.

Nietzsche foresaw that this religious interpretation of life, which he himself dedicated his life to demolishing, must eventually fall if human beings were to not only survive, but to rise to the heights of which we are potentially capable. But if / when it falls, what shall take its place as a basis of value for human life? Nietzsche experienced this question as the yawning abyss before the fate of humankind, and his attempt to answer it drove his entire thinking & writing career, albeit with mixed results depending upon your interpretation of his work.

Altho it has been interpreted in many different ways, the “Death of God” represents the collapse of the world-view that depends upon an external God, specifically the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God, to give life and the universe meaning and value. As all systems of value that are built upon religions of revelation and “supernaturalism” give way under the weight of their own untenability, a condition called Nihilism – life reduced to zero value – may threaten. On the one hand, the Death of God as Nietzsche conceived it can represent one of the highest points of liberation in human history, yet on the other hand it can be the most horrible and frightening event for countless people who have never understood the world and life in any other way. We can see examples of this dilemma in people who intellectually reject RHP religious views, yet who continue to unconsciously cling to them emotionally. This torn and neurotic condition may cause them to have generally cynical and / or bitter attitudes (life sucks and we’re all fucked, etc) and may even lead them to justify the worst atrocities…taking the “Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted” ethic to its most destructive extreme.

As a relevant aside, the extent of the “Death of God” as a psychological / cultural event is debatable. Europe today is, perhaps, in one of its most un-religious periods ever, Christianity- wise. The same cannot be said for America.

Nietzsche proclaimed the Death of God first in “The Joyful Science”, and then more famously in “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”. The Nihilism that would be a result of the Death of God was written about extensively in his posthumously published notebooks grouped together under the title “The Will to Power”. In this book he writes that Nihilism can be an expression of weakness as well as strength; weakness in that one may be too exhausted to believe in anything, or to posit meaning for oneself; strength in that one may be strong enough to create their own value, and therefore will sweep away older traditional forms that stand in the way, and which are no longer relevant. This he called the “pessimism of strength”.

If a civilization that bases its sense of value and meaning on an external, RHP religion / mythology were to lose that basis, chaos would follow as people split apart into different groups to fight over what the new basis of shared meaning will be. This is where the Ubermensch, or “Overman”, steps into the picture as a contrast. The “pessimism of strength” paves the way for the Ubermensch, for he, as a mythological symbol of what a truly evolved Being can become, needs no external basis for his sense of value, whether it be God, Devil, Culture, Law, or Moral World Order. The Ubermensch infuses the world with meaning from his / her own inner plenitude which overflows like a fountain, and is directed by an awesome self-mastery that utilizes irrational and self-destructive impulses for conscious purposes. The Ubermensch exalts his / her own Will to Power as the basis of value, and therefore does not need any external God / religion / or mythology to base his / her existence upon.

Life is good because I am powerful. Power is self-overcoming and self-mastery. Self-overcoming and Self-mastery is good, and all that comes from it is good. Life is therefore good because I am powerful. I infuse my experience of life with my self-mastery and sovereignty. This is an expression of Noble Values as Nietzsche, and not just Nietzsche, defines them. Slave values, conversely, see the self as weak and the world as bad, and accordingly search for (and create) a “master” to which they, and all others, are supposed to bow to and obey. This is why RHP religions so often speak of service, and make of it a virtue unto itself.

Within the RHP and LHP dichotomy, one can say that the Ubermensch represents a complete transcendence of the source of the RHP within the heart and mind, and symbolizes a kind of ultimate blossoming of the LHP in flesh, blood, and psyche. The Ubermensch is a Lord of the Left Hand Path taken to its highest conceptual power.

Here I return to the point of the paragraph I began with. The ability of the Black Magician to infuse his / her life with meaning, and to gain an increasingly conscious control of this ability, is no small matter, but is in some ways the whole matter! It touches the very heart of what makes the LHP possible.

-Werbinox

Wizard on a Mountaintop: Thought that is Power

“…the general similarity of psychic processes in all individuals must be based on an equally general and impersonal principle that conforms to law, just as the instinct manifesting itself in the individual is only the partial manifestation of an instinctual substrate common to all men.”

- Carl Jung (Phenomenology of the Self)

Just because certain desires, impulses, and thoughts are within me does not mean that they ARE ME. Besides the general accretions of societal contamination that are, to varying degrees, common to all as aggregates in the ego-persona, these various desires, impulses, and thoughts may also just be a part of my genetic and / or archetypal heritage as a sentient biological being. Properly understood, what I refer to as “I” is a particular kind of awareness and activity within the energetic and populous territory of my Subjective Universe. “I” am the coordinator of my consciousness. “I” am the Director. “I” am the living awareness of my own thought. “I” am the power and command within my own Awareness.

