"I suspect every human being is born with this veil-piercing capacity. Like consciousness itself, it’s a component of our innate meta-anatomy, as hereditable as any material property of our species. One way to describe it is as a kind of perceptual muscle; if we train this muscle a certain way, we can not only make good choices, but can learn to tell good stories about those choices."
This is so. And empirically observable if one puts the time in. (So is the existence of subtle bodies.) One of my teachers says that if he was held to one and only one practice, it would be meditation. Prayer would also suffice (but not the petitionary kind, rather ones that are more like the rosary ... I suspect, for the most part, the specific narrative in which the prayers are embedded is likely irrelevant). Regularity and discipline is key. It's like working out at the gym: the effects accrue over time. (Time!)
To fix the woes of this world, it would suffice to succeed in getting a critical mass to meditate or pray.
"To fix the woes of this world, it would suffice to succeed in getting a critical mass to meditate or pray."
I don't think I agree with this. Or I guess I'd say it's "necessary but not sufficient," I suppose. That's because there are evil prayers and evil rituals, as well as sinister insights to be gained beyond the Veil. Evil people meditate, petition and pray, they just do so to obtain a different (and ultimately destructive) result.
I see your point. However, consider that meditation and prayer always bring you closer to more subtle aspects of reality, so that in the long run, in a "statistical" sense (over many many souls), it moves the spiritual center of mass closer to God.
Another way of looking at this is to ask the question, how many people would change their ways if they had a more vivid sense of the totality of Being? Of course, some would not, and in fact some are committed to evil even after looking and working beyond the veil. But I believe most would, or at least a critical mass to make a difference.
In my original comment I excluded petitionary prayers and rituals for a reason: they are always about the ego's needs and wants. That doesn't automatically make them evil, and in fact I would even say that paying attention to the ego's needs is necessary as a matter of physical survival, but it doesn't move you closer to God, it's just a support.
Another great installment! Very much enjoying this series Mark and love how you have described the Veil, call out the materialists in their folly and generally try to give us a perspective that embraces both the temporal and eternal.
Thanks, Winston. I still need to comment thoroughly on your last several (excellent) pieces. Sorry, kinda got sidetracked (And as for the crypto wallet, could I give you an I.O.U? I'm a bit up against the wall myself, lately).
Man I totally get it in regards to catching up on other people's writing! I'm flat out myself and finding it a struggle to read, comment, and write my own stuff, while holding down my 'day jobs'. No pressure from me for any response from you - just stay focused on your writing, that's the important thing!
I don't actually have a crypto wallet so you are off the hook... for now ;-)
That's a relief. My shit is all tied up in FTT at the moment, anyway. There's this whiz kid named Sam Bankman Fraud or something, who promised me a 1000% annual ROI. Seems trustworthy, but I really ought to check in and see how it's going...
lol - I had a tinker on the platform for a while day trading. Wasn't a good enough chartist to actually make any money so ended up pulling out. Was a good looking platform - a shame it turned out the way it did. I've given up on crypto, it's not my financial saviour - hard assets and a God who owns everything is a better bet.
Phenomenal work. You have given shape to this utterly reprehensible delusion that has captured many (all?) of our fine institutional demigods. Whereby science, bastardized in form, is God. How remarkably smug to contend with, yet how cleverly disguised. Smoke and mirrors.
It is interesting how John Dee and his angelic language seemed to precipitate his downfall. More interesting, indeed telling, is the empire that followed after his....work. Fascinating story, and one which overlaps - linearly, to some bizarre degree - with the work of good ol’ AC. He, too, pierced the veil (or, at least, ended up in the belly of the Abyss as it were, cannot recall if he did get past the guardian). These workings do, indeed, wreck psychological harm if not total annihilation (as you referenced earlier with you-know-who in the desert).
Perhaps there is a reason for the uninitiated to not be welcomed guests at the round table. Such tools can be welded for good or for evil, and my gut tells me that evil begets evil as power begets power. We are indeed in a spiritual maelstrom, though I suspect the more evangelical bunch do subscribe to more of John Dee’s angelic prophecies than they would like to admit: namely, to usher in the apocalypse. Your writing is elucidating, for there is hope in understanding the machinery itself as to its inevitable un-doing. Thank you.
