Gordon White, Pieces of Eight: Part 2, Aleister Crowley, Opposite Day |333|


I'm listening to this awesome awesome interview with Joseph Farrell that deals with many of the topics Alex is driving towards. He was also recently on THC. He'd be a great guest on Skeptiko! :)

Before I hit post, I searched Skeptiko for him and found Sci (of course :) )had already posted this:


Today we take on one of the largest philosophical mysteries; what Dr. Farrell refers to as the Topological Metaphor. In a roller coaster of a talk, we touch many aspects and derivatives of this fundamental structure of existence - historically, esoterically, theologically & politically. What is this fingerprint of Creation? Where do we find its traces? How is it best grasped through symbolism, numbers, music & geometry? Was it part of a prehistoric understanding? How does modern science relate to it? How is this open abundance system opposed to the closed scarcity system? And we learn about the first Unified Field Theory in known history!
 

I'm listening to this awesome awesome interview with Joseph Farrell that deals with many of the topics Alex is driving towards. He was also recently on THC. He'd be a great guest on Skeptiko! :)

Before I hit post, I searched Skeptiko for him and found Sci (of course :) )had already posted this:
Just listening to this reminded me of Stephen Phillips.... I can't even attempt to understand what he's going on about, but suspect he's on to something or a complete lunatic:

http://www.smphillips.8m.com/web.html

Cheers,
Bill
 

I'm listening to this awesome awesome interview with Joseph Farrell that deals with many of the topics Alex is driving towards. He was also recently on THC. He'd be a great guest on Skeptiko! :)

Before I hit post, I searched Skeptiko for him and found Sci (of course :) )had already posted this:
Havn't interview him. He has done some really interesting stuff... but I could never get past the Nazi Roswell thing???
 
Havn't interview him. He has done some really interesting stuff... but I could never get past the Nazi Roswell thing???

Yeah I don't know about that. He seems to be a good balance of well-researched alternative theories and ability to make interesting far-ranging connections as well as "high octane speculation" which he holds with an open hand of skepticism and is able to distinguish from the more solid stuff. He's also very interesting and fun to listen to and talks in a high-level analogical metaphorical way that I really dig.
 
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I'm listening to this awesome awesome interview with Joseph Farrell that deals with many of the topics Alex is driving towards. He was also recently on THC. He'd be a great guest on Skeptiko! :)

Before I hit post, I searched Skeptiko for him and found Sci (of course :) )had already posted this:
Ha! I just listened to him on THC this morning. I'll have to give this a listen. I love what he has to say about the American education system and the degradation of culture. I agree with a lot of what he had to say and if I could do it all over again, I'd homeschool my kids. Hopefully though, I've instilled in them a healthy sense of skepticism, to not swallow anything whole, and if something doesn't seem right, ask questions until you get answers.

The 9-11 stuff was interesting, some interesting links he's made there, but I'll admit he lost me a bit. It'll take a little homework to understand exactly what he was getting at.
 
Hi Alex,

I haven't read most of the replies to this episode, so forgive me if someone else has said this in their response or in previous responses to other episodes. First, let me admit that I am not a Crowley scholar. I'm not even a big fan (though I do have a copy of his "Book 4" sitting next to me on the shelf as I write this.) I may be mistaken, but I believe you are mischaracterizing the meaning behind his "Do What Thou Wilt." As I said, I'm not the biggest fan of Crowley, and I haven't cracked his book in probably 5 years. For the past two years or more I've mostly exclusively been reading texts on Vedanta and haven't looked at most of my books on magic(k) in some time. All the same, I think Crowley's intent on his "Do What Thou Wilt" was likely more in line with the spirit of Vedanta than the hedonism and nihilism you attribute to it, or to him. As I understand it, "Do What Thou Wilt", and Thelema particularly, is a charge to the aspirant to determine what his or her Will really is. That is, what one's genuine, true will is... as in "Know Thyself." Another statement that Crowley makes is, "Love is the Law, Love under Will." This suggests to me that Crowley recognized that, at the bottom of things, love is the ultimate value, even the only value. All the same, this charge is worthless until a person recognizes that it's true for him or her. Most of us have to go down a lot of dead ends and bang our heads against a lot of walls until we realize this.

