hackingthelema

Relevant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C4%81ja_yoga#Comparison_with...

We have ideas like biological taxonomies and genetics that provide a shared basis for cross-cultural understanding and exploration of universally relevant fields. “We need that for the deep end of spiritual experience,” he said. “What works as well in Riyadh, as Rome, as Rio, as rural Alabama? What’s the functional, scalable essence?”

That was the purpose comparative tools like correspondence charts[1] were intended for; Aleister Crowley and Allan Bennett put a bunch of effort of surveying all spiritual experience they could learn about, followed by tabulating it all and trying to pattern match. The result was a shared basis for cross-cultural understanding, though the actual form of it could be heavily criticised.

Advanced meditation for everyone?

“My hope is that ultimately, this work will contribute to bringing advanced meditation out of the monastery,” Sacchet said, describing its “incredible promise for moving beyond addressing mental health issues, toward helping people thrive.”

That was also Crowley's primary goal: to show that anyone at all could attain, and easily, while living a normal life, and thought that it would help them thrive. He stated this over and over again.

I love that we're finally making effort towards the thought he had, that

Diverse as these statements [on mystical experiences] 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. (Book 4, Part 1; 1911[2])

though it's 70 years later than he thought. I'd love to be involved in work like this, both as an occultist/experienced meditator, and as a computer scientist / software developer, though I don't know how to get involved. Maybe by contacting the EPRC listed? :)

May all attain!

[1] http://www.thelemapedia.org/index.php/Tree_of_Life:777

[2] https://sacred-texts.com/oto/aba/aba1.htm

Magick in Theory and Practice is 'part 3' to the 'Parts 1 & 2' of Book 4, and it is dense and hard to read. I wouldn't recommend MiTaP to most people. The compilation of letters you're thinking of is 'Magick Without Tears'[1].

Personally, I think Book 4, Part 1[2] is one of the best explanations of what Crowley was about. It's essentially an argument for meditation, and will be very familiar to anyone who has read Swami Vivekananda's Raja Yoga. It helps a lot that it was a collaboration between him and Mary d'Este Sturges rather than a solely 'Crowley' writing.

[1] https://hermetic.com/crowley/magick-without-tears/index

[2] https://www.sacred-texts.com/oto/aba/aba1.htm

Abandon guided meditations and audio-based meditations, and focus to a simple programme of breath-focus. You just:

1. sit quietly and comfortably

2. breathe through your nose

3. find the feeling of air moving in and out of your nose

4. observe that feeling of air

5. if your mind starts observing other thoughts instead of the breath feeling -- 'I have an itch', 'this sitting position is uncomfortable', 'what about my meeting tomorrow' -- you notice your observation has left the air-in-your-nose feeling, and you gently redirect it back to focusing on that instead of the thoughts.

6. Repeat. You'll slowly increase from 2-3 seconds of focus to minutes at a time.

3. Most importantly, unsurprisingly, I suck at it. I keep trying every now and then; maybe I'll give it another go :)

You're better off with 3-5 minutes daily, regularly, than with longer sessions sporadically. It's a matter of practice and getting the knack of concentration down. Slowly increase to 10-15 minutes a day over a month or two, and really focus on getting the technique mastered more than anything.

The book Mindfulness in Plain English is both available freely online, and my favourite guide to getting it right.

Are you saying this because you have aphantasia and this is your personal experience?

When you say 'you probably won’t visualize' do you mean completely internal/mental visualisations or are you including all sorts of hallucinogenic visualisations typically reported?

(I'm asking these because I have aphantasia and have been psychedelic/hallucination-curious, but still haven't given anything of the sort a try. I do engage with mystical practices, though, have had 'mystical visions' (which had actual no visual component!), and have been curious how psychedelics might compare.)

'Flanderization' as a term was on TV Tropes as early as 2006:

https://web.archive.org/web/20060512061148/https://tvtropes....

I might be misremembering, but I think fastmath was one of the flags explicitly warned against in the Gentoo manual.

It is, here: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/GCC_optimization#But_I_get_bett...

