Open Enlightenment

Free Will and Enlightenment

A short discourse on the nature of Will. Alternative title: Get Out Of Your Own Way!

Thanks to Tom and Brynjar for the questions.

Free Will and Enlightenment from Alan Chapman on Vimeo.

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Alone With Ghosts

Fancy a change from your usual meditation practice? Give this a try:

He who practices sadhana is supposed to go at night to a deserted house, a mountaintop, or a cemetery. There he must sit astride a corpse that has been laid on its belly, facing north. He must draw on the corpse’s back a graphic symbol (yantra), usually an inverted triangle, representing Shakti. At this point he evokes elementary forces by reciting mantras and by projecting prana in the corpse with the purpose of animating it… If the rite is successful, this force actually manifests itself in the corpse, whose head will then spin around and speak to the apprentice. The apprentice must be able to impose his will right away on the ‘ghost.’ This practice is considered terrifying and most dangerous. [1]

Maybe it’s not so easy in modern times to dig up a fresh corpse as it may once have been. But suppose that wasn’t the case and you had the means – are you up for it?

Even supposing the head doesn’t turn around and speak (which I imagine is quite likely), this would still be probably one of the most frightening experiences of your life. Even to reach the point where you had proved to yourself the spell didn’t work, you would have to master a massive whack of fear that it just might.

And if the corpse actually did turn around and speak? Well, then you’d have to master a whole whack more…

On Halloween this year I’ll be doing my own version of this ritual. I’ve arranged to spend the night all alone and in the dark in a very haunted place: The Old Police Cells Museum, in the basement of Brighton Town Hall.

Some of the cells have been renovated and turned into a museum, but the remainder are still derelict. They were in use throughout the 19th century, right up until the 1960s. A police chief was murdered there in the 1840s, and who knows how many poor souls died or languished down there in misery. No wonder the place has a reputation for being vigorously haunted.

I’ve wondered for a while about making a point of facing my fear and doing something like this, so I’ve decided to collect sponsorship for the challenge. The proceeds will be split between the museum and the local branch of a national mental health charity, Mind.

I’ll have a night-vision camera for company, but I’m not planning a ‘paranormal investigation’. Instead, I want to see how good my meditation skills are at dealing with fear.

I recently read an account by a paranormal investigator of his most frightening moment. He fled from a house after being physically attacked by a poltergeist:

As I stood in the back garden I contemplated my future in paranormal research. I thought I had been in acceptance that such phenomena existed but apparently not. I had been fooling myself! This was all a bit too real for me… [2]

Fear and reality go hand-in-hand. We can’t fear something unless it becomes real; fear of something that isn’t real we instead call ‘worry’ or ‘anxiety’, whereas – as in the example above – the more real something becomes (especially when it hasn’t quite been recognised before) then the more incredibly, mind-blowingly scary it suddenly is.

But where is ‘real’ when we look at it in our experience? A sensation of reality involves things becoming vivid and impactful. Yet if things are not vivid or impactful, is our experience therefore less or only partially real?

I don’t think so. If it were, then we couldn’t recognise non-vivid experiences as being real – and yet we do. Also, the opposite couldn’t happen either: an experience such as travelling at speed would never cease to be vivid – but of course, over time it does.

Reality is not a concrete quality that experiences do or don’t have, but a description of our relationship to experience. In sensations of threat, awe or powerlessness the causes of these feelings spring into vivid relief as being ‘out there’ and a strong sense of reality is initiated. But this feeling of reality is just the flip-side of the sense of self; generally, the less there is of self, the more reality – and vice versa. But the fact we can recognise and shift between either implies that both are there, bound up in each other. It’s the habit of drawing a dividing-line in different places that makes some experiences feel more real than others.

Now, I’m not saying that being punched in the back by a poltergeist didn’t happen to the paranormal investigator, or wasn’t real, or that he was chicken. But although you can change your circumstances (by running into the garden, for instance) there’s never anywhere to hide from experience. Everything in experience is always how it seems, whether that means things feel vague, or else that things are far too weird or vivid to bear. Fear is what arises when we assume we can somehow hide from experience. If we remain accepting of experience then fear will not arise – and if it does, then we should accept that too.

I’d say it wasn’t quite the case that our paranormal investigator didn’t believe poltergeists were real; he did, I’m sure, but it was the experience of being punched by one that drove him into the garden. Who can say they wouldn’t have reacted the same?

Will I be able to spend a night in haunted cells without cacking my pants? I doubt it. It’s going to take every gramme of willpower to keep me down there. Hopefully, the even worse prospect of letting down my sponsors will keep me standing firm(ish). But if I’m able to make use of them, there should be plenty of opportunities to work with my fear.

I’ve set up a new blog for this project, with more information, a diary of the build-up to the event, and various observations on the paranormal. Drop by if you’re interested – and wish me luck!

References

[1] Julius Evola, The Yoga of Power: Tantra, Shakti, and the Secret Way (Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 1992), p. 96.

[2] Steve Mera, ‘The Invisible Assailant’, Paranormal Magazine, 50 (August 2010), p. 51.

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Occult Experiments in the Home

This post is a shameless plug for my book on magick and the paranormal, Occult Experiments in the Home, which has recently been published.

The connection between paranormal phenomena, spirituality and enlightenment is a topic that has long been close to my heart. I never suspected that a childhood fascination with ghosts, UFOs and tarot cards would lead me to a serious engagement with Buddhism, meditation and the nature of reality.

Intuitively we recognise certain experiences as ‘paranormal’, yet the apparent causes of these experiences contradict rationality. Magick, meanwhile, is a set of practices that set out on purpose to bypass rationality, in order to shape experience according to the magician’s will. Magick – in other words – is a means of creating the paranormal.

Take any of the paranormal reality shows that are quite common on television these days. It’s pretty obvious that the presenters of these shows are hyping up situations in order to create the very type of experiences they supposedly set out to ‘investigate’. If only these shows weren’t so constrained by the demands of the entertainment industry, we’d see quite clearly that they are contemporary examples of magick in action.

