Intellectual and Mystical Approaches to Practice

 Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

One thing that marks out Thelema and related occult 'scenes' these days is the heavy slant towards a sort of intellectualism, where the mystical or spiritual aspects of practice get replaced by a sort of sophistry around unprovable ideas and dogmas, or else, in the case of thelema for example, endless speculation about this or that aspect of Aleister Crowley's life and writings. Now, don't get me wrong, I am not anti-intellectual by any stretch, I'm a scientist by training and know the value of concise and clear thinking. What does bother me is how the intellectual aspect of esoteric systems is expressed as a pissing contest and the mystical and devotional aspects of the spiritual path are forgotten about and the it becomes a combative pseudo-academic exercise largely derived from people arguing about which theory of magick is correct, which is ridiculous since they are all pretty much arbitrary, even the most antiquated and venerable, subject only to internal validation and unprovable one way or another.

These days my own practice is largely experiential, a direct confrontation with things as they are rather than as I would like them to be. Not rationalising or trying to fit my experience into a known system in an attempt to tame it and somehow cut it down to size, as if I could make life more digestible if I cut it into chunks and mixed it with a little salt to improve the taste. Over the last few years I have become more inclined to accept that some things don't necessarily fit into my view of the world, and it's not these things that need to change, but my mind that needs to expand to fit them. Magickal theory, of whatever stripe, has largely been discarded, quite simply because these models don't describe the universe accurately. How do I know this? Simple, when I act as if they were true I get no results, which is the same as when I act as if they are not true, so I have no sound reason to accept them. If one's practice is based on sound theory then the described results follow. I strongly feel that good intentions or wishful thinking are not sufficient to win over the laws of the universe. As Crowley put it, drinking sulfuric acid will kill you no matter how hard you believe it is water. Out of this mindset has arisen a sort of marriage of the mystical and the scientific attitude in my practice.

I can't help but feel that things would be a lot better in the world if we were more prepared to experience things directly, rather than through our preconceptions, not only in religious circles but in the realms of politics, society, and pretty much any other area of activity. I am currently working on using various computer models to describe ecological systems around soil-atmosphere carbon cycles, and fitting these to empirical data and assessing their accuracy gets me to thinking. My understanding is that while we use various theories and models to map what is happening in a system of process, these are only approximate, and though some are very accurate they only describe the process and there are always a great number of variables that we simply can't account for: factors infinite and unknown, if you will. The job of the modeler is to account for as many of these factors as possible to get the best fit for the model, so that the unknown factors have negligible influence. This requires a systematic approach that I enjoy, although I confess it also baffles me sometimes. But still, in the words of Monty Python; "it's only a model". 

Life is not compartmentalized, and these habits of thought leak into other areas. With the inner life something similar occurs, models are evaluated on how closely they fit the observed data, and those that do not fit get discarded. As I have already said, these metaphysical models are less subject to the validation which is an essential part of modelling physical and chemical systems such as those involved in climate change which are subject to replication and validation. We must however test our models empirically whenever possible, but often the unknown factors are not only external things, but internal to the observer. The tools are often, mis-calibrated, so to speak, and this can lead to all sorts of errors, from the functionally inconsequential to the drastically consequential. Therefore it is important that we have tools for periodic calibration of the mind and its perceptions, that, in short, we develop a reflective capacity, to develop a mind which, as the saying goes, "reflects the moon and a flying bird", while itself remaining unmoved.

In the spiritual life there is little peer review except (in the case of A.'.A.'.) your supervisor, and people can go for years adhering to a set of ideas that have no basis in reality, or by contrast, may float from idea to idea, never settling down to anything but shifting around. Getting more scattered and not really attaining anything, like a mystical bumble bee undecided on which flower to settle on, never gathering nectar as a result and in fact unable to discern good flowers from weeds. This flitting about is nearly as bad as obsessing over a false model, except that they are more liable to get no result than a bad result, and are likely to end up chucking the whole thing out without ever having committed to the path sufficiently to obtain even superficial results. Further, while A.'.A.'. aspirants have a supervisor, that individual should not be relied on as they will have their own bias and point of view. A good supervisor I think will want their students to learn how to think, not what to think.