Notably, however, there can be ethical or sustainability issues with how incense resins are harvested, so being choosy about finding a seller may be worthwhile.

You can find it locally often enough, too. Look for 'occult' or 'new age' shops and if they don't have it in, they may be able to get it in from a reputable source. There are at least two shops local to me I know of where I can buy multiple varieties (if they exist) of frankincense, myrrh, dragon's blood, copal, and almost any other I've looked for.

sometimes carried a paperback book stuck in their back pocket

and one reason why we read more was that television was just not as good as it is today...

I feel like there's a little disconnect between these two statements. It's not that television is taking priority, it's that the times when people used to break out a book -- that they carried in their back pocket or purse! -- now break out their phones and engage with social media, or they check their work email, or respond to slack messages, or they get involved in texting, or they play some video game just to make the time go faster. I suppose some of them put in headphones and watch Netflix, but I don't see that often, to be honest.

The world has gotten so busy and defaulting to 'on' that no one feels they can default to reading a book, but you can. You just have to decide to carry a book and, instead of breaking out a phone at those times to stay connected, you just let yourself be disconnected, and you read a book. Or meditate.

That's how I go about my life, and frankly I don't understand why more people don't. I never use my phone unless it's an emergency. I get a lot more out of life meditating and reading books than checking my email, playing candy crush, and engaging with twitter.

Depends on the antidepressant, but SSRIs like Zoloft do suppress the effect. MAOIs, on the other hand, tend to increase the effect. I'm not sure about Wellbutrin.

There's some charts floating around about it on the internet: https://wiki.tripsit.me/wiki/Drug_combinations

Meditate: Literally train your mind to focus. It's going to the gym. Won't happen in a day, week, even month. Consistently do it and you'll eventually see progress.

Indeed! I'd add on -- keep in mind that this focus might be very fleeting at first. You might focus on your breath or mantra for one, maybe two repetitions... and that's it! You've already lost it. You barely made it two seconds and now your mind is drifting and you have to remind yourself to focus. You might've even been drifting or daydreaming for over a minute after only two seconds of focus. That is perfectly normal. It's ok to just try meditation for a couple to a few minutes at first until you get the technique down. You slowly increase how long you can meditate -- keeping one-pointed concentration on your focus -- from a couple seconds, to a few seconds, to minutes, etc. It's like training a muscle. It takes time and effort.

Resources to check out, available free online: The books Mindfulness in Plain English and Keeping the Breath in Mind and Lessons in Samadhi.

'Reliable and quick', in the sense that they will almost certainly have a psychoactive effect, sure, but reliable in the sense of 'I can tap into those mystical feelings any time, any where, and turn it off if I need to'? Not even a little. You are not the 'captain of the ship' during a psychedelic trip. Meditation is more reliable in those senses, but you have to learn how to do it and engage with it.

Edit: to respond to your 'easiest' edit in -- it's only easy in the sense that the barrier for entry is lower, but 'lower barrier for entry' is optimising for quantity, not quality.

You don't entirely 'hang up'. You -- as Alan Watts said -- mature and deepen that communication with a different form of communication: meditation. It's like hanging up the phone and meeting with your teacher in person, not hanging up and never talking to them again.

You don't need psychoactive drugs to have deep, earth-shattering mystical experiences, and I don't understand why one would want to rely on drugs to get them.

I think I have aphantasia and no inner monologue. Mind you, I can summon an inner voice to compose a sentence before saying it, but when I'm thinking about something being discussed and someone asks me what my thoughts are so far... I never have any idea what to say. My mind is blank! It's always blank! There are never any discernable words or images in there to give you. If I need to communicate my thoughts, I have to spend significant amounts of time translating to words and choosing words before I can actually summarise what I was thinking, which is much more nebulous to me than words or images.

My 'thoughts' are closer to a mouse cursor changed into an hourglass while waiting for a computation to finish than 'First we need to do <XYZ>, but to do <XYZ> we need <X>, <Y>, and <Z>. To get <X>, <Y>, and <Z>, we need to ...'

I find it really hard to operate in live/in-person discussions because of this. I physically end up just as silent and blank as my mind!

