What do I know?

I talk about a lot of things here, some quite fantastic, and I imagine some beginners may wonder, “Well, how do you know?”

A vital question, and one that I encourage you to ask everyone who makes assertions about M, especially the old religions.

It deserves a clear answer. Here’s mine:

I don’t know anything.

OK? Clear enough? Good.

So why do I say that?

1. I don’t believe there’s any such thing as “knowledge.” I don’t believe “knowledge” is possible. It’s just an artifact of the N system, and I don’t use the N system when it comes to anything more important than hunting and gathering new kinds of sweets with which I have yet to stuff my face.

For important questions, I use the A system. And the A system tells me that knowledge is a delusion of the N system.

2. We’re still at the Ursula stage with respect to our understanding of M—i.e., we have no Science and little data. I think it absurd to imagine we can pronounce on any part of it with even the tiniest shred of confidence at this point. It’s only the old religions that assert their understanding is so perfect it’s Absolute and Eternal Truth and should you disagree, they’re entitled to put you to death to protect their earthly wealth and power Humankind from damnation to a non-existent Hell.

3. M is different for everyone. It won’t look the same to anyone else as it does to me. The largest factor in your perception and interpretation of reality is your pure will. And everyone’s pure will is unique. That means that in an important sense, everyone lives in a Unique Universe. So even when it comes to the notions about M in which I am most confident, that only applies to me. I can offer them in hopes they might be helpful to someone else, but my experience strongly suggests to me that isn’t going to come anywhere close to everybody, which is generally what we mean when we talk about “knowledge.”

4. Philosophy in the new Aeon has dispensed with the notion of Truth. If you like reading, you can look at Richard Rorty’s Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. All we have are models of aspects of reality we deem “True” in the rather vague, old Aeon sense. (Rorty preferred the term “hermeneutics” instead of “models.”) A notion of “Truth” is appropriate in certain very narrow contexts, such as tightly defined domains in Set Theory, Logic and Mathematics. Of course it’s also appropriate when we’re speaking informally. But when we’re talking about something as profoundly complex, profoundly subtle, profoundly important and profoundly intimate as M, then using a framework of “Truth” is not just inhumane, but anti-human. Haven’t we had enough of the totalitarian One-Size-Fits-All dogmas of the old religions by now? Remember they include permanently locking women and ONSG into second-class citizenship—that alone is forcing more than half of the Human Race to live their entire lives in shackles. It’s also anti-Science: we can’t learn anything if the powerful in our communities declare they have Absolute and Eternal Truths that can’t be contradicted on pain of death. (On pain of death: I’m not talking about ancient history. If you don’t know about them, you can read about the murders of Theo von Gogh, Tahir Ahmad Naseem, the massacre of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, along with the steady drumbeat murders and massacres of members of one faith by members of another in this century. In that nation that likes to tell itself it’s terribly advanced, the United States, the most recent religious massacre, at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, was in 2018 ce.) And in this Aeon, we want to get a science of M off the ground so we can, once and for all, get past the Ursula stage and stop wearing diapers when it comes to our understanding of M. I’m sick of M being confined to the same level as bedtime stories for children. When our mathematics for M is as sophisticated as it is for Physics, then we’ll be getting somewhere. When Set Theory, Logic and Mathematics have been rebuilt from the ground up based on the axioms of A consciousness instead of N consciousness, then we’ll be getting somewhere.

I actually believe what the old religions only pretend to believe—that there is nothing anywhere close in importance for us—as individuals, communities, nations and a species—as A. And our best way of advancing our understanding is empiricism, and especially our most sophisticated form of empiricism, Science. What has Science done for us? Before modern Science, 50% of children died in childhood. 50%! Now it’s 4%. Half of you wouldn’t even be here. But we haven’t been able to use Science for M because Religion has been too powerful, and that’s why our understanding of M so far is such a joke.

Let’s be clear about the stakes—M is the foundation and framework of N. In a fractal Universe, the structure of N reflects the structure of M. What happens in M reverberates in N. M suffuses N. Every thing, every process, every enterprise, every event in N has an M “layer.” Every thought, every feeling, every judgment, every act has an M “layer.” M affects everything that happens in N down to the most trivial level of detail. In the old Aeon, M was considered Religion. In this Aeon, we’re going to see that M is implicated in every field of enquiry, expression and practical endeavor. I found it even affects playing videogames! I was spending too much time playing them (for me, a violation of the M laws, but that was just for me, not some sort of Absolute, Universal and Eternal Truth) and I got Turbulence—my TV died. That was H’s way of saying, “You need to get back to your M training.” So if we like reducing child mortality from 50% to 4%, then we need to rip the determination of the facts of M out of the hands of Religion and hand it over to Science instead. And when I say “Religion” in this context, I’m also including narrow, shallow, simplistic and rigid thinking about M that privileges tradition over empiricism in any context, by whatever name.