Yet magick has uses that far exceed television shows. Magick intervenes directly in the processes that create reality. What we experience as reality is not seamless and given, but the product of a linked chain of processes. In Buddhism this chain is called ‘dependent origination‘ and is the subject of highly detailed exposition. For the purposes of practical magick, however, a far simpler model usually suffices: desire shapes belief, which shapes perception, which shapes reality.

For many magicians, reshaping reality is the extent of their practice and many of them end up spending their lives simply and repeatedly bending reality in order to realise their desires. But magick takes its place among the world’s genuine spiritual traditions when its principles are applied to desire itself, and to the notion of the self that we suppose is the source of those desires.

Every magician gains clear and first-hand experience of how reality is a construct, amenable to desire, but few take the logical next step to examine how desire and self are merely constructs too. One means of arriving at this understanding is meditation. In this way, every act of meditation is also an act of magick.

All the major spiritual traditions employ some form of meditation, and also some form of magick as well. Christianity, for instance, uses prayer as the basis of meditation, and various rituals – such as the Eucharist – to invoke the presence of God through magical means. The classic Buddhist texts on meditation, Visuddhimagga and Vimuttimagga, also include extensive discussion on cultivation of siddhis or ‘supernormal abilities’. Evidently, meditation and magick are inseparable. You cannot realise what reality truly is (or – rather – isn’t) without realising at the same time the extent to which it can be bent, manipulated and taken apart.

Every meditator practises magick and every person who has experienced enlightenment is a magician.

Magick can be a fast-track to enlightenment – or, at least, a valuable catalyst to the process, because it demonstrates so vividly to the practitioner the utterly fabricated nature of reality. Whenever we bypass or bend reality with magick, a paranormal experience is the result. A paranormal experience is the strongest possible assurance of and motivation toward the realisation that reality is all made up.

The spiritual traditions differ markedly in their attitudes towards the usefulness of the paranormal. Western magick, of course, places it right up front: first, take reality apart; next, the self. But the risk here is that we have so much fun bending the world to our desires that we never bother to look very hard at what we suppose is doing the bending.

Other traditions ban their students from any reality-bending altogether, until they’ve made headway first in understanding the nature of the self. The risk here is that by denying them access to magick, students never have the powerful experiences that can propel them over the hump of over-conceptualisation and give them the motivation and understanding required to examine the self effectively.

The paranormal plays an integral, subtle but easily overlooked role in the development of authentic spirituality. This is the basic theme I develop in the book and trace through a variety of types of paranormal experience. If this appeals to you, then I hope you might give it a look.

It’s available from Amazon US, Amazon UK, or from wherever you prefer to buy books.

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Magick

A life-long interest in the paranormal led me to occultism. From there it was a short hop into spiritual practice. And from there (conceptually, at least) only another step toward enlightenment.

The insights I’ve gained I owe to magick more than religion. Tarot cards, ouija boards, ghost-hunting and UFO-spotting, sorcery, invocation of spirits and demons – these have played a role in my enlightenment. Going to church, puja to Buddha, adhering to the eight-fold path – have played none.

Yet the difference between the eastern paths to enlightenment and the western magical tradition is not that great. The eastern traditions – Buddhism included – accept the validity of magick and sanction the development of magical abilities, but this is often treated as an extra and there are frequent cautions against acquiring magick at the expense of insight.

What we call ‘reality’ has no intrinsic existence. The lived experience of this understanding is awakening, but what follows even from the mere idea is a notion that ‘reality’ is, therefore, quite malleable stuff. To an extent, it can be bent and shaped at will. Reality is determined by our perception, and perception by our belief. Magick is an intervention at both these levels (and others besides) to alter reality. Meditation is an act of magick.

There is nothing like magick for gaining a first-hand experience of the insubstantiality of reality. The danger is that we may become so occupied with our bending and shaping that we never get around to realising how the bender and shaper too lacks any inherent existence.

Here lies the underlying tension. If we allow people the leeway to muck about with their reality, can they be trusted to progress beyond magick? But if we protect them with faith and rules from the temptations of anarchy, will they garner enough insight to understand the vital role of magick in seeing through the self?

People do not get enlightened by following rules or by proving an idea – not even their own. People get enlightened by having the courage to pick apart their experience and discover something that transcends all rules, ideas and experiences.

But the rule that there are no rules is a rule. And the rule that we should not make up rules is a rule. And the rule that there is no need for rules is a rule.

When people tell me I shouldn’t hold a certain view, or that I don’t need to hold any view, what I hear (all too often) is someone merely parroting an idea.

Probably it was an idea given to them by a teacher, intended to protect them from a pitfall further along the path. But now they’ve mistaken it for a reality, and although they’d do better to concentrate on taking it apart (after all, isn’t that what the teacher always says?), instead they’re waving it in other people’s faces.

The hard part is accepting that you’ve fallen into the trap of faith and religion. The remedy, however, is always magick.

Just keep waving that wand and eventually – poof – it’ll all disappear.

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New Developments

Things have certainly moved on in the last few weeks. In my last post I mentioned the desire to set up a bone fide Western tradition of enlightenment, and coupled with recently learning how to use the internet properly, I now have a more fleshed out business model for Open Enlightenment and my other projects.

Site #1: Open Enlightenment

This site has always been about discussing enlightenment in an honest and sane manner, with a view to presenting enlightenment to the public as a very real and natural human development. This project is very much a product of the times we live in, and in some sense is also reactionary, and so it is not the ideal basis upon which to build a tradition.

I have therefore separated out the teaching side of the equation (see below), leaving OE to its original aims. This also means that the conversation facilitated by OE can be opened up to many different viewpoints and traditions, without any ideological inconsistencies getting in the way.

I’m currently excited by how the internet and the growing New Marketing is effecting spirituality and what this means for the future of teaching enlightenment, and my work for OE will be dealing with this topic in the near future.

I see OE growing into a digital magazine with many contributors, a repository of resources (written, audio and video), and an events facilitator for many great cutting edge spirituality teachers. And yes, that centre is still a dream.

