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Page 105 of 1141929 · PDF PAGE 407
…ok us much deeper into desolation. We had two camels and a man to drive them and a boy to look after the camels. We picked up occasional wayfarers as we went, and dropped them again, in the most charmingly casual way. At our first halt we enjoyed the hospitality of a famous sheikh who had established a sort of mystical university in that obscure corner of the world. We found him a courteous host and a most enlightened scholar. One of the advantages of spiritual development is the confirmation of one's results which one obtains from similarly di…
1929 · PDF PAGE 110
…ut his foot upon the mischief. Then again, the whole of Mathers' conduct might have been in the nature of a test. It might have been his way of asking the adepts whether they had the power of concentrating on the spiritual situation, of giving up for ever all their prejudices.
1929 · PDF PAGE 253
…dventure was foolhardy; that, for his own part, he would never consent to go on a mountain again with Jacot Duillarmod; and that, in one way or another, his vanity, inexperience, fatuity and folly were certain to land us in disaster. I liked Tartarin so well, personally, that I unconsciously minimized his imbecility; and I was still much too young to realize how much mischief may be done indirectly be the mere presence of such a man, despite every precaution that prudence can suggest and all the supervision that caution can recommend. So I went…
1929 · PDF PAGE 139
…ath force", consists in learning to breathe as slowly, deeply and regularly as possible. The slightest mental irritation or excitement always makes one breathe quickly and unevenly; thus one is able to detect any disturbance of calm by observing this system. Also, by forcibly controlling the breath one can banish such ideas. Also one reduces to a minimum the consciousness that one is breathing. One may remark at this point that such precaution seems absurd; but until one begins to try to keep the mind from wandering, one has no conception of th…
1944 · PDF PAGE 118
…mage of Our Lady Nuith, but also it is called the Fool, which is Parsifal, “der reine Thor”, and so referreth to him that walketh in the Way of the Tao. Also he is Harpo‐ crates, the Child Horus walking (as saith Daood, the Badawi that became King, in his Psalm‐ ody) upon the Lion and the Dragon; that is, he is in Unity with his own Secret Nature, as I have shewn thee in my Word concerning the Sphinx. O my Son, yester Eve came the Spirit upon me that I also should eat the Grass of the Arabians, and by Virtue of the Bewitchment thereof be‐ hold …
1904 · PDF PAGE 107
…thinking. For, needless to say , the universe, including the thinker, exists only by virtue of the thinker’s thought.1 In y et one other way is magic a capital training ground for the Arahat. True symbols do really awake those macrocosmic forces of which they are the eidola, and it is possible in this m anner very largely to increase the magical “potential” to borrow a term from electrical science. Of course, there are bad and invalid pro- cesses, which tend rather to disperse or to excite the mind-stuff than to control it; these we must discar…
1929 · PDF PAGE 16
…form on the Rigi-Kulm and to illumination of a waterfall by coloured lights. He felt acutely that nature should be allowed to go her own way and he his! There was plenty of beauty in the world; why make oneself uncomfortable in order to see an extra? Also, you can't improve a waterfall by stagecraft! There is the skeleton of quite a philosophy of life in this. As to the Scottish Highlands, the boy's mind had been so poisoned by romance that he saw nothing that he can remember. The scenery was merely a setting for silly daydreams of Roderick Dhu…
1929 · PDF PAGE 79
…under the curse of the universal sorrow. I determined deliberately to give it up, notwithstanding that it was unique and adorable in its way; that there was no reasonable hope of replacing it. This was my act of faith, unalloyed with the dross of hope, and stamped with the imperial countenance of love, to determine that I would not continue our relations. The poignancy of this resolution was jagged and envenomed; for he was the only person with whom I had ever enjoyed truly spiritual intercourse and my heart was lonely, hungry and embittered as…
1944 · PDF PAGE 94
…ents, because they did not grow. The first problem of alchemy was to raise mineral to vegetable life; the adepts thought that the proper way to do this was to imi‐ tate the processes of nature. Distillation, for instance, was not an operation to be performed by heating something in a retort over a flame; it had to take place naturally, even if months were required to consummate the Work. (Months, at that period of civilization, were at the disposal of enquiring minds.) A great deal of what people now consider ignorance, being themselves ignoran…
1944 · PDF PAGE 52
…, but Two; he is only One because he is 0. He exists; Eheieh, his divine name, which signifies “I Am” or “I shall Be”, is merely another way of saying that he Is Not; because One leads to nowhere, which is where it came from. So the only possible manifestation is in Two, and that manifestation must be in silence, because the num‐ ber 3, the number of Binah‐Understanding‐has not yet been formulated. In other words, there is no Mother. All one has is the impulse of this manifestation; and that must take place in si‐ lence. That is to say, there i…
1906 · PDF PAGE 284