So we’ve seen what “Truth” has done to M—we’ve been stuck with the most narrow, shallow and simplistic and the most farcical ideas about M for thousands of years. If that’s the benefit of sticking to the “Truth,” then no Truth for me, thank you. I kinda value thinking for myself—it’s done me an awful lot of good. In both my N career and my M career, my elders told me I was doing it all wrong and would never get anywhere. In both cases, I managed to succeed anyway. So I have a certain attitude about people who “know” everything. Our elders have plenty of value to offer us. But sometimes they’re dead wrong. And my personal experience—which isn’t a scientific sample, of course—is that it’s a rare elder who remains open to the existence of that possibility. When I hear anyone say, “I could be wrong,” they get my respect.

5. Part of the psychological dynamics underlying the question, “How do you know?” is the N system’s obsession with “certainty.” The N system is a control system written by Evolution for a wild animal. So yes, I can see why an obsession with certainty makes perfect biological sense—it conserves resources. If you’re certain that the Sun goes around the Earth, you needn’t expend any more resources on the issue and can save them for more important things like figuring out how to have sex with another animal’s mate without getting caught.

But M development teaches you there ain’t no certainty in this Universe. To a wild animal, that’s a terribly frightening prospect. Think for a moment what it would do to a deer if it could somehow become aware that there’s such a thing as a predator that has a sniper rifle with a telescopic sight and a range so long the deer could never know they’re within killing range. At least with a cheetah they can see the bloody thing and turn on the afterburners to race away and have a reasonable chance of saving their life. But the existence of a sniper rifle—which didn’t exist when the deer’s genome was formed and so played no part in Evolution’s calculations—means that the deer would have to live its entire life knowing that it can be killed at any instant without warning. What do you think that would do to the deer’s psyche?

The N part of our being is just another wild animal. It can’t function under that kind of intense, unrelenting stress. So the N system tells us it’s quite certain about 99.99% of the things we think about. You don’t worry about whether the grocery store might suddenly evaporate. That is, the N system tells us it’s certain to keep us calm. The N system is not an engine to advance our philosophical or scientific understanding of the world; it’s an engine for evolutionary success. And if lying to us increases our chances of that success, it will lie to us. And what you’ll discover in M development is that it lies to us constantly. (“You are a Good Person. Your rival/opponent/enemy/ex is a Bad Person.” “You’re contributing so much more to your relationship than your Eternal Beloved!”) So it tells us it’s certain to keep us from freaking out, to keep us from realizing that we face uncertainty from every direction and at every step. What do you think was on the minds of those 3,000 people killed in the World Trade Center attack on September 11, 2001 ce as they commuted to work that morning? “Hmm. I wonder if the Trade Center is going to be destroyed by a terrorist attack today . . .”?

But M development means switching from using the N system to the A system. Those two systems have sharply different models of the world, what it contains and how it works. (For instance, the A system says that Time and Space are not fundamental ordering principles in the Universe. It says that a moment does NOT follow from the moment previous, i.e., that moments can NOT be ordered neatly like beads on a string, that sometimes a moment is shaped by something that happens in what we would call “the future.”) And the A system tells you there ain’t no certainty in the Universe, and you’re going to have to learn to live with that and still function productively even so. It gives you a little insight into why Aiwass stresses the importance of overcoming fear. “Fear not at all . . .” (L iii 17.) A lot of M development is learning how to overcome fear at levels that are ever larger, ever deeper, ever subtler. Not so easy! It takes years if not decades and a great deal of M progress. You can’t do it when you’re a baby beginner. But you can open your eyes to the lie of certainty, to all of N’s lies, as you toil away at the self-understanding challenge of Probationer, and look behind the curtain the N system erects to keep you from seeing what’s really going on behind what it tells you, the challenge I call “Lifting the First Veil.”

6. So what do I have if I say I don’t know anything? When I Lifted the First Veil on what the N system calls “knowledge,” what did I see? What I saw was staggeringly complex. I won’t bore you with that. I’ll just sketch out a very simple model. I have experiences. Then I have to interpret those experiences. (For 300,000 years, Humankind had the experience of seeing the Sun move across the sky from East to West and rise in the East the next day. And how did we interpret that experience? “The Sun circles the Earth.” Interpretation of experience or data is a hugely iffy part of the chain of reasoning.) And as I amass experiences as I have interpreted them, I form tentative working models to try to explain my experiences to myself. And as I gain more experiences, I see how well my models hold up. And when I get conflicting data, I modify or discard my models depending on how sharp the conflict. So my models to help me Navigate through the world are always in flux. My rule of thumb is, “Everything I thought before today is wrong, because today I learned something new, and now I have to go back and reassess everything I thought before, to see if it can be kept as is, needs adjustment, or is better discarded.”

