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Page 1 of 131929 · PDF PAGE 514
…with ideas, souls, etc. I perceived also that each star was connected by a ray of light with each other star. In the world of ideas each thought possessed a necessary relation with each other thought; each such relation is of course a thought in itself; each such ray is itself a star. It is here that the logical difficulty first presents itself. The seer has a direct perception of infinite series. Logically, therefore, it would appear as if the entire space must be filled up with a homogeneous blaze of light. This however is not the case. The s…
1929 · PDF PAGE 423
…pired writing. It describes the conditions of that exalted Grade. I had at this time no idea that I should ever attain to it; in fact, I thought it utterly beyond possibility. This book was given to me that I might avoid mistakes when the time came for me to become a Magus. It is impossible to give any idea of the terror and sublimity of this book, while the accuracy of its predictions and of its descriptions of the state of being, at that time wholly beyond my imagination to conceive, make it a most astonishing document. LIBER X. This book is …
1929 · PDF PAGE 433
…, whereas the conscious self is no more than the murmur of its moods whenever its supremacy is challenged by environment. In Chapter 37, thought is compared to the darkness of a {687} lunar and spiritual ecstasy to that of a solar eclipse. Both shadows are rare accidents in a universe of light. Again, "In the Wind of the mind arises the turbulence called I. It breaks; down shower the barren thoughts. All life is choked." Elsewhere, deep spiritual wisdom is evoked by tea at Rumpelmayer's, dinner at Lapérouse, breakfast at the Smoking Dog, a walk…
1929 · PDF PAGE 500
…ing, looking for something under my pillows, I found my revolver was missing. I did not like it. The evening before, both the boys and I thought we saw a strange man on the island just after dark. We gave chase and thought we saw him slipping through the trees, but failed to report him. I decided to call on my friend the colonel and report. He was very pleased with my solution of the mystery of the alleged signals, and agreed that the incident of the boat looked bad. On his part, he had a new yarn. An old boatman, as steady and sober as one cou…
1929 · PDF PAGE 351
…, as far back as 1902, a reasonably complete demonstration of this conclusion whose premisses were not stated by the official leaders of thought till long afterwards. Yet the theory of initiation on which European adepts base their systems (derived, possibly, from the Egyptians and Chaldeans by way of the gnostics, Pythagoras and the neoplatonists), that of Lao tzu in China, and that of the Vedantists in India, alike imply something of the sort. My claim to originality is confined to the nature of my proof, which I drew from facts of a similar …
1929 · PDF PAGE 220
…k, while I went to look at the sea and wish ti weren't too cold to drown myself. I returned to find that she had booked a double room. I thought it was hardly playing the game; but I couldn't be rude to a lady and, at the worst, it was only a matter of a day or so. I could decently dispatch her from Boleskine to the embraces of Mr. Summers and proceed to Raze out the written troubles of the brain, And with some sweet oblivious antidote Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff. It possibly crossed my mind that all these alarums and excur…
1929 · PDF PAGE 143
…to find that I had completely lost the object of concentration. I could not think what I wished to find or where to find it. I naturally thought something was very wrong. Here was an occasion when Allan's experience proved invaluable. Without it, I might have been {247} frightened into giving up the practice. But he told me the result was good, showing that I was approaching the state of what is called "neighbourhood concentration". Another experience was this: I found myself at one and thee same moment conscious of external things in the backg…
1929 · PDF PAGE 277
…ny other occasion had so much time to think --- I am afraid I express it badly. I mean that I was acutely conscious of a few well-marked thoughts, without the usual gradations, sub-thoughts, connections and so forth, that make it hard --- in ordinary life --- to discriminate between conscious and unconscious thought. On this night I was as primitive as an ape. My thoughts stand out stark as stars on a background of utter blackness. I had become, as by an enchanter's spell, the primeval caveman. Perhaps the long strain and horror of the Kangchen…
1929 · PDF PAGE 138
…ism for dealing symbolically with impressions; its construction is such that one is tempted to take these symbols for reality. Conscious thought, therefore, is fundamentally false and prevents one from perceiving reality. The numerous practices of yoga are simply dodges to help one to acquire the knack of slowing down the current of thought and ultimately stopping at altogether. This fact has not been realized by the yogis themselves. Religious doctrines and sentimental or ethical considerations have obscured the truth. I believe I am entitled …
1929 · PDF PAGE 278
…odate themselves to change of illumination --- I have never met any man equally helpless in case of sudden diminution of light. I had no thought soever as to whether my shot might have hit anybody. There was not the faintest sound; but the alley seemed somehow empty. I do not know whether I stepped over fallen bodies or not. (I was facing the archway when I fired.) I thought: I will get out of this alley at once. Those people may be lying in ambush in the archway, especially as I do not know whether there are doors opening out of it or not. I w…