As your guest stated, Crowley seems to be losing his prestige. Many of those who have written about him - even his apologists - acknowledge that he was willfully obscure and intentionally disguised much of his message at times in order to force his readers to think long and hard about what he really meant. (One of his contemporaries, and critics - Gurdjieff - did much the same thing in his own writings). This hasn't done Crowley any favors and, had he had the foresight to see how future generations would expect writers to say what they mean and mean what they say, I am sure he would have done things differently - even if only for his own legacy.

Anyway, just wanted to throw that out there. You've brought up the "Do What Thou Wilt" thing off-handedly numerous times throughout recent episodes and I think you ought to dig a little deeper on this.

Disclaimer: Crowley really did do a lot of questionable, extremely distasteful things. The above is not to be taken as a blanket defense of the man or of everything he did. Also, Ozzy Osbourne and you have both mispronounced his name. As Crowley said himself, it rhymes with "holy."
 
We hear about NDE experiences because those people make it back. How many people do you think there are who don't make it back? How many people do you think are on their surgery bed, they see Jesus, believe it's totally Jesus because of shiny lights or whatever, and then "Jesus" phases back to it's real form and rips them apart? Much like a trapdoor spider or fish that cover themselves in silt and waits for something small to swim by.

And then back in the operating room all they can really think is "well, the resuscitation didn't work." and leave it at that because they don't have any reason to think any different.

My guess is there's quite a lot of people that this happens to.

I know there's tons and tons of context missing here and it probably sounds utterly ridiculous. When I get time I'll try to clear as much up as possible.

I imagine you've already come across this before but, if not, perhaps you'd be interested in Googling about Robert Monroe's account of "loosh" in his book, Far Journeys. Pretty terrifying stuff. Here's a link to get you and anyone else who might be interested started: http://afterlife-knowledge.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1160433849/1
 
Hi Alex,

I haven't read most of the replies to this episode, so forgive me if someone else has said this in their response or in previous responses to other episodes. First, let me admit that I am not a Crowley scholar. I'm not even a big fan (though I do have a copy of his "Book 4" sitting next to me on the shelf as I write this.) I may be mistaken, but I believe you are mischaracterizing the meaning behind his "Do What Thou Wilt." As I said, I'm not the biggest fan of Crowley, and I haven't cracked his book in probably 5 years. For the past two years or more I've mostly exclusively been reading texts on Vedanta and haven't looked at most of my books on magic(k) in some time. All the same, I think Crowley's intent on his "Do What Thou Wilt" was likely more in line with the spirit of Vedanta than the hedonism and nihilism you attribute to it, or to him. As I understand it, "Do What Thou Wilt", and Thelema particularly, is a charge to the aspirant to determine what his or her Will really is. That is, what one's genuine, true will is... as in "Know Thyself." Another statement that Crowley makes is, "Love is the Law, Love under Will." This suggests to me that Crowley recognized that, at the bottom of things, love is the ultimate value, even the only value. All the same, this charge is worthless until a person recognizes that it's true for him or her. Most of us have to go down a lot of dead ends and bang our heads against a lot of walls until we realize this.

As your guest stated, Crowley seems to be losing his prestige. Many of those who have written about him - even his apologists - acknowledge that he was willfully obscure and intentionally disguised much of his message at times in order to force his readers to think long and hard about what he really meant. (One of his contemporaries, and critics - Gurdjieff - did much the same thing in his own writings). This hasn't done Crowley any favors and, had he had the foresight to see how future generations would expect writers to say what they mean and mean what they say, I am sure he would have done things differently - even if only for his own legacy.