I would like to fund all of the above on a micro-patron basis. I have it on good authority that approximately 2% of an audience can be expected to take part, but I have every confidence that the audience for OE will grow dramatically over the coming years.

Teachings have been removed from this site, revised and will be presented on a new site shortly.

Site #2: The Baptist’s Head

I originally considered closing down this site after the original aim of the project was fulfilled: the completion of the Great Work by two contemporary magicians. Duncan has painstakingly edited, polished and indexed the best material from the BH into three books (one for each stage of the magical process), with the first two available soon (self-published – and not ‘on demand’ – too!).

But ending this project would be ending a conversation when there are a growing number of people who have only just joined in. The BH is a movement (even if it is small), not a just a website, and so the plan is to scale down the site to a blog, so that the conversation around Advanced Magick for Beginners and the three BH books can continue, as well as having a portal for new articles, videos (Scrying an enochian aethyr is coming soon!) and new titles.

Funding wise, the BH will continue as it always has, as a labour of love.

Site #3: Original Nature

This is the name of my teaching and tradition. I’ll be giving away all of the teachings and practices for free on the website, but I’ll be charging for group sessions, workshops and retreats. I’m currently looking in to setting up an online instruction course that offers a degree of one-on-one tuition, without incurring the usual costs of conference calls, or venue hire in meat space. I’ll also be doing a lot of work in the real world too, as well as having a book in the pipeline.

The pledge bank group mentioned to your right is the beginnings of an Original Nature meditation group in London.

The teaching includes everything I’ve learnt from every practice and tradition I’ve used personally, but presented in an easily understood and contemporary fashion. It will include work with daydreams, dreams, understanding how the mind is always meditating and how best to approach using it, working with Providence and synchronicity, and all within the context of a coherent psychology and philosophy.

But what really excites me is the ethical practice involved, and I would very much like to begin introducing the benefits of enlightenment into the real world, perhaps as a form of activism, working with the poor, prisoners or the sick and dying. I’m currently inspired by the ID project.

Moneywise, Original Nature will work on a membership basis, although on and offline events can be paid for individually. And of course, donations will always be welcome.

Site #4: My personal site

I thought it would be a good idea to have all of this stuff – plus everything I’ve ever done and will do – in one place. I’ll probably blog about anything that interests me that isn’t relevant to any of the above conversations here. No funding necessary.

New Marketing

I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that the internet is not just an online extension or presence for real-world services or products; it’s a completely new way of doing things. I’ll be exploring this a lot in the future on OE, but the general gist is that the internet is about genuine interest and honesty, and communication between everyone. The internet is about conversations, not advertising or products.

This realisation is responsible for everything I’ve outlined here, as well as the revelation that building whizz-bang sites with their own forums and stuff is a symptom of approaching the net as if it were just another advertising channel. All the sites are (or will be) in wordpress, which is free, and I intend on using the already available social media instead of trying to re-invent the wheel (you may have noticed a new social bookmarking function at the bottom of each thread to aid in the conversation).

Design for each site is coming, and thankfully I won’t be doing any of it! Woohoo!

Updates will be coming as soon as each site becomes available.

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Great Expectations

OE reader nic asked me to elaborate on my comments regarding the ‘bad time’ I had after enlightenment. So here it is.

A person who has yet to experience enlightenment simply cannot imagine what it is really like. But that doesn’t mean they can’t have good or bad expectations.

Expectations you might have before the event of enlightenment

Here are some of the expectations I came across in books, from teachers and other seekers during my journey to enlightenment, from when I first heard of the idea at about 15, up to the event itself at 29. Some I took very seriously, others less so:

• Enlightenment is the transformation into a God, and it only happens to very special people.
• Enlightenment will confer specific knowledge of everything, ever. The enlightened person knows what happened at the beginning of the universe, everything that is happening now, and everything that will happen right up to the very end. The enlightened person can provide an answer to all the Big Questions, because he/she knows God personally. He/she’s in on the plan.
• Enlightenment is the terrifying knowledge of Absolutely Nothing.
• Enlightenment is the death of the self while still alive.
• Enlightenment can only happen to men.
• Enlightenment is the complete destruction of the universe, right in front of your eyes.
• Enlightenment is a shocking, earth-shattering, cataclysmic, reality-tearing, mind-destroying, adrenalin-fueled mystical explosion.
• Enlightenment is the realisation that the world is an illusion, and so the enlightened person can walk through walls, fly, teleport, and perform all kinds of other miracles.
• Enlightenment is waking up from the dream of reality.
• Enlightenment is knowledge of heaven, hell, past lives, spiritual realms, Gods, Goddesses, dead people, angels, elves, pixies and ascended masters.
• Enlightenment is the end of suffering, pain, depression, despair, anger, hate, revulsion and disgust. It will heal my damaged self, and preserve who I am for ever in eternal bliss. I will never hurt again.
• Enlightenment is perpetual bliss.
• Enlightenment is an incomprehensible non-experience that promises nothing, and it is debatable if it actually has any benefit.

It didn’t take much experience with magick and meditation to learn that most of the expectations of enlightenment I had come across were outright fantasy or delusion. I rejected all of the above, and for a couple of years leading up to enlightenment, I invested mostly in the following:

• Enlightenment is non-dual awareness that happens after going through a process with predictable stages and milestones, including states, mystical experiences and ‘fruitions’ [peak experiences of the non-dual]. It is a result of the right kind of meditation or technique, it is achievable and the sooner I get enlightened the better!
• Enlightenment will radically alter my identity, and I will no longer suffer from fear of death, pain and the loss of my loved ones.
• Enlightenment will not provide answers to questions such as ‘What happens after death?’ and ‘Where do we go when we smoke DMT?’, but will confirm my suspicion that everything is predestined, and that the meaning of life is to get enlightened.
• Describing myself as ‘enlightened’ and talking about the fact that enlightenment actually exists is of benefit to humanity.
• If I could just figure out why I’m not yet enlightened, I can become enlightened.

There was also a secret expectation that I didn’t uncover until towards the end:

• Enlightenment – an event so incredible it cannot even be imagined – could be absolutely terrifying, and once it happens there is no stopping it. Will it feel like dying?

