Aleister Crowley - Meditation.pdf - Occult Collection - nosvermeister

BOOK 4

by Aleister Crowley

PART I

MEDITATION

THE WAY OF ATTAINMENT OF GENIUS OR GODHEAD CONSIDERED

AS A DEVELOPMENT OF THE HUMAN BRAIN

Issued by order of

the GREAT WHITE

BROTHERHOOD

known as the A.'.A.'.

"Witness our Seal,"

N.'.'

"Praemonstrator-General"

{Diagram: A.'.A.'. seal}

PRELIMINARY REMARKS

EXISTENCE, as we know it, is full of sorrow. To mention only one minor point:

every man is a condemned criminal, only he does not know the date of his

execution. This is unpleasant for every man. Consequently every man does

everything possible to postpone the date, and would sacrifice anything that he

has if he could reverse the sentence.

Practically all religions and all philosophies have started thus crudely, by

promising their adherents some such reward as immortality.

No religion has failed hitherto by not promising enough; the present breaking

up of all religions is due to the fact that people have asked to see the

securities. Men have even renounced the important material advantages which a

well-organized religion may confer upon a State, rather than acquiesce in fraud

or falsehood, or even in any system which, if not proved guilty, is at least

unable to demonstrate its innocence.

Being more or less bankrupt, the best thing that we can do is to attack the

problem afresh without preconceived ideas. Let us begin by doubting every

statement. Let us find a way of subjecting every statement to the test of

experiment. Is there any truth at all in the claims of various religions? Let

us examine the question.

Our original difficulty will be due to the enormous wealth of our material.

To enter into a critical examination of all systems would be an unending task;

the cloud of witnesses is too great. Now each religion is equally positive; and

each demands faith. This we refuse in the absence of positive proof. But we

may usefully inquire whether there is not any one thing upon which all religions

have agreed: for, if so, it seems possible that it may be worthy of really

thorough consideration.

It is certainly not to be found in dogma. Even so simple an idea as that of

a supreme and eternal being is denied by a third of the human race. Legends of

miracle are perhaps universal, but these, in the absence of demonstrative proof,

are repugnant to common sense.

But what of the origin of religions? How is it that unproved assertion has

so frequently compelled the assent of all classes of mankind? Is not this a

miracle?

There is, however, one form of miracle which certainly happens, the influence

of the genius. There is no known analogy in Nature. One cannot even think of a

"super-dog" transforming the {7} world of dogs, whereas in the history of

mankind this happens with regularity and frequency. Now here are three "super-

men," all at loggerheads. What is there in common between Christ, Buddha, and

Mohammed? Is there any one point upon which all three are in accord?

No point of doctrine, no point of ethics, no theory of a "hereafter" do they

share, and yet in the history of their lives we find one identity amid many

diversities.

Buddha was born a Prince, and died a beggar.

Mohammed was born a beggar, and died a Prince.

Christ remained obscure until many years after his death.

Elaborate lives of each have been written by devotees, and there is one thing

common to all three -- an omission. We hear nothing of Christ between the ages

of twelve and thirty. Mohammed disappeared into a cave. Buddha left his

palace, and went for a long while into the desert.

Each of them, perfectly silent up to the time of the disappearance, came back

and immediately began to preach a new law.

This is so curious that it leaves us to inquire whether the histories of

other great teachers contradict or confirm.

Moses led a quiet life until his slaying of the Egyptian. He then flees into

the land of Midian, and we hear nothing of what he did there, yet immediately on

his return he turns the whole place upside down. Later on, too, he absents

himself on Mount Sinai for a few days, and comes back with the Tables of the Law

in his hand.

St. Paul (again), after his adventure on the road to Damascus, goes into the

desert of Arabia for many years, and on his return overturns the Roman Empire.

Even in the legends of savages we find the same thing universal; somebody who is

nobody in particular goes away for a longer or shorter period, and comes back as

the "great medicine man"; but nobody ever knows exactly what happened to him.

Making every possible deduction for fable and myth, we get this one

coincidence. A nobody goes away, and comes back a somebody. This is not to be

explained in any of the ordinary ways.

There is not the smallest ground for the contention that these were from the

start exceptional men. Mohammed would hardly have driven a camel until he was

thirty-five years old if he had possessed any talent or ambition. St. Paul had

much original talent; but he is the least of the five. Nor do they seem to have

possessed any of the usual materials of power, such as rank, fortune, or

influence.

Moses was rather a big man in Egypt when he left; he came back as a mere

stranger. {8}

Christ had not been to China and married the Emperor's daughter.

Mohammed had not been acquiring wealth and drilling soldiers.

Buddha had not been consolidating any religious organizations.

St. Paul had not been intriguing with an ambitious general.

Each came back poor; each came back alone.

What was the nature of their power? What happened to them in their absence?