Anyway, just wanted to throw that out there. You've brought up the "Do What Thou Wilt" thing off-handedly numerous times throughout recent episodes and I think you ought to dig a little deeper on this.

Disclaimer: Crowley really did do a lot of questionable, extremely distasteful things. The above is not to be taken as a blanket defense of the man or of everything he did. Also, Ozzy Osbourne and you have both mispronounced his name. As Crowley said himself, it rhymes with "holy."
thx for this.

Seems to me that Crowley (rhymes with holy... thx for that :)) was all about "do what thou wilt." I know some Crowley apologists will stitch together bits and pieces of his writings in his defense, but if we are to know him by his fruits the picture seems clear. He was a terrible husband, father, partner/lover/friend who seemed to go out of his way to bring misery and pain to everyone he came in contact with. He was overall wreck of a human being who squandered his crazy fundamentalist christian daddy's fortune and wound up a broke-ass drug addict living in a boarding house.

I get the iconoclasm... I get the rejection of orthodoxy, but I think he serves as a great example of how not to blaze your own spiritual path.
 
Just listened to these two related podcasts and enjoyed them immensely and I am keen to follow up on the other materials Alex mentioned
Thanks Alex

One thing that jumped out at me that I wanted to put my opinion about on the forum was the notion of morality as an objective quality or property of the universe
To me this notion is essentially the morality equivalent of panpsychism; and just as flawed and incoherent

In my view the processes of physics and nature (objective reality) are amoral
Objective physical reality has an inherent causal lawfulness; and this is the objective basis of the possibility of human science
That there is a way natural things are and work; and when we discover these ways or patterns in nature we can utilize that knowledge to create reliable technologies

Morality enters the physical universe (the earth realm etc) as the subjective awareness and mind or consciousness of incarnated spirits
Just as we bring consciousness to the physical universe, just so with morality

If there is an inherent lawfulness to morality it is hidden in the depths of the human psyche and spirit
A cardinal aspect of all human spiritual teachings and religions is precisely the development and expression of our inherent moral sense in the context of the physical realm
 
Nope; dualism
The realm is objectively material (whatever matter is - I dont define it)
Consciousness is non-material and not of this realm

Isn't it jumping the gun to insist consciousness is distinct from matter without defining matter nor indicating how matter & consciousness would interact. If consciousness is truly distinct from matter (whatever that is) how does the former influence the latter? (Not to mention how any laws would impose themselves on matter.)

Though admittedly one can note the Interaction Problem is only a piece of the larger mystery of causation, as noted by Lycan (Giving Dualism Its Due) & Tallis (The Strange Idea that What Happens has to be Made to Happen.)

Still, it feels the better solutions come from acknowledging an underlying commonality between Mind & Matter whether that's Idealism, Neutral Monism, Panpsychism, Transcendental Materialism, etc...though I would agree - as David Bailey has noted - dualism works well as a functional description of what's going based on current understanding.
 
.though I would agree - as David Bailey has noted - dualism works well as a functional description of what's going based on current understanding.
I think I argue a bit more than that - science can't really take a huge change of paradigm - it has to change a step at a time. Dualism accommodates a lot of phenomena that materialism can't, and yet it still provides some sort of framework. Idealism - as it is conceived right now - can easily degenerate into "anything is possible - the source only needs to think it!".

David
 
I think I argue a bit more than that - science can't really take a huge change of paradigm - it has to change a step at a time. Dualism accommodates a lot of phenomena that materialism can't, and yet it still provides some sort of framework. Idealism - as it is conceived right now - can easily degenerate into "anything is possible - the source only needs to think it!".

David

Though, AFAICTell, dualism is more seen as the enemy by academia?

So not sure how promoting dualism is going ease anyone away from materialism? I suspect panpsychism and neutral monism are better in that regard, though I'd agree Idealism is going to have at least a hard a time as dualism in Western STEM academia.
 
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