Leading up to enlightenment, sure enough I did experience a process made up of stages with certain milestones as a result of certain practices. I encountered visions, synchronicities, strange dreams, mystical states and experiences (light, vibration, bliss, energetic stuff), encounters with ‘spirits’ and ‘gods’, and other assorted weirdness. So some of my expectations seemed to be grounded in reality, but most of them were not.

What to expect during the event of enlightenment

The unexpected. I don’t mean bizarre things like a unicorn made of cheese riding a unicycle; I mean just don’t have any at all. It’s not worth it.

What to expect after the event of enlightenment

I can only tell you how it has been for me.

Nearly all of my expectations about enlightenment and what it meant were wrong in various different ways. I’ve already explained why believing you can ‘be enlightened’ is a problem, an I’ll explore some others at a later date.

Here’s what I didn’t expect:

After enlightenment, I was Whole; no longer separate, no longer a subject. I had the ability to see the radical truth and conceit was apparent everywhere. But a good deal of my mental activity was based on the ignorance that I was separate and a subject; a lifetime of habitual emotional and mental patterns built on a what was now an obvious lie. Eventually old habits die and new ones emerge; but it takes time, and watching these desperate emotions and thoughts endlessly cycle with no foundation in reality is simply not pleasant. This means I was Whole at a fundamental level, but experiencing bad things at a personal level. Imagine that!

The expectation of ‘getting enlightened’ was based on the same ignorance too; for three and a half years I had chased it, as if it was an object that I – as a subject – could own. So what happens when enlightenment occurs, but it is not an object? The ego continues to try and treat it as one and anxiety over losing enlightenment – supported by the ‘goal mentality’ – becomes inescapable, because it is simply ‘not there’ as an object. Cue alternating smug contentment with desperate recourse to meditative techniques to make sure it is ‘still there’. The goal mentality is a recipe for a vicious circle of imaginary ‘gaining’ and ‘losing’; and all within the context of Wholeness. This is ludicrous behaviour, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Do not think for one second that enlightenment marks a sudden change for every aspect of the self; you simply become aware of the truth, and eventually, over time and with a degree of conscious effort on your part, everything else might follow suit. Immediately after enlightenment, everything exists just as it did before: pain, hate, anger, frustration, fear, attachment, love, desire, want, need, stupidity, restlessness, discontent, and doubt; but again, all within the context of Wholeness.

You should be aware that it is still possible to re-enforce the old habits based on ignorance even after enlightenment, if you simply continue to indulge them. Imagine what the fact of the actual occurrence of enlightenment might do to an ego-maniac? (You don’t have to imagine: check out Andrew Cohen or ‘the Avataric Great Sage’, Adi Da Samraj.)

It is also possible to inaccurately describe or understand enlightenment, much like the millions of humans who believed the sun went around the earth even though they could see the truth right in front of their eyes. Experiencing the truth is not a guarantee of understanding it (as the pseudo-Advaitists demonstrate).

But here is the good news: over time, and with a conscious effort made to understand what is now experienced and what it actually means, the fruits born of a self built on ignorance, such as fear, hate, frustration, attachment, desire and doubt, are less and less produced as the ignorant self dies; and the production of the fruits of a person who abides in Wholeness, such as peace, contentment, bliss, happiness and acceptance, become the norm.

It is very rarely mentioned, but it takes a while – if at all in some cases – to personally reap the full benefits of enlightenment, and to understand it to an accurate degree. There is a good reason Ramana Maharshi spent 20 years on his own after his enlightenment, and a good reason he was so firmly ‘established’ in enlightenment when he began teaching.

Have you noticed how so many people who have experienced enlightenment have such different views on it? How some promote practice, others ban it? Some describe a process, others claim it’s instant? Some say we need to act on enlightenment, some that we can do anything we like? That’s because people – who have experienced enlightenment or not – are simply human. Some humans are stupid, some humans are illiterate, some humans are amateur philosophers, some humans are fantasists, some humans have an agenda (sex, money, power), some humans are confused, some humans are hopelessly indoctrinated, and enlightenment does not change this fact. It simply means that these people are what they have always been, except now it all occurs – you guessed it – in the context of Wholeness.

Enlightenment is the beginning of a new life, not the end of life itself; using the experience of enlightenment as an excuse to do nothing, on the grounds that the event confers absolute virtue, is like refusing to go to school, learn to read and write, make friends, get a job, find a lover, raise a family, use a hospital or see a shrink on the grounds that you were once born.

Enlightenment is the experience of Truth; but without understanding, it confers no virtue; without no virtue, there is no wisdom; and without no wisdom, of what use is enlightenment to humanity?

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10 ideas I’ve changed my mind about since becoming enlightened

Here are ten ideas I’ve changed my mind about since my enlightenment in March 2009:

1. The arrogance of psychological development

According to the Integral crowd, pluralism allowed us for the first time in history to recognise the existence of many perspectives. This puts the postmodernist at an advantage to any of the lower stages of psychological development, but at the cost of a narcissism based on moral superiority. Postmodernists can be infuriatingly patronising.

Due to the extreme equality of all values and viewpoints held by the postmodernist, any genuinely new perspective to develop after postmodernism must inescapably reintroduce the concepts of hierarchy, progress and values; the very same concepts championed by modernism. And so it is not uncommon for the post-postmodernist (or integralist) to be mistaken for a modernist by the postmodernist, and the sadly predictable patronising ensues (which is doubly frustrating when you’re more than familiar with postmodernism).

I’ve been on the wrong end of a patronising postmodernist a few times, and I’ve been so enranged and sickened by his or her unexamined smugness, that I’ve responded by informing them that, actually, I’m at a level of development above and beyond theirs, and so they’re just incapable of understanding me. Ha!

In other words, I’ve been arrogant and patronising myself. Rather than seeing this behaviour as inherently postmodern, I’m convinced the integral or spiral dynamics model of psychological development actually promotes arrogance. If this is the case, I don”t believe spiral dynamics is the best tool with which to approach the problems of any given perspective, or a profitable lens with which to view each other.