Thank you, Elizabeth. I agree that the capture is many, if not most or all (although "all" is incredibly hard to quantify).
"It is interesting how John Dee and his angelic language seemed to precipitate his downfall. More interesting, indeed telling, is the empire that followed after his....work. Fascinating story, and one which overlaps - linearly, to some bizarre degree - with the work of good ol’ AC."
Absolutely. Their journeys are echoes through local time. It isn't evil to seek truth; in a way that is the entire purpose of our design. But these quests are dangerous, on multiple levels of stratification. As I mentioned in an earlier comment, there are evil insights to be gleaned behind the veil, lies disguised as truths. I'd argue that it the primary utility of religion; an anchor to bind us near the shores of truth through regularity and community. Although, as you say, even that kind of structure can be corrupted.
I also agree that there is something disturbing about those who "pray for apocalypse," so to speak. There's a certain lack of humility to it, among other things. We don't actually know the shape of the battlefield. We have maps, but the actual territory is always different than we expect. I think the best we can hope for is to prepare ourselves for what may come, and do our best with the gifts we were given in the meantime. If that includes forging tools and weapons, so be it.
For sure. I am fortunate that my husband is immensely curious, and is able to point out the incredible number of synchronistic events that I tend to glaze over. Our conversation turned to hermetic philosophy and, moreover, the oft-repeated ad nauseum (yet so powerful) principality that “the mind is all”.
We do shape our reality, and for what it’s worth, feeding the egregore is more precarious than most (I suspect) realize. It’s one thing to bury our head in the sand and pretend so-and-so is not happening; it’s quite another to identify it behind the veil and not dwell nor surrender within its shadow.
As psychological-mind-shenanigans tend to scramble the truth within lies, merging of opposites, discernment is one of our greatest strengths. Those who get enmeshed in the woo are perhaps even more susceptible-- “on the night of the fight, you might feel a slight sting.. that’s pride, fucking with you.”
Thanks for the thoughtful response, Mark, and thank you highlighting the esoteric within the mundane throughout your work. It’s telling, and pertinent, and one in which I pray for: that humanity is so beautiful, life is so beautiful; we are not reducible to our parts, separate as they may seem, but the vast totality of all - collective karma, perhaps - that must find our inner peace to bring outer peace within ourselves but, much more importantly, within others. To disrobe the emperor, if he is still prideful enough to ‘think’ he is wearing clothes. ;)
Thanks, John. I understand what you mean. But I've come to believe that shock can be a tool of great use, particularly when the stakes are so high. This belief is thanks in part to Winston's excellent piece here:
That said, thanks for coming along with me for this ride. I can't promise there won't be more shocks along the way, but I can promise they will have the best intentions.
Yes, and many others of Luc's as well. I do mostly agree with his perspective on this. I think are differences are mostly semantic, though we may have some more important disagreements when it comes to manifestations versus symbols. I'm thinking those might bubble up in the next chapter, since I'm going to get very specific about the whole "incarnate" thing.
If I’m not mistaken, this is the divine purpose that can only be fulfilled by human endeavor:
“…because the work that generates Eru requires the solving of problems. In the case of love, it is the spiritual problem of Self and Other, and how to pierce the boundary between the two without losing the integrity or intelligibility of either. In the case of intellect, it is the material problems of space, density and other physical forces that limit our ability to love. These properties are mutually sustaining: one cannot adequately solve its problems without the other solving its own. Love and intellect are therefore not to be mistaken for distinct components of Eru, which is an indivisible unit representing the combination of both.”
If so, it becomes apparent why free will is essential; there is no love nor intellectual advancement without one’s making a conscious choice to take risk. As John Carter said, safety last!
Yes! I'm glad that idea shone through without having to spell it out directly. Our work is risky, dirty, dangerous and (ultimately) deadly. Literally nothing could be *real* without choices. Even the most elaborate clockwork would be functionally similar to a blank void. That's why the concept of raw determinism is back in force, and freedom in general is under attack.