Utilizing the power of imagery, I can view my mind as a clear blue, infinite sky. The different types of clouds that drift across it, either randomly or within a current, are thoughts, impulses, feelings, and desires. These clouds are, in essence, typical to any world / mind, and are not necessarily unique to my own psyche. Formerly I identified myself with every cloud and atmospheric disturbance that drifted across my sky. Every cold front and storm system of emotional and hormonal passion was “me”, and as a result I was extremely contradictory and complicated to myself. With time and self-observation, I began to see the possibility that these drifting clouds and weather patterns might be nothing more or less than my genetic / biological inheritance as a human being. With this perception I was able to depersonalize the forces in my psyche that had so confounded me in the past, and begin the work of distinguishing what “I” was amidst and against all of them.

This is where I stand now: what I do not consciously determine or control is not me. These random and uncontrolled impulses, desires, and “thoughts” are energies within my mind and body; energies that I can either be confused and controlled by (becoming their victim by falsely identifying myself with them) or that I can learn to utilize and direct for my own consciously willed purpose of defining and creating what “I” am, and can be.

The mythologies of many cultures and traditions relate this message in different ways. The various unconscious and undetermined energies of my psyche, which are Subjective Universe analogues to Objective universe forces of nature which I also do not determine or control, are akin to what the ancient Egyptians called the Neteru, which were mythological personifications of the forces of nature. To the ancient Egyptians who lived before the takeover of the Osirian religion, only Set - alone amongst all of the Neteru - struggled against and overcame his instinctive programming to become a fully conscious, self-willed Being. Just as Shiva stands within the calm eye of the storm that is the dance of Shakti that swirls around him, I am the central and immovable point within my own consciousness. I am the power and command that directs my Attention, and what is my heart and “soul” if it is not my Attention?

I am the living Awareness that stands at the fulcrum of my consciousness; the living Awareness that can stand apart from the rest of my psyche, and can regard it from an “outside” and superior position.

Thought that is power issues forth from an identification of myself with that which consciously directs it. To the extent that my knowledge of myself as the directing agent within my consciousness is flabby and unexercised, I will be buffeted about by the winds of my mind and body. I will not think thoughts - they will think me. Passions inherent to mine and every other biological entity will cause me to dance to their tune. Thought that is power - a living Awareness of my consciousness - requires a disidentification with these “natural” energies, and a converse identification with the self-critical directing agent within my psyche – Set’s Gift of the Black Flame.

Nature does; it does not know. Because it does not know, nature does not know duality. The ability to regard my own psyche from a non-natural position gives me the ability to not only achieve self-awareness and self-knowledge, but to change and form myself according to a conscious will. Non-natural consciousness makes self-observation possible. It gives me the ability to know myself as a machine, and, with hard work, to possibly become something more than a machine – perhaps a god!

The wizard who stands on a mountaintop and conjures a storm so he can harness and direct its lightning for his own dark purpose is a popular traditional image of fantasy fiction, yet it is also an effective symbol for an internal process that takes place in the Quest for self-mastery and transformation. The clouds and storms of my mind and body are not me, but they are energies I can use to shape my Subjective Universe (and thru it the Objective universe) according to my conscious will. To the extent that I have achieved true self-knowledge and mastery, I can call up different passions and thoughts (powers) from my depths and heights without fear of being overwhelmed by them. I do this because I am the architect of my consciousness, and the sculptor of my Being. “I” am that wizard on the mountain peak at the Center of my psychocosm, calling up different monsters and mysteries so that I might make them more conscious and, putting them under my direction, increase the sheer realm of my Being.

I am not just the directing power within my consciousness. I also become those energies that I extend my conscious direction to. To direct the forces within me is not to control them totally and utterly. To hypothetically reduce them to complete control is to achieve a stasis that does not end my struggle, but rather turns it against me. Shiva does not enslave Shakti, He seduces Her with His own invincible implacability. That I effectively direct the action of fierce tigers that can turn on me and maul me at any time is my power, not my wasted “command” of slaves that have no will of their own. Magical power, like all power, is a Dance with partners that I consciously lead from a position of sustained superiority, not a song and dance routine with robots I have reduced to absolute subservience. Where is the power without tension and struggle?

-Werbinox