Newsgroups: alt.magick
From: shaman@cix.compulink.co.uk (Leo Smith)
Subject: Re: Magical Power(book)
Reply-To: shaman@cix.compulink.co.uk
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1992 09:34:00 +0000


>>        (c) Reality is in here, is mental, and in the ultimate is so
>>        connected to the process of perception, that not only are our
>>        attempts to come up with a description doomed to failure, but
>>        in fact the reality and the description are so linked that
>>        any attempt to describe changes the reality....

>The problem I have with this is that I used to believe that
>perception changed reality.

>It didn't work.

>I tried over and over, and even now have a similar belief, but it was
>never supported by reality.

>And don't try that 'well, if your beliefs didn't change reality, you
>didn't believe enough!'

>I felt I believed strongly, and such an assertion is quite circular.
>(It's true because it's true)

>-Me

Hi You. What do you mean it didn't work. It must have changed YOU and
YOU are a part of reality........

Certainly the universe does not rearrange itself to YOUR perception,
but it remains a possibility that it rearranges itself to OUR
perception....

....Certainly as far as human ideas are concerned, what we believe is
what is real to us. Ask any Iranian nationalist about the reality of
the 'Great Satan, America':-)

I think that everybodies thoughts modulate some kind of mutual field:
This field has the power to affect not only thought in return, but
also to modify perception, and to act as a time independent store.
What you think and believe allows to to access one or another area of
this field: The interaction is two way.

If you could think like a stone (pardon the lithp - I meant think
like a thtone - oh shut up :-) then maybe you could affect the state
of a stone with your thinking. Perhaps this is, in fact, what
structural engineers do :-)

But traditionally the areas more accessible to modification by
thought are the realms of unborn effects, the realms of cause. Out of
that vast sea of thought, of infinite possibilities, come the
actualisations of those possibilities.

I stopped using the Tarot because despite my own feelings on the
subject, all I ever got out of it was 'Fortune Telling' I was bloody
good at it too: I upset a lot of people. The images and patterns that
seemed to work weren't the ones that I perceived: They seemed to be
more an amalgam of all the other people who used Tarot.......so in
the end I have concluded that using the Tarot did not connect me to
any higher plane of reality: It just put me in touch with a bunch of
superstitious nerds who were doing the same thing.

So I suppose the picture that I sort of hold, temporarliy, and for
today only, and simply for the purposes of writing this post you
understand....ius as follows.

        There is a life field: It has various 'bands' and you live in
        it and access it constantly.

        You can be more, or less, deliberate about this - most
        religion and ritual exercise are examples of direct
        interaction with it. This is what Castaneda calls 'sorcery'
        IMHO.

        You can actually understand that that is what you are doing -
        no more and no less. This is 'mysticism' 'enlightenment' or
        'seeing' (cf Castaneda).

        The effects of the interaction are most obvious at the human
        level - we are humans and not unsurprisingly we can hit those
        bands the easiest. So most magick and sorcery will be
        concerned with information exchanged between people, or
        occasionally influence brought to bear by one person on
        another.

        Influencing inanimate objects is far more difficult: Use
        science or your hands. Unless you can find a sentient agent,
        you would, in this schema, have to go a LONG way off beam to
        hit say 'atomic' consciousness. Mind you, legend claims its
        possible.

Now this is all an interesting position: It sort of stands between
the anti-realist postion of there being a real reality and the monist
who cliams that it is all mental.

It IS all mental, but that doesn't mean it is going to sit up and beg
for you. There are other Thoughts out there that are very stable and
very strong, and one of them is called Physical Reality. So you can
neglect the effects of your puny brain on THAT one. BUT human affairs
are not so rigid: You can (via your HGA, or by seeing it in a
reflection, or simply via a pipe dream) come to understand that a
sewing machine is in your locality for example :-) You may even find
that by adopting a classical brown nosed attitude with respect to the
infinite, people will feel constrained to offer it to you :-)

(apologies to shava, who I respect greatly )

I wouldn't say this is cast in stone by the way: Its just a model
that seems to fit my experience tolerably well - there are others
here who would disagree somewhat, but not altogether.

I remember something I wrote long ago:-

'The hallmark of a mage is his ability to believe, whatever is
necessary for as long as it is necessary _very lightly_......'

Leo