Most of the things we make so much noise about, technical differences between different interpretations of the pentagram rituals for example, or insistence on this or that interpretation of the doctrine of the abyss are are orthodox, hilarious given the unknowable quality of the subject matter, are all too common. One branch of Thelema seeking a sort of orthodoxy has gone so far as to try to define the abyss in symbols and sypher, the joke having apparently been lost on them. It is no better than the catholic churches insistence on a specific interpretation of its own doctrines that serve only to alienate and sow division rather than unite, insisting that god is this and he isn't that, and that such and such an interpretation is erroneous on no more than the testimony of old books thrice translated, overcomplicating a message that should be luminously simple. Real spirituality I feel must move between these two frauds of rigid dogmatism on the one hand (that is, opinion based on the strength of the assertion in lieu of robust evidence), and a sort of wooly headed anything goes spirituality embracing any and every obscure and convoluted theory. Quite often it also seems, these two meet at their extremes and one mans bonkers theory becomes the basis on a religion and enshrined in an unassailable vault on no more merit than the absolute belief of the adherents. I have to be honest, this orthodox wing of thelema scares me, it is a sort of fundamentalism lite.  

When I first encountered the A.'.A.'. system, what attracted me to it was the slogan: "The method of science, the aim of religion". I realise now of course that this is not really the method of science at all, but the method of empiricism, which is to say trial and error. "Try all, and hold fast to that which is good", experiment, see what works and what doesn't. Understand theories, listen to people and read widely and deeply, try things, but always be ruthlessly honest about the process and be prepared to cast off even one's pet ideas if they should be demonstrated as unsound. All well and good, but easier said than done, many of us are not really well equipped with critical thinking skills at the outset and mistake the trappings of a scholarly approach for a genuinely empirical attitude, as if barking like a dog makes you a dog.

One really good and scientific way of approaching this problem is a method based on Bayes theorem, which was used by Alan Turing to crack the enigma code, applied to thinking. This method is one of probability, and essential for sound critical thinking, addressing ones biases and obtaining a more realistic view of things. We use probabilities because, as anybody knows, "only the Sith think in absolutes", that is to say, all or nothing, rigid terms, often associated with personality disorders. In Bayesian thinking, the first thing to be aware of is that this method is not black and white, we never actually have absolute certainty, which is as true of mathematical models as it is of life itself, there is always room for error, we must always admit the possibility of the factor infinite and unknown. We always weight the evidence, adjusted to account for previous knowledge of a situation, and critically, should new evidence arise we adjust our assumptions accordingly. To make an example:

Say you have a child, normally well behaved who is accused to stealing cookies from the cookie jar. When asked the child swears she didn't do it and it must have been her brother. As the parent, you know the child well enough that she likely didn't do it, yet nobody else was in the house at the time.

H stands for the hypothesis of innocence, this is possible but not very likely. Prior knowledge of the childs character and that of her brother, a known cookie lover, are the only evidence to support it and the excuse is rather cliché after all. These priors give weight to the hypothesis but not by much given the evidence, i.e., empty cookie jar and no other person around.

N stands for the null hypothesis, that is, the child did in fact steal the cookies and is covering her trail by blaming her brother. You think this is likely, but the evidence points towards the opposite hypothesis.

Which is more probably, H or N? For now we might say that N outweighs H in the scales of justice, so we must see N as being more probable. We might say that observable evidence outweigh the theoretical (H) which is based only on our priors, so we say that in all likelihood she did in fact steal the cookies. 

However, supposing later that day you call both children in for dinner, and the brother is uncharacteristically not hungry while the sister is famished as would be expected if H were true. Whilst you cannot prove anything categorically, this suggests that the brother has already eaten and that the sister is in fact telling the truth. While slight, this new evidence combined with our prior (that the sister doesn't usually steal cookies and the boy is a known cookie lover), must be taken into account. Not incontrovertible, but this does adjust the scales somewhat in her favour.

Take it another step: on doing the laundry later that night after the kids have gone to bed, you find cookie crumbs in the pockets of the brothers jeans, or even a crumpled packet, then this swings the scales back towards H. You then go back and update your probabilities accordingly. Note that this does not mean that N is impossible (she could have planted the evidence, but given her character this is unlikely), only that the evidence is now stacked in favour of the opposite hypothesis. In this situation it would seem much more reasonable to ground the brother and let the sister off the hook and we could respond with a much higher degree of certainty.

We can use this method of reasoning in daily life, we continually adjust, adapt, remember our priors, and remember that we are dealing with probabilities rather than absolutes. In magical and spiritual circles this type of thinking is often cast aside in favour of biased modes of cognition, our priors become what we previously believed (anchoring bias), backed up by what we would like to be true based on the model of reality we are superimposing over things, and these given undue weight. Anchoring bias is like holding down one side of the scales to simulate the weight of evidence where none in fact exists. If these methods were used more regularly and rigorously by occultists then there would be much lower prevalence of outlandish beliefs and the 'method of science' might actually start to be worthy of the name.