There is an assumption in the Integral view that developmental stages are in themselves arrogant and patronising, when in truth only humans have that honour.

2. Occultists need to be convinced that magick is about enlightenment

I’ve spent the last few years trying to rehabilitate magick as the Western tradition of enlightenment. I used to think magick was important in this respect, but I was missing the point. The Great Work has never been about the tradition of magick itself, and persisting in trying to convince occultists and everyone else of what magick is really about ultimately has nothing to do with enlightenment.

I always assumed magick was important for the Great Work; when in reality, enlightenment is not bound to any tradition whatsoever. Isn’t it time for a Western tradition accessible to a majority – instead of a minority – living in the 21^st Century?

3. Magick is different to other traditions of enlightenment

Reading contemporary Western Buddhist literature can easily lead to a very narrow expectation of the type and variety of meditative results; when compared to the reported interactions with non-human intelligences, dreams, oracles, visions and synchronicities of magick, a dry meditative practice can seem like a very boring path to enlightenment.

In the past I’ve emphasised the difference between magick and other less ‘exciting’ traditions, which carries with it the assumption that a straight up insight practice doesn’t engender the same variety and type of experience as, say, invoking the Holy Guardian Angel.

But this assumption has no basis in reality; after all, it is the process of enlightenment that is the root of the vast diversity of mystical and magical events, not any single technique or tradition. Perhaps it would be to everyones benefit if magicians talked more about the developmental stages of spiritual development, and Buddhists more regularly described their meetings with spirits, the occurrence of life-changing visions and the development of psychic powers.

4. Ritual and meditation are demonstrably synonymous

I’ve tried many times over the course of three years to show how the practice of ritual can lead to the same process of insight as straight-up meditation. The assumption here is that a technical explanation for how the two seemingly separate acts both engender the same result is directly related to helping others reach enlightenment; but it isn’t. (This is also tied up with convincing others that magick is an enlightenment tradition, as discussed above.)

So I’ve ditched the comparative, specific tradition-related practical approach that attempts to prove a technical synonymity, in favour of a simple symbol that helps to explain enlightenment on its own terms. It proves nothing, but I’m pretty sure it’s helpful.

5. Enlightenment is a science

Personal verification of the promise of enlightenment is to be expected of a genuine, spiritual practice. In order to stress my conviction in the reality of enlightenment (and magick), in the past I have jumped on the ‘deep science’ bandwagon and tried to argue that enlightenment is an injunction that brings forth data that can be verified by peers, thus making it a bone fide science.

But exactly how is arguing whether or not enlightenment is a science (in a specialised sense of the word that only a philosopher might be familiar with) in any way related to a). personally getting enlightened or b). helping others get enlightened? Is it not enough to say enlightenment requires no belief or blind faith, just the will to verify its reality for yourself?

God knows, I am not a scientist in the accepted sense of the word, and neither are the majority of people I know who have actively engaged with enlightenment. Of the scientists I do know, it wasn’t any notion of performing ‘deep science’ in order to prove anything that made them decide to take up insight practice or draw a circle on the floor in order to summon a spirit.

Attempting to prove that enlightenment is a science, as if this is necessary before we might delude ourselves, is simply ridiculous and missing the point.

6. The virtue of the language of the Relative and the Absolute

For me, enlightenment has always been about answering questions such as ‘why am I here?’ and ‘what is the true nature of reality?’ I think these are questions worth asking, and I strongly believe enlightenment provides the answers.

With so much extreme postmodernism floating around, especially within contemporary occult culture, any notion of pursuing the Big Questions required a reactionary language with which to discuss them. Absolute relativity is a myth completely divorced from reality, and it leaves the inquisitive lost in a sea of meaningless perspectives in a universe inherently devoid of value. It was necessary to re-introduce the idea of the Absolute itself, something outside of the individual, but that could be discovered by it. The language of the relative and the absolute has proved useful as a means of navigating away from the insanity of radical postmodernism.

However, such language is inescapably dualistic, and by this I mean it fosters a conceptual divide that doesn’t really exist. And if Absolute Relativity is a myth, why should we entertain the Relatively Absolute into the bargain? Furthermore, talk of the absolute only reinforces the human propensity to invest in the One Correct Answer or a Unified Theory of Everything. I fail to see how this is profitable.

I believe there is a much more beneficial way to approaching enlightenment that doesn’t require first challenging postmodernism, and then erecting a conceptual divide between enlightenment and everything else. I hope to post further developments in this direction in the near future, whilst resolutely refusing to try and prove anything, resolve contradictions or create the One Mighty and Complete System that Accounts for Everything.

7. Morality, psychology and insight are three separate lines of development

Daniel Ingram’s masterpiece Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha provided me with a pure insight model, divorced from the fantasies of many of the models of enlightenment taught by so many Buddhist traditions.

Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory showed me how development in insight can help the progression through the psychological stages of Spiral Dynamics, but that it was perfectly possible to be enlightened at the Traditional stage as it was to be at the Integral stage.

As a non-Buddhist, and being particularly inclined to Aleister Crowley’s Thelema, I wrote off the Buddha’s training in morality as just another example of religious dogma.

But my experience of the process of enlightenment has demonstrated that a). a pure insight model is impossible, b). enlightenment has its own unique psychological development and c). its own unique moral development too.

The ‘discarded’ models of enlightenment certainly require revisiting (I will be writing something up soon), and I hope in the future there will be some research into the psychological effects of enlightenment, with the creation of an accurate psychological developmental model specifically related to enlightenment. I’ve begun to address Enlightened Ethics, which I plan to develop into a method of conscious integration.

8. Enlightenment is not a matter for hard science

While I still believe it is absolutely wonderful that enlightenment is a personal, direct experience that must be verified and understood first hand, thereby invalidating any idea of a priesthood or church, I can no longer believe in strictly relegating hard science to the physical world, and enlightenment to the spiritual level of experience alone, based on the assumption that one has no business with the other. After all, in the final analysis enlightenment has nothing to do with the spiritual level of experience either. The freedom of enlightenment has demonstrated to me firsthand that my identity is not bound up in any of the levels of the Great Chain of Being, and so I no longer have an aversion to discussing the physiology of the enlightened brain for fear of becoming a materialist reductionist.