So you see how rickety-ramshackle this process is? For starters, I only have an infinitesimal amount of data about the Universe. That is, I’m trying to form models while missing almost all the relevant data. Not the sort of thing that gives you much confidence about the reliability of your models. Furthermore, one person’s experience is not a scientific sample. But I have only trivial amounts of data from other researchers. And when it comes to M, I have no way of measuring the phenomena I’m dealing with. I can test my models to some extent, but nowhere near the level at which we test things in Science. So I lack the sort of feedback that makes for a relatively reliable empirical investigation. My mental capacity is tiny. I don’t have the massive datasets they do in Physics that can be fed into computers so that humans’ tiny mental capacity ceases to be an obstacle. What’s more, as impressive as Science is, it makes things easy on itself by only examining the narrowest questions. “What happens when you fire a bunch of electrons through a double-slit aperture?” It can’t answer a question as vast as, “Why did my ex dump me?” And there’s no question more vast than the nature of M.

So that’s all I have. My experiences, as I have interpreted them, and tentative working models derived from the aggregate of those interpretations.

And one more thing: that’s all anybody has. I don’t just mean M aspirants. I mean those Nobel-winning scientists too. Remember, until 1925 ce, Science thought the Milky Way was the only galaxy in the Universe. (I’m not making this up! But it’s not surprising—Science’s models derive from its interpretations of its experiences. And until Edwin Hubble came along, Science didn’t have any experience of other galaxies. Hence its model was dead wrong. But there’s no way around this problem as long as you rely on the N system.) And if you’d talked to the most esteemed Professor of Astronomy at the most esteemed university in the world, they would have told you the Milky Way was the only one with the utmost confidence and authority. Right? That’s the sort of thing the N system is convinced is “knowledge.” You go talk to an expert and listen to see how much confidence and authority there is in their tone of voice (in practice, tone of voice is a huge factor in human epistemology, as any salesperson or ideologue can tell you), and then you write down in your notebook, “This is knowledge.” The N system was written for a wild animal—what do you expect? It’s not all that bright. It can do plenty of things we find helpful, but when it comes to the nature of reality, it’s not really the system to which you want to turn. I have enormous respect for Science—I am Science’s #1 FAN—but Science is currently being driven by the N system and so it’s only investigating the N Level. And the N Level is the tiniest and least important part of the Universe. Science denies M even exists!

• I am pretty sure you folks think M exists. Or to speak more precisely, you think there are rather striking phenomena that present-day Science can’t explain except by shrieking, “Mental dysfunction!” or “Chance. Coincidence. Fluke!" "Chance. Coincidence. Fluke!" "Chance. Coincidence. Fluke!” Why don’t we insist Science prove those assertions by using the scientific method instead of merely asserting them? And if it can’t prove them, why doesn’t it just shut up already? Religion is the one that claims to know everything without ever having to resort to empirical testing. Why is Science acting exactly like Religion when it comes to M? Reddit tells me there are 60,000 or so of you in r/thelema. You must be one of the largest sources of M data in the world today—and if we’re to get a science of M off the ground, what we need is data. Were I 50 years younger, I would set up an online wiki so we could collect all that data in one place. Right now, it’s a struggle to just get myself out of bed, so it will have to be someone else. But we don’t want to be stuck forever with our M understanding confined to the natterings of half-senile old folks. We want a science of M. But the temperaments of scientists for the most part are such that they think M has cooties. So I don’t have much confidence that the drive to build a science of M is going to come from them. It will probably have to come from the outside.

So much as I love Science, I keep in mind what it is and what it isn’t.

* * *

OK. I hope I’ve made clear why my first answer to any question about M has to be, “I don’t know.” So what am I doing with all my blabbing here?

Two things: First, I’m offering models that I’ve found helpful in hopes they might be helpful to someone else. Models are just Navigational tools. The only test of their value is whether they seem to work more or less well enough for your purposes for the time being. If they don’t, don’t use them.

Second, I’m trying to build on-ramps for Science and the Humanities so they can start to engage with M to a robust degree. I don’t expect my models alone can do that. But they can contribute to the effort. When we have lots of models for the same phenomenon, it can make our thinking more sophisticated and that can help guide our empirical investigations instead of constraining them to a tiny little corridor. (Right now, there are more than a dozen theories in Quantum Mechanics to try to account for the measurement problem. That’s going to produce much more sophisticated thinking than just having one.)

* * *

But there ain’t nothing’ ’bout M but it’s complicated.