But what has this to do with mysticism? Everything. My own belief is that science and mysticism are twin pillars of the temple, not contraries. Mysticism based on bad science is empty speculation at best, fundamentalism, fanaticism and insanity at worst. Science without the broader, deeper view of mysticism, the implicit appreciation of the unity of all things, is mechanistic, utilitarian, the manipulation of dead things. On the other hand, all factors, known and unknown are part of the one equation, even the observer is part of the observed model and can change the outcome by the act of observation itself. Without a rigourous, scientific approach, mysticism tends to head in unverifiable directions and loose contact with the ground of reality, becoming truly an opiate of sorts, a way of avoiding reality and making real unity impossible. As an aikido practitioner I see this danger, people forget the martial aspect of the art (it has to work if it is to have meaning), and it becomes empty movement, a sort of choreographed dance. Or the opposite can happen and the art becomes a rather inefficient for or self defense based solely on faith that it will somehow work if needed, despite never being tested, and with none of the internal work and understanding of why the movements are as they are that really gives aikido life and meaning. In many instances it has ceased to be a budo in any real sense, and at the same time cannot really be called a form of self defense. 

As an A.'.A.'. aspirant, I see the same danger in initiates. Too many are hooked on conspiracy theories and abstract speculations for which the evidence is circumstantial at best and often so wildly unlikely that one wonders how anybody in their right mind can hold such beliefs. Of course it's not right to discount such things as occult knowledge and conspiracy theories out of hand however improbably they might seem (we know that real conspiracies do exist), but you can only go with the weight of evidence, scanty as it often is in areas deliberately concealed from view. I recently conducted a fairly thorough investigation of the origins of some of the more popular theories, they all seem to be related to the Montuak Project, ideas of ancient baby eating alien reptilians for example, all based on the testimony of one person, whose story has actually changed over the years, indicating a lack of consistency at best. These ideas have caught on and have been further developed by other more recent pundits all saying similar things and drawing on a wide variety of media and circumstantial ideas to demonstrate the point, I see it as the mental equivalent of pareidolia, a sort of Rorschach test that may reveal more about the holder of such beliefs than about the validity of the ideas themselves, plugging into our fears and fantasies in ways that trick the mind. It becomes a sort of mental parasite that restructures the thinking in a self-referential loop from which not many seem to emerge. Again we see how the inability to assess the value of information means that anything is allowed to take up residence in the mind, becoming in its turn a sort of fanaticism, which explains the extreme defensiveness common to both religious fanatics and conspiracy theorists. 

A more balanced way is possible, and essential for a healthy mental, emotional and spiritual life, we must learn to properly curate our minds if they are to become the book of Thoth rather than some Necronomicon of crazed ideas. I might for example, believe that I was Napoleon in a past life. This is fine, a datum that I enter into my logs as I might a vivid dream or recurring feeling, but if I wanted to verify it I would need to know things that only Napoleon would know, or produce some other evidence if I expect to be believed. In the absence of evidence I would be wiser to regard the feeling of being Napoleon as only a feeling, possibly meaningful but not likely to be actually true. If we are firm believers in reincarnation we might have a preexisting belief that sways our thinking, in that we already readily accept that such things happen all the time, but this itself may be biased thinking and we would need to examine this prior. Is it based on knowledge of on belief? Why do we believe it? Are we culturally or socially obliged to hold this belief? What would the world look like if it was true? What would the world look like if it was untrue?

The mystical aspect of all of this is then direct experience, authentic communion with the unknown, an unrelenting attitude of aiming to see the universe as it is, not as we would like it to be. This is an austere way of living, and not easy, but in my estimation is the only real way to address reality on her own terms and come to appreciate the magnificent simplicity of living in this world fully conscious, fully participating in the dance of life unconditionally and without reservation. Thus it is that over the years my practice has been stripped down to essentials, with many things cast by the wayside as not providing accurate models of reality, failing under the scrutiny of analysis. Each is a veil of Isis, beautiful in their own ways but essentially veils, meant to intoxicate and seduce, but otherwise a sideshow. Beyond this, the ground of being, Isis unveiled, the face of God which No Man can look upon and live, the Holy of Holies lies silent within the empty tabernacle. 

Love is the law, love under will.