Saw this dude arguing that monism is more spiritually evolved than pragmatic pluralism because he experienced phenomenal reality fade away into non-dualistic awareness during meditation.
Thing is, that’s hardly a rare state to reach. I’ve done it about six or seven times over the years, and a couple of those were even without drugs.
I’ve also experienced this:
Five fiends have been in poor Tom at once: of Lust, as Obidicut; Hobbididance, Prince of Dumbness; Mahu, of Stealing; Modo, of Murder. Flubbertigibbet, of Mopping and Mowing. So many giants and demons and always room for more in poor Tom’s head. (Grant Morrison, The Invisibles Book One)
And this:
The Joker’s a special case. Some of us feel that he may be beyond treatment. In fact, we’re not even sure if he can be properly defined as insane. His latest claim is that he’s possessed by Baron Ghede, the Voodoo loa. We’re beginning to think it may be a neurological disorder, similar to Tourette’s Syndrome. It’s quite possible we may actually be looking at some kind of super-sanity here. A brilliant new modification of human perception. More suited to life at the end of the twentieth century. Unlike you and I the Joker seems to have no control over the sensory information he’s receiving from the outside world. He can only cope with the chaotic barrage of input by going with the flow. That’s why sometimes he’s a mischievous clown, others a psychopathic killer. He has no real personality. He creates himself each day. He sees himself as the Lord of Misrule, and the world as a theatre of the absurd. (Grant Morrison, Arkham Asylum: A Serious House On Serious Earth)
Consciousness is incredibly elastic.
And if you’re going to start meddling with your perceptions – poking and prodding and stretching reality into strange and uncomfortable shapes – the first thing you better learn is some discernment. Test those fucking spirits, man:
Likewise the famous Iamblichos, as I have handed down in my account of his life, when a certain Egyptian invoked Apollo, and to the great amazement of those who saw the vision Apollo came, said, “My friends, cease to wonder; this is only the ghost of a gladiator.” So great a difference does it make whether one beholds a thing with the intelligence or with the deceitful eyes of the flesh. (Eunapios, Lives of the Philosophers and Sophists)
Question everything, especially your perceptions, and don’t rush to any conclusions based on your experiences. Just because an experience is real doesn’t make it true.
You think that state of oneness is the pinnacle, but what if it’s actually the bottom, the most rudimentary of gates one can pass through?
What if it’s not something to be celebrated but a mental projection in need of overcoming in order to be able to apprehend the eternal forms of the world?
For all you know it could be an illusionary snare placed there by malevolent archontic daimones to capture unwary mystics, magicians or shamans, the web of māyā as the Indians would say. While you’re blissing out on the idea that you’re the tree and the hippie hugging the tree a tremendous spider with a titanic hunger is creeping up on you, grinning like a clown.
Tagged: magic, philosophy, spider, spirits
