Having been working through the A.'.A.'. system for most of a decade now I've gotten pretty familiar with most, if not all of the writings of Aleister Crowley's writings. As I have gone on, I have more and more branched out and explored areas of mysticism that Crowley never wrote much about, or at least only touched on briefly. Other things he seems to have completely missed, or else ignored. These omissions have largely carried over into the writings of his predecessors, who unsurprisingly follow similar veins of thought and arrive at similar conclusions. It has become the thing to try to emulate Crowley, to obtain his visions, his 'heights of ecstasy', and to understand the path in the way that he did. Along with Thelema as a system; a Victorian era occultism, Jungian psychology, dream analysis and other visionary experiences are a big part of the A.'.A.'. system, so they are important as a basis for a spiritual education of this type. However there comes a time when the book needs to close on these things, some distance gained, as a way of getting perspective and developing as a person along lines derived from ones karma, if you like, rather than the forced growth of a vine trained to a frame for the convenience of the gardener.
The more my own practice deepens, the more I realise that this stuff really is only the preliminaries of the spiritual life. The Neophyte is encouraged to work with astral and etheric forces. By doing so she opens up the doorway to Yesod via the path of Tau, and from there becomes a denizen of the astral realm, that of the instincts followed by an incursion into realm of the mind, of concepts and images, and at a deeper strata the realm of emotions and socio/sexual programming, in short the things which for many of us make up our personalities, who we are, or who we think ourselves to be.
The best way to view a mountain isn't from the summit, but from a distance. In terms of practice, a lot of what I do these days is less about climbing to the summit of who I am, but of getting sufficient distance from it to be able to appreciate it, both in itself and in relation to the landscape in which it sits. Thelema is very individualistic, as is modern western culture. The 'individual' takes centre stage in his or her own drama. Given the inevitability of death and the disintegration of the body, and with it the individual, this is vain worship of a false idol. Modern society all but forces this worship, making it the default position. We worship vapidity and temporariness and spirituality of all stripes teaches us to hope implicitly for an afterlife of some sort, a continuation of the individual after the death of the body, either by resurrection or reincarnation, both speculative at best, driven more by hope than knowledge. We focus so much on our individuality that we lose sight of our person-hood, as members of humanity, and the fact that we are social creatures who only really derive meaning in life from our relationships with others, a fact that should be more apparent now in these days of mass self-isolation where the importance of our connections is brought to the fore.
Even the wisdom of the ancients, from paganism to yoga and anything in between, are all drafted in to propagate the cult of the self. All point towards the improvement of the self, a becoming,...but becoming what? All change is a process, but a process is not necessarily an improvement. It strikes me that as individuals the only thing we are all undeniably becoming is rotten flesh in a casket, the very idea of becoming when married to the idea of the individual is doomed to failure, because it is founded on a delusion, it is to be married to a ghost.
Rather than becoming, and focusing on the individual, focusing on myself and MY path, perhaps it is better to simply observe the process of constant change. Increasingly my inclination is to just be, just exist with no special aim beyond the task before me. Birds sing, flowers open to the sun, the moon goes and returns in eternal cycles, this is True Will in action. As a biologist it is apparent to me that organic life is a constant cyclic dance, interacting with the minerals of the soil, the air around it, and all fueled ultimately by the sun or, in a very few cases, by the heat at the centre of the earth. In the Soto zen tradition the idea of becoming, linked to the idea of self, is seen as illusory, a fantasy that does nothing but compound our stuckness. The central practice of zen, meditation, is about sitting in quiet awareness as an expression of Buddha nature, not intent on becoming a Buddha, but simply existing. In Tai chi chuan the form in its intricate flowing movements is an expression of the Tao, Koichi Tohei taught that meditation is an expression of the universal mind, and the author of the Psalms writes: "Be still and see that I am God!"
This vision, that is no vision, since it reflects off of nothing, this voice that rings like the deepest silence. Light shines in darkness and the darkness does not comprehend, because the darkness is the 'individual', the ego and the mind which is opaque, not permeable to the light, and so does not comprehend it. The daily round of practice, meditation and mindfulness serve best now, like sinking into deep water, into sleep, like dying, "as an acid that eats steel, as a cancer that utterly corrupts the body, so am I unto the spirit of man!" Or, "And I said, Now have I begun: this is the change of the right hand of the most High". The rest is silence, and the eternal glimmer of distant stars.
Love is the law, love under will.
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