1929 · PDF PAGE 140
…; in particular, time and space are abolished. This, however, occurs with almost equal completeness in certain states of normal abstract thought. {242} The attainment of this trance is likely to upset the whole moral balance of the student. He often attributes and exaggerated importance to the imperfect ideas which represent his memory of what happened. He cannot possibly remember the thing itself, because his mind lacks the machinery of translating it into normal thought. These ideas are naturally his pet delusions. They seem to him to have be…
1929 · PDF PAGE 499
…ng was impossible. The water gained. Nothing remained but to bale and paddle for dear life and reach the south inlet before sinking. She thought the opportunity unequalled for a display of hysterics. But I spoke so sharply and sternly that she postponed the performance and began to bale. We just did it and only just, thanks to the help of two boys who had come to camp close to the landing place a couple of days earlier. They rushed in waist deep and pulled us in. By that time the water-logged wreck hardly answered the paddle. We dragged the can…
1929 · PDF PAGE 400
… the Hon. Everard Fielding, the other, Raymond Radclyffe, who, though utterly indifferent to Magick, was passionately fond of poetry and thought mine first-class, and unrivalled in my generation. He edited a high-class financial weekly and was rightly reputed as the most incorruptible, high-minded and shrew critic of the city. Their opinion was identical and emphatic: "If you touch pitch you will be defiled," said one. "Fenton has been warned off the turf and his city editor has just come out of jail," said the other. There was nothing to gain.…
1929 · PDF PAGE 331
…n. "The Psychology of Hashish" pleases me more every time I read it. It contains such a wealth of knowledge, it shows such profundity of thought, that I find myself today still wondering how I ever wrote it. I find in it ideas which I am hardly aware that I possess today; how I could have thought {537} thus at this elementary stage of my career, and written it all down in a single day, is bewildering. It is completely free from any blemishes of the old type. The sublimity of my subject possessed me. One other seed had fallen upon fertile ground…
1929 · PDF PAGE 73
…egrees in the second. The actually figures are ten degrees and fifteen degrees. In 1902 Pfannl proposed to rush Chogo Ri from Askole. He thought he could get there and back in three days! In reality, it is fourteen days to the foot of the mountain, though unladen men might possibly do it in five. Mountain panic was without doubt partly accountable for the mental and moral breakdown in Guillarmod and Righi, which led them to mutiny on Kangchenjunga. A high degree of spiritual development, a romantic temperament and a profound knowledge based on …
1929 · PDF PAGE 77
…th repeated disasters because God was jealous, as He had been of the tower of Babel. In 1917 my cousin, Lawrence Bishop, told me that he thought that "the Lord prepared a great iceberg" for the Titanic in annoyance at the claim of the shipbilders that she was unsinkable. William Whiteley had several fires, which my mother took as the repartee of the Almighty to the merchant's assumption of the title "Universal Provider", which could be properly attributed only to God. It is the modern fashion to try to dismiss these barbarous absurdities as exc…
1929 · PDF PAGE 481
…ought to have known better than to employ a personal friend with no experience of such cases to act as his solicitor. And one would have thought that even such a solicitor would have known better than to brief a barrister of the kind that "will see the whole job through for a ten pound note". When the case came to trial, the defendants pleaded that they had not suggested that Mr Jones was a sodomite. They had not, and never had had, any intention of suggesting that Mr Jones was a sodomite. Mr Jones explained elaborately and excitedly that he wa…
1929 · PDF PAGE 203
… perversity was that he was not true to himself. Without {343} knowing it, he had adopted the standards of the English middle class, and thought to become distinguished by the simple process of outraging them. As one is said to be able to invoke the devil by reciting the Lord's Prayer backwards, so Wilde thought to set up a new morality by reciting George R. Sims backwards. He naively accepted the cockney idea that Paris is a very wicked place, and proposed to petrify the puritans by writing a play in French. His difficulty was that his French …
1929 · PDF PAGE 122
… day, Eckenstein being ill, I had arranged to go with Longstaff and his two guides over the Col du Géant. Not feeling very fit myself, I thought I would start an hour ahead of the others. Having inspected the ice fall, I found a way straight up. When I was about half way through the sracs, I heard Longstaff's guides yelling blue murder. I had taken the "wrong" way. Their route involved a detour of a mile or more. I took not notice of their friendly anxiety and reached the top a long way in advance. When they arrived, they explained that what I…
1929 · PDF PAGE 116
…sired kind of love. In fact, they are making it continually in their hearts and only wait opportunity to suit the word and action to the thought. Nor does opportunity lag. There are no practical difficulties. Indoors and out nature and art combine to invite Cupid to pay every kind of visit, passionate, permanent, transitory, trivial. The caprice of the moment is the sole arbiter of the event. The idea of worry is unknown. "Take no thought for the morrow" is the first principle of human relations, especially in regard to all such matters. Love i…