Interestingly, it works just fine in the console/text-based browsers links, elinks, and lynx.

I remember that site and it was actually what I was expecting to see when I clicked on the OP! I feel like the version I remember stumbling across had smoking but no BMI but I can't corroborate it on archive.org

It hasn't changed much in 20 years, eh. https://web.archive.org/web/20000520091843/http://www.deathc... Really cool to see it's still up.

What do you hope to gain and accomplish, sitting around and consuming years after your prime has come and gone and your children have grown?

1. If immortality is a reality, the health issues that come with the disease of aging are likely going to make it so your 'prime' lasts forever.

2. I neither have nor want children

(Edit: Removed bits on my personal beliefs. I don't want to get into them right now. I do have views on the soul that aren't based in materialism and they result in different conclusions than yours.)

Yes, because we also control physical adaptation to a degree. Human adaptation has been disconnected from physical evolution for a long time now. How many type-1 diabetics only live now because of changes we invented our way out of?

It often takes a new pair of eyes to see a new solution to a problem.

Why does this require death of current people and not simply more eyes that already exist?

I have, but that is just one point of view, which I happen to disagree with. Given a mortal life, you have to cling to what you can carve out. You're going to die and your current ideas are all you're going to get; anyone who overthrows them is a threat to your 'legacy'.

With an immortal life -- assuming physical decay is arrested with immortality -- you have endless time to reconsider your ideas and expand on them using your wealth of knowledge and experience.

I don't see Planck's principle as inevitable, but an aberration that we can cure.

Humans adapt all of the time without death or birth. We call it invention and innovation.

I never said anything about fun. I said I don't want to ever die. 'Maybe we can't cope' sounds like a lot to take on faith. I'd rather live centuries or millenia and see for myself.

That's a pretty grim statement. You want everyone to die? Would you mind unpacking this a bit?

I'd like this material existence I am currently experiencing to have no end (i.e., I hope I never die), so this comes as a shock. I can understand not wanting yourself to live forever, but wanting everyone to die?

'Bene Gesserit school'? How hyperbolic. I am talking like 10-15 minutes of meditation a day. I used to do it in the break room for 10-15 minutes twice a day while working at Walmart or elsewhere. It is no issue at all. I'm not sure what you have in mind that would be more complicated than that!

retrain the entire human species to fend off media manipulation

Mindfulness assisting in opening one's eyes to media manipulation is just one of the benefits, not the only one. There are many benefits to teaching it to all.

10 minutes of meditation, consistently & properly performed once or twice a day over time does a lot more good than any temporary boost like a retreat. In Mindfulness in Plain English, Venerable Henepola Gunaratana says:

When you first start meditation, once a day is enough. If you feel like meditating more, that's fine, but don't overdo it. There's a burn-out phenomenon we often see in new meditators. They dive right into the practice fifteen hours a day for a couple of weeks, and then the real world catches up with them. They decide that this meditation business just takes too much time. Too many sacrifices are required. They haven't got time for all of this. Don't fall into that trap. Don't burn yourself out the first week. Make haste slowly. Make your effort consistent and steady. Give yourself time to incorporate the meditation practice into your life, and let your practice grow gradually and gently.

The way 'mindfulness' is taught and the business of retreats and training gets in the way of the real work, which takes place every day and in normal life, a little at a time. It doesn't need to be complicated.

I wouldn't mind knowing more. Do you have any links to research or work in progress in this area?

The Buddha had a lot of great ideas, but it was over 2000 years ago. If, perhaps, we can teach mindfulness in a way that is more consistent and available to all (like a focus-detection feature in devices), I would definitely support it if it results in the same changes in the brain. Since changes induced by meditation (both acute and long-term) are detectable with brain scans, this seems like something easy to test and compare with traditional mindfulness teachings and practices.

I often wonder what the world would be like if the Buddhist sciences of the mind (e.g. mindfulness) were taught at all levels of society, as a priority, and TFA mentions it near the end, to say it's not enough:

Meditation is a useful tool – but we actually need to stop the people who are pouring itching powder on us. We need to band together to take on the forces stealing our attention and take it back.