History will not help us to solve the problem, for history is silent.

We have only the accounts given by the men themselves.

It would be very remarkable should we find that these accounts agree.

Of the great teachers we have mentioned Christ is silent; the other four tell

us something; some more, some less.

Buddha goes into details too elaborate to enter upon in this place; but the

gist of it is that in one way or another he got hold of the secret force of the

World and mastered it.

Of St. Paul's experiences, we have nothing but a casual illusion to his

having been "caught up into Heaven, and seen and heard things of which it was

not lawful to speak."

Mohammed speaks crudely of his having been "visited by the Angel Gabriel,"

who communicated things from "God."

Moses says that he "beheld God."

Diverse as these statements are at first sight, all agree in announcing an

experience of the class which fifty years ago would have been called

supernatural, to-day may be called spiritual, and fifty years hence will have a

proper name based on an understanding of the phenomenon which occurred.

Theorists have not been at a loss to explain; but they differ.

The Mohammedan insists that God is, and did really send Gabriel with messages

for Mohammed: but all others contradict him. And from the nature of the case

proof is impossible.

The lack of proof has been so severely felt by Christianity (and in a much

less degree by Islam) that fresh miracles have been manufactured almost daily to

support the tottering structure. Modern thought, rejecting these miracles, has

adopted theories involving epilepsy and madness. As if organization could

spring from disorganization! Even if epilepsy were the cause of these great

movements which have caused civilization after civilization to arise from

barbarism, it would merely form an argument for cultivating epilepsy.

Of course great men will never conform with the standards of little men, and

he whose mission it is to overturn the world can hardly escape the title of

revolutionary. The fads of a period always furnish terms of abuse. The fad of

Caiaphas was Judaism, and the Pharisees told him that Christ "blasphemed."

Pilate was a loyal Roman; to him {9} they accused Christ of "sedition." When

the Pope had all power it was necessary to prove an enemy a "heretic."

Advancing to-day towards a medical oligarchy, we try to prove that our opponents

are "insane," and (in a Puritan country) to attack their "morals." We should

then avoid all rhetoric, and try to investigate with perfect freedom from bias

the phenomena which occurred to these great leaders of mankind.

There is no difficulty in our assuming that these men themselves did not

understand clearly what happened to them. The only one who explains his system

thoroughly is Buddha, and Buddha is the only one that is not dogmatic. We may

also suppose that the others thought it inadvisable to explain too clearly to

their followers; St. Paul evidently took this line.

Our best document will therefore be the system of Buddha;<<footnote: We have

the documents of Hinduism, and of two Chinese systems. But Hinduism has no

single founder. Lao Tze is one of our best examples of a man who went away and

had a mysterious experience; perhaps the best of all examples, as his system is

the best of all systems. We have full details of his method of training in the

"Kh"ang "K"ang "K"ing, and elsewhere. But it is so little known that we shall

omit consideration of it in this popular account.>> but it is so complex that no

immediate summary will serve; and in the case of the others, if we have not the

accounts of the Masters, we have those of their immediate followers.

The methods advised by all these people have a startling resemblance to one

another. They recommend "virtue" (of various kinds), solitude, absence of

excitement, moderation in diet, and finally a practice which some call prayer

and some call meditation. (The former four may turn out on examination to be

merely conditions favourable to the last.)

On investigating what is meant by these two things, we find that they are

only one. For what is the state of either prayer or meditation? It is the

restraining of the mind to a single act, state, or thought. If we sit down

quietly and investigate the contents of our minds, we shall find that even at

the best of times the principal characteristics are wandering and distraction.

Any one who has had anything to do with children and untrained minds generally

knows that fixity of attention is never present, even when there is a large

amount of intelligence and good will.

If then we, with our well-trained minds, determine to control this wandering

thought, we shall find that we are fairly well able to keep the thoughts running

in a narrow channel, each thought linked to the last in a perfectly rational

manner; but if we attempt to stop this current we shall find that, so far from

succeeding, we shall merely bread down the banks of the channel. The mind will

overflow, and instead of a chain of thought we shall have a chaos of confused

images. {10}

This mental activity is so great, and seems so natural, that it is hard to

understand how any one first got the idea that it was a weakness and a nuisance.

Perhaps it was because in the more natural practice of "devotion," people found

that their thoughts interfered. In any case calm and self-control are to be

preferred to restlessness. Darwin in his study presents a marked contrast with

a monkey in a cage.

Generally speaking, the larger and stronger and more highly developed any

animal is, the less does it move about, and such movements as it does make are

slow and purposeful. Compare the ceaseless activity of bacteria with the

reasoned steadiness of the beaver; and except in the few animal communities

which are organized, such as bees, the greatest intelligence is shown by those

of solitary habits. This is so true of man that psychologists have been obliged

to treat of the mental state of crowds as if it were totally different in

quality from any state possible to an individual.