Dec 5, 2022·edited Dec 5, 2022Liked by Mark Bisone
Seeing the veil language reminded me of one of my favorite albums that I hadn't listened to in years. It inspired me to pull it up and listen as I enjoyed this read. It was kind of a surreal experience tbh considering the inspiration for the album. A friend of some of the musicians in the band attempted suicide with morphine and went into a coma. In this coma, Cerpin Taxt fights an epic battle of good and evil against the Tremulants. Ultimately after awakening from the coma, the individual in question decides that he doesn't belong among the living, but on the other side of the veil and takes his own life, this time by jumping off a bridge. The penultimate song on the album is "Take the Veil, Cerpin Taxt" and it is what is playing as I finish typing this comment. If only he could have understood that his further artistic contributions to Eros were to be severed by that action he might have persevered. We have a lot of work to do. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8l7Ix-LfSBA
Depends on what you mean by "evolution," Felix. If we're talking about Eru work shaping more useful Eru-producing forms at multiple levels of stratification, sure. If we're talking about accidental life shaped by random mutation, that's one of the diabolical causal distortions I was referring to. In fact, that form of illogical Darwinian determinism might be the most destructive lie ever told
"most destructive lie ever told" yes, quite. In my view, a fruitful and internally consistent philosophy of life has to stand on creationism. I lean towards creation having occurred 4000-6000 years ago. The Eru work you refer to is likely speciation from the kinds that were on the Ark, that is, guided environmental adaptation producing the "variations on a theme" we see today in every family of animals and plants.
But it can't be. RANDOM mutation is the core of evolutionary theory. A random process cannot be a mechanism for anything. Even to speak of "mechanisms" is to speak of design.
There are, of course, mathematical definitions, of which I am extremely well familiar. But they skirt the issue. They describe, they do not cut to the essence. Even the Quantum Mechanicists cannot agree. The Copenhagen Interpretation just throws up its hands without trying to explain. And statisticians merely waive hands, explaining it away as variation external to the design of the study.
The best I can emulate it as a programmer is a variety of pseudo "random" methods (seeded or unseeded, lottery draw, etc.). It is indeed one of those mathematical concepts (like zero, or infinity) that is difficult to even begin to describe to oneself in satisfactory terms.
The arguments for random mutation are indefensibly insane, but that's because they're merely adjuncts meant to buttress the central postmodern thesis: people are machines, and can be treated as such.
“Frost had left the dining room a few minutes after Wither. He did not know where he was going or what he was about to do. For many years he had theoretically believed that all which appears in the mind as motive or intention is merely a by-product of what the body is doing. But for the last year or so – since he had been initiated – he had begun to taste as fact what he had long held as theory. Increasingly, his actions had been without motive. He did this and that, he said thus and thus, and did not know why. His mind was a mere spectator. He could not understand why that spectator should exist at all. He resented its existence, even while assuring himself that resentment also was merely a chemical phenomenon. The nearest thing to a human passion which still existed in him was a sort of cold fury against all who believed in the mind. There was no tolerating such an illusion. There were not, and must not be, such things as men. But never, until this evening, had he been quite so vividly aware that the body and its movements were the only reality, that the self which seemed to watch the body leaving the dining room and setting out for the chamber of the Head, was a nonentity. How infuriating that the body should have power thus to project a phantom self!”
“Perhaps worst of all, you get the destruction of medical science as a practical engine of Eru production. This tragic casualty of the war cannot be overstated. “
I have a couple of key points that differ from your perspective, which I will discuss as a feature on my 'stack (and of course I will include a link to this article). Your thinking and writing are rife with gems💎 that inspire me to get out of the kitchen and onto the writing pad (or typing platform, as it were).
"I suspect every human being is born with this veil-piercing capacity. Like consciousness itself, it’s a component of our innate meta-anatomy, as hereditable as any material property of our species. One way to describe it is as a kind of perceptual muscle; if we train this muscle a certain way, we can not only make good choices, but can learn to tell good stories about those choices."
This is so. And empirically observable if one puts the time in. (So is the existence of subtle bodies.) One of my teachers says that if he was held to one and only one practice, it would be meditation. Prayer would also suffice (but not the petitionary kind, rather ones that are more like the rosary ... I suspect, for the most part, the specific narrative in which the prayers are embedded is likely irrelevant). Regularity and discipline is key. It's like working out at the gym: the effects accrue over time. (Time!)