I'd argue the 'attention stealing' -- the 'itching powder', as the article called it -- is all in your head. It does exist, concretely, of course, in the form of social media, video games, etc. but their power over you -- the itchiness -- is something I find is seen for what it is through mindfulness. If we teach people proper control over their own minds, we put the power in their hands to evaluate new technologies and services mindfully.

I would sooner fight for teaching proper mental hygiene to people than trying to regulate every possible idea under the sun (as it suggests at the end). You DO own your own mind, as TFA says at the very end -- so take control of it!

I think it's more avoiding clinging to temporary joy. Have you met a person who seems to live in their glory days, clinging to the last time they were happy? Spending their entire life chasing after those first highs? I find it hard to describe people like this as anything but 'suffering'.

I would also note that the meditative techniques of the Buddha eventually lead to an experience called the 'jhanas', which are pleasurable all on their own:

Directed thought, singleness of preoccupation, and evaluation act as the causes. When the causes are fully ripe, results will appear — (d) rapture (piti), a compelling sense of fullness and refreshment for body and mind, going straight to the heart, independent of all else; (e) pleasure (sukha), physical ease arising from the body's being still and unperturbed (kaya-passaddhi); mental contentment arising from the mind's being at ease on its own, undistracted, unperturbed, serene, and exultant (citta-passaddhi).

(https://accesstoinsight.org/lib/thai/lee/inmind.html#jhana)

There are plenty of joyful feelings in the path the Buddha set forth; spending time in meditation in these altered states of consciousness is part of the path, as I understand it. It's not all as austere as it may seem at first!

If a certain form of game is fun and not harming others, why not continue it?

In Buddhist terms (as I understand them), even if something is fun, it is transient. Impermanent. Eventually you'll beat the game, or it will end, and what are you left with? A replay? A new game? It only results in craving more and more -- more games, more things.

The Buddha would, I think, argue that this sort of 'clinging' is a form of suffering. Without those things, sitting alone in a room with your eyes closed and only your own self for company, how do you feel? Do you feel comfortable with your self -- knowing who you are and your place in the universe?

I think the Buddha would argue a self-sufficient happiness, as his system teaches you to realise, is more sustainable, since it is not based in any particular 'thing' (like games), but instead in an understanding of yourself and your place in the universe.

(NB: Not a Buddhist.)

I'd be interested in hearing more about the public rituals that you attend, or any groups that you are aware of.

Thelema's ecclesiastical arm is called Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica, and its main purpose is the public performance of The Gnostic Mass (AKA Liber XV) by Aleister Crowley: https://sabazius.oto-usa.org/gnostic-mass/ It is a public ritual Eucharist intended to communicate the principles of Thelema to all:

I believe in one secret and ineffable LORD; and in one Star in the Company of Stars of whose fire we are created, and to which we shall return; and in one Father of Life, Mystery of Mystery, in His name CHAOS, the sole viceregent of the Sun upon the Earth; and in one Air the nourisher of all that breathes.

And I believe in one Earth, the Mother of us all, and in one Womb wherein all men are begotten, and wherein they shall rest, Mystery of Mystery, in Her name BABALON.

And so on.

You could look up a local OTO chapter and see if they know of any performances planned -- http://www.oto.org/

There are online recordings of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhUpJubHlAc

Local Wiccan or Pagan groups might be willing to allow you to attend one of their celebrations of the times, like the recent Yule or upcoming Imbolc. I'm not up-and-up on how they find local chapters -- my Wicca and Pagan knowledge are stuck in the times of Witchvox!

Great advice! I think I may have been a little too flippant in saying 'use whatever framework' because perspective is incredibly important. I'd say it's a continual process and engagement; if your philosophy or religion or sect doesn't answer it, and you don't feel good about it, it's okay to expand your horizons.

I think what I wanted to emphasise is having nothing at all can leave you in a bad position. Hitting these dreary spiritual states without any philosophic or religious framework that can provide perspective is like being lost out in the sea without even a life preserver, much less a boat.