… its ooze of sentiment- ality, I was yet not unobservant of its cogni- sance of this fact, and I was even pleased— though this is by the way—to see that the author recognises in-the ridiculous First Pre- cept of the Buddhist Faith, or rather in the orthodox travesty of Buddha's meaning, a mere survival of some fetichistic theophagy. Myst, Doesn’t it say somewhere that ‘* Long words butter no parsnips” ? Scept. It ought to. But pray proceed with your defence of religion—for I presume it is intended as such. Myst. I was saying that if unconscious…
1929 · PDF PAGE 409
…g coffee, cup after cup. The monotonous rhythm of sound and movement dulls the edge of one's intellectual activity in very much the same way as a mantra. The finest concerts and operas, or such spectacles as the Russian ballet, alleviate the pain of existence by putting a positive pleasure to work against the pale persistent pang; but, as the Buddha has shown, the remedy increases the disease. I have long since come to the point in which I could say that I had enjoyed all possible forms of delight to the utmost possible extent. I am not blasé; …
1906 · PDF PAGE 275
…, for Heaven's sake, let us post- pone it as long as possible, eh? Scept. Indeed, it is the devil of a subject. But we wander far—By the way, how old are you? You appear young, but you know much. Myst. You are too polite. I am but an ultimate truth, six world-truths, fourteen grand generalisations, eighty generalisations, sixty-two dilemmas, and the usual odd mil- lion impressions. Scept. What is all this? You are surely— Myst. No, most noble Festus. Put me 1.6. , 1 The physical basis of thought, as dis- tinguished from its physical mechanism. …
1929 · PDF PAGE 126
…inciple of probity and probability; but he was justified, provided that his primary postulate held good. I could think {220} of only one way of putting him to the test. It concerned an episode at which Allan Bennett was present. Allan, and he alone, could confirm the account which Mathers had given me. If he did so, Mathers was vindicated; if not, it was fatal to his claims. It seems absurd to travel eight thousand miles to ask one question --- a childish question into the bargain! --- but that was what I did. The sequel will be told in the pro…
1906 · PDF PAGE 241
AN ESSAY IN ONTOLOGY 235 being convinced on insufficient grounds.’ This is surely the last refuge of incompetence. But though, always on the original hypo- thesis of the infinity of space, &c., the Ad- vaitist position of the Vedantists and the great Germans is unassailable, yet on practical grounds the Dvaitists have all the advantage. Fichte and the others exhaust themselves trying to turn the simplé and obvious posi- tion that: ‘‘ If the Ego alone exists, where is any place, not only for morals and religion, which we can very well do without…
1906 · PDF PAGE 253
…ort of nonsense. He analyses the phe- nomena of mind, adopting Berkeley’s para- dox that ‘‘ matter is immaterial,’ in a sane and orderly way. The ‘‘ common-sense Phi- losopher,” whom I leave to chew the bitter leaves of Professor Huxley’s Essay ‘‘ On Sensation and the Unity of the Structure of Sensiferous Organs,” observes, on lifting his arm, ‘‘I lift my arm.” The Buddhist ex- amines this proposition closely, and begins: ‘‘ There is a lifting of an arm.” By this terminology he avoids Teutonic discussions concerning the Ego and Non- ego.” But h…
1929 · PDF PAGE 378
378 brewing. I put my foot down; and though I almost had to use main force to get Neuburg to go home, I had my way. I was still talking to my own friend at half-past two, when I heard the click of the garden gate and steps on the path. The house door opened and shut with sinister softness. There there was absolute silence. A few minutes later there was a frightened scream from Mrs. Gnaggs. I threw on a dressing gown and went out. She was standing in a kimono on 1. WEH Note: This is a typical misunderstanding (by Crowley and the Engineer, not th…
1929 · PDF PAGE 457
…n to the condition of an experiment, exactly as a candidate in freemasonry sees, hears, speaks and acts with his normal senses, yet in a way which has no relation to his previous experience. The stolid old gentleman in evening dress is really King Solomon. He hears a rigmarole both false and meaningless in itself, which he must understand as conveying something entirely other than it apparently implies. His words are put into his mouth, and produce an effect neither expected, desired, nor understood. He performs a series of gestures neither com…
1929 · PDF PAGE 129
… to have got so far only to fall in love with a white woman. I know now that white women introduce the idea of impurity into love in one way or another. There is something either vicious or intellectual about them. Love should be a strictly physiological matter, with just that amount of natural emotion that goes with it. But then, such simple happiness is not for me. Anyhow, I decided to spend a month on Waikiki Beach. I had a vague idea of getting a hut and a native girl, and devoting myself to poetry of the most wholesome kind with correspond…
1929 · PDF PAGE 188
… the radiation; that is by wearing non-conducting clothes, also by supplying artificial heat from kangris and so on. (The kangri, by the way, is a Kashmiri device. It is a pot of copper or iron in which charcoal is burnt. The natives put it under their blankets and squat on it. It is alleged that this habit explains the great frequency of cancer of the testicles or scrotum in the country. The analogy is with "chimneysweep's cancer".) After cancelling out all the excrescences of the equation, the situation amounts to this; that you cannot live p…