To fix the woes of this world, it would suffice to succeed in getting a critical mass to meditate or pray.
"To fix the woes of this world, it would suffice to succeed in getting a critical mass to meditate or pray."
I don't think I agree with this. Or I guess I'd say it's "necessary but not sufficient," I suppose. That's because there are evil prayers and evil rituals, as well as sinister insights to be gained beyond the Veil. Evil people meditate, petition and pray, they just do so to obtain a different (and ultimately destructive) result.
I see your point. However, consider that meditation and prayer always bring you closer to more subtle aspects of reality, so that in the long run, in a "statistical" sense (over many many souls), it moves the spiritual center of mass closer to God.
Another way of looking at this is to ask the question, how many people would change their ways if they had a more vivid sense of the totality of Being? Of course, some would not, and in fact some are committed to evil even after looking and working beyond the veil. But I believe most would, or at least a critical mass to make a difference.
In my original comment I excluded petitionary prayers and rituals for a reason: they are always about the ego's needs and wants. That doesn't automatically make them evil, and in fact I would even say that paying attention to the ego's needs is necessary as a matter of physical survival, but it doesn't move you closer to God, it's just a support.
Another great installment! Very much enjoying this series Mark and love how you have described the Veil, call out the materialists in their folly and generally try to give us a perspective that embraces both the temporal and eternal.
Looking forward to more.
Thanks, Winston. I still need to comment thoroughly on your last several (excellent) pieces. Sorry, kinda got sidetracked (And as for the crypto wallet, could I give you an I.O.U? I'm a bit up against the wall myself, lately).
Man I totally get it in regards to catching up on other people's writing! I'm flat out myself and finding it a struggle to read, comment, and write my own stuff, while holding down my 'day jobs'. No pressure from me for any response from you - just stay focused on your writing, that's the important thing!
I don't actually have a crypto wallet so you are off the hook... for now ;-)
That's a relief. My shit is all tied up in FTT at the moment, anyway. There's this whiz kid named Sam Bankman Fraud or something, who promised me a 1000% annual ROI. Seems trustworthy, but I really ought to check in and see how it's going...
lol - I had a tinker on the platform for a while day trading. Wasn't a good enough chartist to actually make any money so ended up pulling out. Was a good looking platform - a shame it turned out the way it did. I've given up on crypto, it's not my financial saviour - hard assets and a God who owns everything is a better bet.
Phenomenal work. You have given shape to this utterly reprehensible delusion that has captured many (all?) of our fine institutional demigods. Whereby science, bastardized in form, is God. How remarkably smug to contend with, yet how cleverly disguised. Smoke and mirrors.
It is interesting how John Dee and his angelic language seemed to precipitate his downfall. More interesting, indeed telling, is the empire that followed after his....work. Fascinating story, and one which overlaps - linearly, to some bizarre degree - with the work of good ol’ AC. He, too, pierced the veil (or, at least, ended up in the belly of the Abyss as it were, cannot recall if he did get past the guardian). These workings do, indeed, wreck psychological harm if not total annihilation (as you referenced earlier with you-know-who in the desert).
Perhaps there is a reason for the uninitiated to not be welcomed guests at the round table. Such tools can be welded for good or for evil, and my gut tells me that evil begets evil as power begets power. We are indeed in a spiritual maelstrom, though I suspect the more evangelical bunch do subscribe to more of John Dee’s angelic prophecies than they would like to admit: namely, to usher in the apocalypse. Your writing is elucidating, for there is hope in understanding the machinery itself as to its inevitable un-doing. Thank you.
Thank you, Elizabeth. I agree that the capture is many, if not most or all (although "all" is incredibly hard to quantify).
"It is interesting how John Dee and his angelic language seemed to precipitate his downfall. More interesting, indeed telling, is the empire that followed after his....work. Fascinating story, and one which overlaps - linearly, to some bizarre degree - with the work of good ol’ AC."
Absolutely. Their journeys are echoes through local time. It isn't evil to seek truth; in a way that is the entire purpose of our design. But these quests are dangerous, on multiple levels of stratification. As I mentioned in an earlier comment, there are evil insights to be gleaned behind the veil, lies disguised as truths. I'd argue that it the primary utility of religion; an anchor to bind us near the shores of truth through regularity and community. Although, as you say, even that kind of structure can be corrupted.