In fact, I wholeheartedly wish to encourage the notion that enlightenment is a question for science. Not because I believe enlightenment is nothing but a product of the brain, but because I believe the brain must necessarily demonstrate a correlate with the enlightened experience. My identity and perspective on the world is so radically different than it was beforehand that I find it hard to believe my brain is still the same as it was pre-enlightenment. The great thing is, there is still no real research in this area (yes, there have been studies of meditators brains and so on, but there is no reason to assume the test subjects were enlightened or even engaged with the process).

I’m really excited by what might be discovered by hard science in the realm of enlightenment. If only I had money to invest!

9. The Goal mentality

For three and a half years I had one goal in mind, and for three and a half years I struggled to practice the methods of enlightenment correctly and at the right volume in order to ensure success. And when I reached the goal, this investment had negative consequences in the form of frustration, helplessness and fear. Yes: immediately after enlightenment, I had a really shitty time. (I’ll go into this at a later date.)

Of course, early on I learned that after the first peak experience of enlightenment it isn’t you that ‘does’ the process of enlightenment, but the process that ‘does’ you. But I never consciously integrated this experience – I wasn’t even aware that I could or should! – and I persisted in re-enforcing a habit based on the belief that I must chase a goal that I would eventually achieve through my own doing (and the sooner, the better!).

So what happens when you suddenly gain the ability to see every deeply held false opinion you have about yourself and reality for what they are? What happens when you can suddenly and clearly perceive that virtually your entire being is habitually dedicated to a behaviour and way of thinking that is based on an incorrect assumption?

Just because you are enlightened, it doesn’t mean the habits and behaviours based on ignorance disappear over night. They must be replaced by new, enlightened behaviours.

In terms of enlightenment, the goal mentality sets you up for a big fall. While it is very important to realise that both a daily practice of active transcendence and a willing participation is required to attain the very real event of enlightenment, this should not translate to a gung-ho balls-to-the-wall chase for awakening. Such an attitude belongs to the beginner who has not yet had the personal insight – granted by the process of enlightenment – of realising there is much more to reality than the whims of the ego. It appears that without a conscious integration of this insight, the participant is left with a lot of pain and a good deal of work to do post-enlightenment.

10. Maps are always useful

I have personally found maps very useful in my development, as have many of my friends. I used to think everyone should be armed with as many maps and models as they could find, until I met a raw beginner who, ascribing to the goal mentality, had tied themselves up in knots trying to figure out where they ‘were’. Exactly how the headache and expended energy used in trying to find a resolution to this problem were helpful in his achieving enlightenment escapes me (as it turns out, he was slowly but surely making good progress, almost in despite of ‘where’ he thought he was at).

I came across maps just near the end of my first cycle through the stages of insight, and so I already had a good deal of the basic spiritual experiences under my belt. It was a simple question of aligning my experiences with a model to see what fit, and it wasn’t long before I could accurately judge my position. But would I have found maps and models as useful as a beginner with absolutely no experience whatsoever? Would I have memorised the language of the maps and frantically applied them to every little intellectually ‘insight’ or physical peculiarity that might arise during meditation, ending up wondering if i had just landed Naïve Enlightenment or if I was close to the end of the process by experiencing enlightenment in real time?

I can’t be sure, but what I am sure of is that models aren’t always good for everyone all of the time.

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The Diamond

Enlightenment is not an idea.

Do you believe Taoism is about Taoism, even when Laozi wrote ‘The Tao-Path is not the All-Tao. The Name is not the Thing named.’?

Do you believe Buddhism is about Buddhism, even when the Buddha taught the emptiness of all things?

Do you believe Philosophy is about Philosophy, even when Proclus reasoned the One that cannot be hypothesized?

Do you believe Sufism is about Sufism, even when Mohammed said ‘Allah, the One, independent and besought of all, He begets not nor is He begotten, and there is none like unto Him.’?

Do you believe Advaita is about Advaita, even when Shankara argued ‘Brahman is the only truth’?

Do you believe Magick is about Magick, even when Crowley proclaimed ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law!’?

To those who cannot see past ideas, all of these teachers and teachings appear contradictory and exclusive, each promoting their own absolute dogma at the expense of the others.

Yet how many teachers of enlightenment have taught that their teaching alone is true?

For those who cannot see past ideas, one facet amongst an infinite number is taken to be the whole diamond; and the discovery of the truth of another facet is taken to mean the existence of two diamonds, not One.

Yet how many teachers of enlightenment have taught the existence of many enlightenments, or that enlightenment can mean many things?

Unable to see past ideas, and conditioned to find the One Correct Answer, the beginner – seeing many facets of the diamond – cannot help but doubt if he has found the right teaching, to the extent he will either endlessly flirt with one tradition after another, or combat his uncertainty by convincing himself of the shortcomings of any method but the one chosen. The reflection of one facet is held superior to the reflections of the others because not only does conditioning demand it, but the practitioner has not yet seen the diamond personally.

But even the enlightened human may be guilty of persisting in the ignorance of trying to find the One Correct Answer, despite possessing the knowledge that the absolute truth is not an idea. When this happens, the enlightened human forgets the diamond all together when concerning himself with but one facet, and yet having knowledge of the diamond, will struggle in vein to raise up an amalgamation of various reflections to the status of the diamond itself. When this happens, the enlightened human may even deny the existence of the diamond by claiming only reflection exists. For such a confused human, enlightenment is not understood as knowledge of the Tao, Emptiness, the One, Allah, ‘not-two’; the illusion that the absolute is differentiated persists, almost as if enlightenment had never occurred. Of what use is enlightenment to such an individual if it is not or cannot be lived?

Can you admire the reflection of one facet without taking it for the whole diamond?

Can you appreciate the existence of many facets without denying the existence of the diamond itself?

Can you appreciate that no facet is the diamond itself, no matter how glorious, comprehensive or reasonably sound its reflection?