So far in this post I have been talking about M in terms that matter to Philosophy and Science. And that’s a vital part of enthroning the New Aeon in the world. The twin warriors, Bablon and Therion, are yanking out the pillars propping up the Civilization of the old Aeon (L iii 71) and installing new ones in their place atop which we can build a different Civilization for the new. And reframing our understanding of and approach to M in this Aeon has to be done from scratch; has to be compatible with new Aeon Philosophy and Science, instead of “It’s true because that’s what our elders say,” “It’s true because that’s what the Lead Cow says,” “It’s true because everybody knows it’s true.”

But of course, that’s just one part of the task. A different part is helping people proceed through M development. And yes, we also need to rebuild our systems for M training from scratch, taking advantage of everything we’ve learned in the last few thousand years like, oh, I don’t know, maybe “Saturn is NOT the last planet out and so CANNOT mean the same thing in this Aeon as it did before,” and something called “the scientific method” and privileging empiricism over tradition as our best way of building relatively reliable models about the world.

But the more important point is that M development requires emotional engagement, not just intellectual understanding. Intellectual understanding may be enough for certain temperaments, but they are few. For the most part, we animals run on emotion, not intellect. And when it comes to helping people emotionally engage, then we’re not in the realm of Philosophy and Science, we’re in the realm of Art.

And when we turn to Art, then what we want is metaphors and stories and images. We want dreams and fairy tales and fantasies. We want music and scents and tastes. We want evocative rituals and clothing and objects. Those are what engage us at a much deeper level than Philosophy and Science. So Art and Science both are vital to the enterprise. Yes, of course, Science sneers at fairy tales and fantasies, but they can be powerful aids to engagement with M by practitioners. There’s no inconsistency in using Art and Science both as long as we understand rightly what we’re doing. If you devise a ritual where you act out Horus the Avenger deposing Set and you find that it’s an excellent aid for raising the Elevation of consciousness and pumping up your M power, that’s what you want. Studying a chemistry text is unlikely to do that for you.

And let me add something for the beginner and for Science both. Since Science currently ignores M and only studies the N Level, the tiniest and least important part of the Universe, it has no idea how the Universe really works. Let me talk briefly about how M engineering works (in my working model, of course). As I discussed in my post, “Mind, Self, Universe,” you are, ultimately just a WISP in the Universal Field, a Willful, Intelligent, Sentient Power. And you can exert your power to effect changes in the Universal Field, which at the N Level we perceive as changes in reality—before, you didn’t have enough money to pay the rent, and now you do; before, sex outside of marriage was punishable by death, and now it isn’t, except for women in certain cultures.

And one of the factors in determining whether your M engineering operation will be successful is at how high a Level you’re working. If you’re working above the Anomaly, then you are “mightier than all the kings of the earth” (L iii 45) and, like the prophets, can overturn continents, or, like Crowley, the whole planet. And how do you get up to those high Levels? The main way is M development. But, of course, that takes decades. If you’re going to do it in just a narrow operation, then you use Temporary Elevation. And how do you send consciousness skyward for a Temporary Elevation? You have to arouse your M lust, the lust of your pure will, since, after all, it is connected to the largest forces in the Universe. And for that, you need emotional engagement. No recipe can be given for the kind of emotional engagement that can arouse your M lust to the max, of course, because it’s going to be different for every person, but this is where Art comes in. Do your sexual fantasies enhance your physical lust? Those are Art. That is, they are plugged deeply into the emotional layers of your being. And the fantasies of your pure will act in the very same way. So if there is a myth, a fairy tale, a fantasy that really connects to your pure will, that really heats up its lust, that’s what you want. The same with a particular article of clothing, or a scent, or a sound or taste, or a ritual that you can feel makes consciousness quaver, then tremble, then shake, that you can’t even think about without consciousness suddenly swerving and focusing all its attention, as if some terribly sexy person is walking by half-naked (or whatever it is that gets your maximum attention). If it Elevates consciousness, it’s going to increase your chances of success. As I keep saying, if what you’re doing doesn’t Elevate consciousness, then you’re doing it wrong, even if you’re doing it exactly the way it says in the books.

And this is what Science is clueless about: if there is something that M-sexually arouses your pure will to the max, then it reflects some fundamental fact about the Universe. That is, sometimes a fantasy is more than just a fantasy. Sometimes it’s an M perception, it’s an M-link to something above the Anomaly. So what seems to the N system to be sheerest fantasy, might seem to the A system sheerest fact. And again, this is the perennial challenge of M development. Which do you want—N or A? Who knows best—N or A? There’s no “answer” to this. You have to decide for yourself. And as I say, almost everyone is going to choose N over A. But my expectation is that because RHK bridged the Abyss as its reward (L iii 1), more people are going to choose A in this Aeon than they ever have before.

So yes, we need Art and Science both. In a sense, they contradict each other—one utilizes fairy tales, the other says, “No fairy tales allowed!” But that isn’t really a problem as long as we understand they are different tools for different purposes.

Hope this helps!

Best,

D.