I also agree that there is something disturbing about those who "pray for apocalypse," so to speak. There's a certain lack of humility to it, among other things. We don't actually know the shape of the battlefield. We have maps, but the actual territory is always different than we expect. I think the best we can hope for is to prepare ourselves for what may come, and do our best with the gifts we were given in the meantime. If that includes forging tools and weapons, so be it.
For sure. I am fortunate that my husband is immensely curious, and is able to point out the incredible number of synchronistic events that I tend to glaze over. Our conversation turned to hermetic philosophy and, moreover, the oft-repeated ad nauseum (yet so powerful) principality that “the mind is all”.
We do shape our reality, and for what it’s worth, feeding the egregore is more precarious than most (I suspect) realize. It’s one thing to bury our head in the sand and pretend so-and-so is not happening; it’s quite another to identify it behind the veil and not dwell nor surrender within its shadow.
As psychological-mind-shenanigans tend to scramble the truth within lies, merging of opposites, discernment is one of our greatest strengths. Those who get enmeshed in the woo are perhaps even more susceptible-- “on the night of the fight, you might feel a slight sting.. that’s pride, fucking with you.”
Thanks for the thoughtful response, Mark, and thank you highlighting the esoteric within the mundane throughout your work. It’s telling, and pertinent, and one in which I pray for: that humanity is so beautiful, life is so beautiful; we are not reducible to our parts, separate as they may seem, but the vast totality of all - collective karma, perhaps - that must find our inner peace to bring outer peace within ourselves but, much more importantly, within others. To disrobe the emperor, if he is still prideful enough to ‘think’ he is wearing clothes. ;)
🤔
Although a more direct, editorial caption (warning) of the video would have saved ten minutes of WTH! But it did deliver a message.
Otherwise, thought provoking.
Thanks, John. I understand what you mean. But I've come to believe that shock can be a tool of great use, particularly when the stakes are so high. This belief is thanks in part to Winston's excellent piece here:
https://escapingmasspsychosis.substack.com/p/a-strong-delusion-14
That said, thanks for coming along with me for this ride. I can't promise there won't be more shocks along the way, but I can promise they will have the best intentions.
Mark, speaking of others who are circling the same issue, I assume you have read this recent post?
https://luctalks.substack.com/p/covid-and-the-strange-death-of-philosophy/
He pretty much calls out the existence of a true evil principle.
Yes, and many others of Luc's as well. I do mostly agree with his perspective on this. I think are differences are mostly semantic, though we may have some more important disagreements when it comes to manifestations versus symbols. I'm thinking those might bubble up in the next chapter, since I'm going to get very specific about the whole "incarnate" thing.
Agreed!
If I’m not mistaken, this is the divine purpose that can only be fulfilled by human endeavor:
“…because the work that generates Eru requires the solving of problems. In the case of love, it is the spiritual problem of Self and Other, and how to pierce the boundary between the two without losing the integrity or intelligibility of either. In the case of intellect, it is the material problems of space, density and other physical forces that limit our ability to love. These properties are mutually sustaining: one cannot adequately solve its problems without the other solving its own. Love and intellect are therefore not to be mistaken for distinct components of Eru, which is an indivisible unit representing the combination of both.”
I believe so, yes. Just a slightly different way of putting it, applied to my particular purpose in the army, I think.
If so, it becomes apparent why free will is essential; there is no love nor intellectual advancement without one’s making a conscious choice to take risk. As John Carter said, safety last!
Yes! I'm glad that idea shone through without having to spell it out directly. Our work is risky, dirty, dangerous and (ultimately) deadly. Literally nothing could be *real* without choices. Even the most elaborate clockwork would be functionally similar to a blank void. That's why the concept of raw determinism is back in force, and freedom in general is under attack.