Can you hold within your gaze each and every facet, in all their relatively diverse, contradictory and paradoxical beauty, without trying to resolve them in to a single reflection?

Can you see past all reflections to the diamond itself?

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The Dialogue of Eris and Angelos

ANGELOS: Hello, Eris. I should’ve known I’d find you here. This is a great occult bookshop. They’ve got everything, haven’t they? Are you researching something specific?

ERIS: You know what I’m like, Angelos. I’m looking up some references for the latest paper I’ve written on the history of occultism since Aleister Crowley.

ANGELOS: Sounds interesting.

ERIS: Not as interesting as what I’ve heard about you. Someone told me you’d fallen in with a religious crowd and had turned all mystical.

ANGELOS: Well, kind of. You could say the work I’ve been doing recently has been an exploration of how mysticism sits with contemporary magick. One of the problems with chaos magic, when it appeared in the late seventies, is that it has left out the dimension of spiritual practice and development.

ERIS: Yes. Recently I’ve heard people on the magick scene using the term ‘results mysticism’ – which is quite a striking idea.

ANGELOS: Well, that wasn’t us, but yes. However, one of the ways in which we’ve gained results from mysticism is through the realisation that magical and esoteric traditions (if they are genuinely that, because many of them aren’t) are all pushing towards the same goal – namely, The Great Work, which in the eastern traditions is known as enlightenment.

ERIS: Woah – hang on there, Angelos! This idea that all traditions lead to the same goal is one that I have tremendous difficulties with. Each tradition presents a point of view that is socially determined. You know that, surely? Each is a product of the language used by a social group, and other cultural factors besides.

ANGELOS: Do you have to be anywhere in the next hour, Eris? I’m asking, because it’s probably going to take me a while to explain why we need to move on from ideas like that.

ERIS: Move on? That’s a little presumptuous! You have my full attention, Angelos. I only hope the rumours I’ve heard about you aren’t true.

ANGELOS: I’m touched by your concern. But consider this, Eris: if the esoteric traditions are purely socially determined and therefore incommensurate, then in what do you suppose lies the fundamental difference between ‘The Great Work’ in the western tradition and ‘enlightenment’ in the Eastern?

ERIS: Well, it seems to me quite clear. The Buddhist seeks the annihilation of the self (yes, I accept that that’s simplistically phrased, but this isn’t my main point) whereas, in the western tradition, the magician works through successive states of awareness, with the assistance of the Holy Guardian Angel. The Great Work aims toward the knowledge and conversation of the angel, and then union with it. Clearly these aims are not commensurate at all.

ANGELOS: I appreciate that they may not appear so on the surface. Yet in our explorations and practise we’ve discovered that the higher grades of the A∴A∴, which Crowley represented on the Tree of Life as Magister Templi (Binah), Magus (Chokmah) and Ipsissimus (Kether) are mappable with surprising consistency onto the stages of awakening described in the Theravada Buddhist model: sottapana (‘stream-enterer’), anagami (‘never-returner’) and arahat.

ERIS: But this shouldn’t surprise us, Angelos, because Crowley was influenced by the Buddhist model and incorporated it into his own.

ANGELOS: So couldn’t we say he incorporated the Buddhist model because he found it corresponded with his own experience so well? You’re right that my friends and I may have re-invented the wheel, but it’s not our aim to find new models, simply models that work. Should it trouble us, as long as our re-invented wheel takes us where we want to go?

ERIS: Yes, I think it should, because the idea that there is somewhere to go and that it’s the same place for everyone regardless of tradition is itself an idea that arose at a particular moment in history. It came from Helena Blavatsky, if you’d like to know. Before her, it was not generally supposed at all that different paths led to the same place.

ANGELOS: It still isn’t, as far as I can see. Eris, I wouldn’t impose on anyone that they should follow any path to anything. I’m skeptical of this view that no one had this idea before Blavatsky, but I want to avoid an argument over the historical precedence of ideas. What’s more striking is that it seems to me this is where you situate your notion of truth – in the circumstances of the origin of ideas. You’re talking like a historian! This is very odd to me, because we both practise magick, and surely you would not suggest this historical approach is necessary to practise magick successfully. If any practice yields a useful result, it’s not due to the circumstances of its origin, is it?

ERIS: Angelos, Truth (with a capital ‘T’) is something I would be at pains not to situate anywhere! As I said earlier, that which appears to us as truth is the product of socially-constructed cultural processes. Consider: science does not require a notion of truth in order to arrive at its findings. A neurologist, for instance, demonstrates that certain types of stimulation of the brain result in particular states or experiences without any recourse to their supposed ‘truth’ or ‘validity’ or ‘significance’. These states simply are. How they are interpreted by the person that experiences them – as ‘God’ perhaps, or a vision of an angel – is another question entirely. If you, on the other hand, assert that there is Truth, then you are going to have to explain in more detail what you consider it to be.

ANGELOS: Well, it’s ineffable and absolute.

ERIS: Beyond human experience, then?

ANGELOS: No, because it requires human consciousness in order for us to be aware of it. In fact, it arises only from our experience of it.

ERIS: But do you not see how this leads to awful problems? For instance: if you have no direct experience of the Holocaust, let’s say, then you’re asserting it’s not ‘true’; it didn’t happen.

ANGELOS: Come on, Eris! Give me some credit! The truth of the Holocaust lies in the experience of others, but their experience can enter into mine through my reading (for example) and their testimony. I’m not advocating solipsism here. And besides, a social-constructivist view doesn’t deal with this problem any better. Yet is it really a problem? Consider: where’s the sense in accusing an isolated tribe living in the Peruvian jungle of ‘holocaust denial’ if they should have the temerity to claim they know nothing of it?

ERIS: Yet you’re unable to say anything substantial about this absolute truth of yours, which – on the basis of only subjective evidence – you continue to assert.

ANGELOS: Because talking about it isn’t point. If truth lies in our experience of it, then it lies with experience and not words nor ideas. This is why it doesn’t matter in a wider sense what tradition or means of experiencing truth we chose to follow. For instance, our group has been comparing notes very closely with Buddhist practitioners, and we’re able to talk to each other across our respective traditions very easily, so long as we remain focused on the specific details of our practice and its experiential results.