It is by freeing the mind from external influences, whether casual or

emotional, that it obtains power to see somewhat of the truth of things.

let us, however, continue our practice. Let us determine to be masters of

our minds. We shall then soon find what conditions are favourable.

There will be no need to persuade ourselves at great length that all external

influences are likely to be unfavourable. New faces, new scenes will disturb

us; even the new habits of life which we undertake for this very purpose of

controlling the mind will at first tend to upset it. Still, we must give up our

habit of eating too much, and follow the natural rule of only eating when we are

hungry, listening to the interior voice which tells us that we have had enough.

The same rule applies to sleep. We have determined to control our minds, and

so our time for meditation must take precedence of other hours.

We must fix times for practice, and make our feasts movable. In order to

test our progress, for we shall find that (as in all physiological matters)

meditation cannot be gauged by the feelings, we shall have a note-book and

pencil, and we shall also have a watch. We shall then endeavour to count how

often, during the first quarter of an hour, the mind breaks away from the idea

upon which it is determined to concentrate. We shall practice this twice daily;

and, as we go, experience will teach us which conditions are favourable and

which are not. Before we have been doing this for very long we are almost

certain to get impatient, and we shall find that we have to practice many other

things in order to assist us in our work. New problems will constantly arise

which must be faced, and solved.

For instance, we shall most assuredly find that we fidget. We shall {11}

discover that no position is comfortable, though we never noticed it before in

all our lives!

This difficulty has been solved by a practice called "Asana," which will be

described later on.

Memories of the events of the day will bother us; we must arrange our day so

that it is absolutely uneventful. Our minds will recall to us our hopes and

fears, our loves and hates, our ambitions, our envies, and many other emotions.

All these must be cut off. We must have absolutely no interest in life but that

of quieting our minds.

This is the object of the usual monastic vow of poverty, chastity, and

obedience. If you have no property, you have no care, nothing to be anxious

about; with chastity no other person to be anxious about, and to distract your

attention; while if you are vowed to obedience the question of what you are to

do no longer frets: you simply obey.

There are a great many other obstacles which you will discover as you go on,

and it is proposed to deal with these in turn. But let us pass by for the

moment to the point where you are nearing success.

In your early struggles you may have found it difficult to conquer sleep; and

you may have wandered so far from the object of your meditations without

noticing it, that the meditation has really been broken; but much later on, when

you feel that you are "getting quite good," you will be shocked to find a

complete oblivion of yourself and your surroundings. You will say: "Good

heavens! I must have been to sleep!" or else "What on earth was I meditating

upon?" or even "What was I doing?" "Where am I~" "Who am I?" or a mere wordless

bewilderment may daze you. This may alarm you, and your alarm will not be

lessened when you come to full consciousness, and reflect that you have actually

forgotten who you are and what your are doing!

This is only one of many adventures that may come to you; but it is one of

the most typical. By this time your hours of meditation will fill most of the

day, and you will probably be constantly having presentiments that something is

about to happen. You may also be terrified with the idea that your brain may be

giving way; but you will have learnt the real symptoms of mental fatigue, and

you will be careful to avoid them. They must be very carefully distinguished

from idleness!

At certain times you will feel as if there were a contest between the will

and the mind; at other times you may feel as if they were in harmony; but there

is a third state, to be distinguished from the latter feeling. It is the

certain sign of near success, the view-halloo. This is when the mind runs

naturally towards the object chosen, not as if in obedience to the will of the

owner of the mind, but as if directed by nothing at all, or by something

impersonal; as if it were falling by its own weight, and not being pushed down.

{12}

Almost always, the moment that one becomes conscious of this, it stops; and

the dreary old struggle between the cowboy will and the buckjumper mind begins

again.

Like every other physiological process, consciousness of it implies disorder

or disease.

In analysing the nature of this work of controlling the mind, the student

will appreciate without trouble the fact that two things are involved -- the

person seeing and the thing seen -- the person knowing and the thing known; and

he will come to regard this as the necessary condition of all consciousness. We

are too accustomed to assume to be facts things about which we have no real

right even to guess. We assume, for example, that the unconscious is the

torpid; and yet nothing is more certain than that bodily organs which are

functioning well do so in silence. The best sleep is dreamless. Even in the

case of games of skill our very best strokes are followed by the thought, "I

don't know how I did it;" and we cannot repeat those strokes at will. The

moment we begin to think consciously about a stroke we get "nervous," and are

lost.

In fact, there are three main classes of stroke; the bad stroke, which we

associate, and rightly, with wandering attention; the good stroke which we

associate, and rightly, with fixed attention; and the perfect stroke, which we

do not understand, but which is really caused by the habit of fixity of

Aleister Crowley - Meditation.pdf

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