Seeing the veil language reminded me of one of my favorite albums that I hadn't listened to in years. It inspired me to pull it up and listen as I enjoyed this read. It was kind of a surreal experience tbh considering the inspiration for the album. A friend of some of the musicians in the band attempted suicide with morphine and went into a coma. In this coma, Cerpin Taxt fights an epic battle of good and evil against the Tremulants. Ultimately after awakening from the coma, the individual in question decides that he doesn't belong among the living, but on the other side of the veil and takes his own life, this time by jumping off a bridge. The penultimate song on the album is "Take the Veil, Cerpin Taxt" and it is what is playing as I finish typing this comment. If only he could have understood that his further artistic contributions to Eros were to be severed by that action he might have persevered. We have a lot of work to do. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8l7Ix-LfSBA
Thanks Captain. Never heard the album, but I'll give it a listen. What's strange to me is that the hero's name is an anagram of "PAR extinct."
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8511202/
I'm sure that's just a coincidence (either that or the Mars Volta is up to speed on the latest NIH experiments in rat torture).
;-D
Do you favor creation or evolution, Mark? This is not some kind of a gotcha question. Genuinely curious.
Depends on what you mean by "evolution," Felix. If we're talking about Eru work shaping more useful Eru-producing forms at multiple levels of stratification, sure. If we're talking about accidental life shaped by random mutation, that's one of the diabolical causal distortions I was referring to. In fact, that form of illogical Darwinian determinism might be the most destructive lie ever told
"most destructive lie ever told" yes, quite. In my view, a fruitful and internally consistent philosophy of life has to stand on creationism. I lean towards creation having occurred 4000-6000 years ago. The Eru work you refer to is likely speciation from the kinds that were on the Ark, that is, guided environmental adaptation producing the "variations on a theme" we see today in every family of animals and plants.
If time does not exist as we think, then there is no distinction between the two. Evolution is merely the mechanism by which creation is manifest.
But it can't be. RANDOM mutation is the core of evolutionary theory. A random process cannot be a mechanism for anything. Even to speak of "mechanisms" is to speak of design.
Have you ever asked yourself what RANDOM means?
There are, of course, mathematical definitions, of which I am extremely well familiar. But they skirt the issue. They describe, they do not cut to the essence. Even the Quantum Mechanicists cannot agree. The Copenhagen Interpretation just throws up its hands without trying to explain. And statisticians merely waive hands, explaining it away as variation external to the design of the study.
The best I can emulate it as a programmer is a variety of pseudo "random" methods (seeded or unseeded, lottery draw, etc.). It is indeed one of those mathematical concepts (like zero, or infinity) that is difficult to even begin to describe to oneself in satisfactory terms.
This is correct. Have you read any of Winston Smith's "A Strong Delusion" series?
https://escapingmasspsychosis.substack.com/p/a-strong-delusion-10
The arguments for random mutation are indefensibly insane, but that's because they're merely adjuncts meant to buttress the central postmodern thesis: people are machines, and can be treated as such.
“Frost had left the dining room a few minutes after Wither. He did not know where he was going or what he was about to do. For many years he had theoretically believed that all which appears in the mind as motive or intention is merely a by-product of what the body is doing. But for the last year or so – since he had been initiated – he had begun to taste as fact what he had long held as theory. Increasingly, his actions had been without motive. He did this and that, he said thus and thus, and did not know why. His mind was a mere spectator. He could not understand why that spectator should exist at all. He resented its existence, even while assuring himself that resentment also was merely a chemical phenomenon. The nearest thing to a human passion which still existed in him was a sort of cold fury against all who believed in the mind. There was no tolerating such an illusion. There were not, and must not be, such things as men. But never, until this evening, had he been quite so vividly aware that the body and its movements were the only reality, that the self which seemed to watch the body leaving the dining room and setting out for the chamber of the Head, was a nonentity. How infuriating that the body should have power thus to project a phantom self!”
-That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis
“Perhaps worst of all, you get the destruction of medical science as a practical engine of Eru production. This tragic casualty of the war cannot be overstated. “
Well said, sir.
Bravo, mon ami! Cette pièce et épique!
I have a couple of key points that differ from your perspective, which I will discuss as a feature on my 'stack (and of course I will include a link to this article). Your thinking and writing are rife with gems💎 that inspire me to get out of the kitchen and onto the writing pad (or typing platform, as it were).
Wishing you well, as always.💖