ERIS: And as I said before, this is completely unsurprising because Crowley’s model was derived from Buddhism. You won’t be taken seriously by any of the authorities in these fields if you insist on a notion of absolute truth (which you still refuse to define) or your view that self-evident differences between the traditions are not significant.

ANGELOS: Eris, I’m astonished at how you can be satisfied by a notion of truth – or in your own terminology perhaps I ought to call it ‘a dominant view’ – that depends entirely on consensus. I look around this bookshop and I can see works by Crowley, Steiner, Blavatsky, etc., and I wonder at your concern that my views might place me ‘beyond the pale’ of academic orthodoxy because surely all of these writers received similar criticism in their life-time for holding similar views on truth to mine? I find it strange that you value these writers only from a historical perspective, rather than for what is to be gained from engaging in the practices they taught.

ERIS: But I do engage in those practices.

ANGELOS: You’ve sought the Knowledge and Communication of the Holy Guardian Angel?

ERIS: Yes.

ANGELOS: And you were successful?

ERIS: Yes. I experienced all kinds of visions, synchronicities and deep states of trance.

ANGELOS: And you experienced these as the actual presence of your angel?

ERIS: Well, yes and no. I experienced them as the angel, because that was what I had chosen to believe in at the time – what I had chosen to interpret these experiences as. But simultaneously I was aware that there were any number of ways in which these experiences could be interpreted, and if I’d chosen to follow a different tradition they would’ve taken on a different significance.

ANGELOS: You were using your belief as a tool, then, as a means of influencing your experiences?

ERIS: Yes – but surely you know this as well as I do. We both practise magick, and so we both accept – I imagine – that this is how magick works. Our reality is determined by our perception, and our perception in turn is shaped by our belief. Most of the time, our belief is unconscious or involuntary, and thus we can become prisoners of our own reality. Magick helps set us free from this.

ANGELOS: You mean, of course, it frees us because it enables us to intervene in the process by which our belief shapes our perception? I’m certainly in agreement with you on that!

ERIS: Yes. I choose a particular way of seeing things, and therefore my so-called ‘reality’ lines-up in that way, determined by my way of seeing. But if you agree with this, why do you insist on there being ‘Truth’, with that ludicrous capital T, when you’ve now admitted that what we call reality is after all a matter of belief?

ANGELOS: You’ve never directly perceived truth, then?

ERIS: No. But, as I’ve said, I’ve sometimes chosen to believe that certain things were true, with the conscious intention of changing my reality. So you’re telling me, now, that you have directly perceived it?

ANGELOS: No, I haven’t. Because truth is apprehended through knowledge, and knowledge is neither belief nor perception. It is outside either of those.

ERIS: That sounds like mystical word-play! If this Truth of yours can’t appear, how do you know it exists?

ANGELOS: Because we can know it. And this is not mystical at all, Eris, but in fact very ordinary. Consider: if we had to perceive something in order to know it, then how would we ever be able to plan for situations that weren’t immediately present to our awareness, or even hold abstract concepts in our minds?

ERIS: Then this truth of yours is simply your belief. Don’t you see? If it can’t be perceived, as you admit it can’t, then how else would you describe your clinging onto something that can’t be seen or spoken about, and which, therefore, has no discernible effect upon anyone, unless – like you – they choose to believe in it?

ANGELOS: Because it lies beyond perception. Up to this point we’re in agreement, it seems to me, and we are both happy to call ourselves magicians. Only it also seems to me that in being a magician it’s necessary to step beyond perception and into knowledge, if one wants to connect with that realm of absolute truth that is the aim of The Great Work.

ERIS: I understand what you’re saying, Angelos. However, that which is supposedly beyond perception cannot be perceived or experienced, and therefore can only be an object of supposition or belief. How can it be otherwise?

ANGELOS: You said a while back that we can become prisoners in our reality, because that reality is made of perceptions and beliefs?

ERIS: Yes. Unless we choose among our beliefs carefully.

ANGELOS: Or we choose to see beyond them altogether. Because isn’t our notion of what perception is merely derived also from our perception?

ERIS: Yes. And our reality is therefore malleable to a degree, because of that.

ANGELOS: Then what if our perception of our perceptions were inaccurate? What if, in actuality, our consciousness were arranged in such a way that what you described as ‘beyond perception’ were not really so, but only appeared as such due to a mistaken and involuntary belief about the nature of ourselves?

ERIS: Then I would ask how you could have possibly arrived at this knowledge, which – according to the circumstances you propose – would be impossible for us to arrive at.

ANGELOS: But it wouldn’t be impossible, not if we adopted as a practice the habit of making our perception the object of itself, and at the same time took care to protect this practice against influence from our mundane beliefs, on the one hand, nor allowed the results of our practice to solidify into anything we mistook for a concrete ‘reality’ on the other.

ERIS: I can see where you’re trying to take this! It sounds like the Buddhist technique of ‘insight’ meditation. But I can’t see how it bears any resemblance to the western magical tradition and the Holy Guardian Angel.

ANGELOS: The basic practice is the same in all traditions and it leads to an identical result. The ‘angel’ is another term for that ‘true self’ which I described as hidden from us by our habitual beliefs. This ‘true self’ is what the Buddhists term ‘no-self’, a deeper, actual level of consciousness that sees ‘beyond perception’ because it’s not limited by the way that our habitual false beliefs shape our everyday idea of what ‘self’ is.

ERIS: This still sounds to me simply a point of view. It’s the regurgitation of the ‘perennial philosophy’; it’s simply Blavatsky all over again.

ANGELOS: Come on, Eris. Let’s get out of this dusty bookshop and go and get a coffee somewhere. Without leaving behind ideas and turning around instead to examine whom you suppose is having them, it’s unlikely things will appear to you any other way.

ERIS: You’ve got a lot of work to do to convince me, Angelos. But if you’re buying, I might be persuaded to listen some more.

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