elementalism – Page 61

If Materialism Is False, Death Is Nothing To Fear

Materialism is such a dominant perspective in today’s culture that we’ve almost forgotten that it is a perspective. The near-universal assumption is that consensual reality is a mindless collection of atoms and molecules, and of temperature and energy, and that the brain generates consciousness. This essay is a reminder that this perspective is just a perspective, and not necessarily the truth.

Thinking logically, it soon becomes apparent that there’s nothing especially rational about adopting the perspective of materialism, although doing so may be temporarily useful for anyone trying to run a scientific experiment.

From an existential perspective, the only thing you know for sure is that you’re conscious. That’s it. Existence precedes essence – this is another way of saying that consciousness precedes the contents of consciousness.

At this point, most people will protest that they are also aware of the material world. This conclusion follows naturally from the assumption that the brain generates consciousness, because once a person has made this assumption it seems natural to think that the brain has developed to become aware of the material world.

But no-one knows for sure that what they are aware of is a material world. A person might be conscious of a perspective that relates to some mental attempt to make sense of the stimuli that they have received from what appears to be a material world, but this is in no way evidence that such a material world exists – the map is not the territory.

Some might argue here that the sensory impressions that impact upon our consciousness are, nonetheless, impressions from the material world, and that we know that our sensory organs have made accurate impressions of this material world because of our successful adaptation to it.

But the worlds that we encounter in our dreams, which can be as real and as detailed as this material world, are evidently not creating impressions on our eyes, because those are closed and we are asleep. From this we can deduce that eyes are not necessary to create an illusion of a material world realistic enough for a consciousness to want to survive in it.

And from this it follows that a material world is itself entirely unnecessary, because consciousness could simply dream one up in its absence and would be unable to tell the difference.

At this point a materialist might continue to object, claiming that although the dreamworld that the dreamer experiences is evidently non-material (despite being equally as real from an existential perspective), the appearance of it is nonetheless created by the brain, wherein it resides.

But at this point the materialist has allowed themselves to become a magical thinker. The belief that consciousness resides in the brain does not follow from any logical process.

Usually the materialist will continue to profess that science will one day prove what the “origin” of consciousness is, and that when it does so this origin will doubtlessly be material, but this line of reasoning is just the mirror opposite of what materialists deride as “the god of the gaps”.

In other words, it’s magical thinking, not rational thinking.

Talking to a materialist about the idea that consciousness itself has generated the contents of consciousness (i.e. it has dreamed up the material world as a particularly convincing delusion) is like talking to a medieval theologian about the idea that man has generated the idea of the Christian god – their basic existential assumptions about reality make a conversation about it essentially impossible.

If one refuses to make the assumption that the brain generates consciousness, then there is no reason to believe that the death of the physical body and brain should affect the experience of being conscious. Therefore, it follows that, if the existence of consciousness is not predicated on temporal phenomena, consciousness must be eternal.

And if consciousness is eternal, then all the contents of consciousness are just forms – things that come and go. And your body, being nothing more than some of the contents of your consciousness, is one of those things that comes and goes – but it isn’t you.

Therefore, there is no significant difference between the death of the physical body and any other major change in the contents of consciousness. The death of the physical body might portend a great change in the contents of consciousness, but there is no logical reason to think that this necessitates a change in consciousness itself.

The Four Great Masculine Motivations

Figuring out how to get laid motivates almost the entirety of the behaviour of men, whether directly or indirectly

As everyone familiar with men knows, there is really only one masculine motivation: the sexual impulse to attract and to reproduce with women. Fortunately for us in the 21st century, things are a bit more subtle and nuanced than they were in prehistory. This essay looks at how the sexual impulse manifests in the behaviour of men today.

The first of the four great masculine motivations is the unconscious sexual drive, which man shares with the lower animals. This corresponds to the state of clay in elementalism.

At this level, men are barely thinking at all. This is the mindset that a drunk is in when someone spills his drink and he tries to start a fight. He doesn’t know that the reason why he wants to fight is because of his sexually inspired desire to establish dominance over a given territory for the sake of controlling the resources within it.

Much less does he appreciate that this sexually inspired desire has been repressed by his culture, nor that this repression is reversed under the effect of alcohol.

Although this level is the one at which all activity began, women tend to avoid men that are here to the degree that those women are intelligent. The obvious reason for this is that any man at this level of thinking is liable to go and chase some other woman as soon as the first one is pregnant.

The second is the conscious sexual drive, which the majority of man share with each other. This corresponds to the state of iron in elementalism.

This is as far as most men ever get, and the characteristic of this stage is the development of the capacity to get laid by scheming. Here a man will use his higher cognitive functions to plan and execute a plan to get laid.

It might sound primitive to some, but over the course of human history a colossal amount of energy has been sunk into enterprises at this level by men, and it’s historically where much of the joy and flavour of life comes from.

It was also at this level that many of the patriarchal elements of human society and interaction were established. Marriage and the cultural norms surrounding it are, ultimately, little more than male attempts to establish the certitude of their paternity.

The third is the unconscious sublimation of the sexual drive into a creative endeavour, which man shares with the more intelligent of his kind. This corresponds to the state of silver in elementalism, and most men do not ever reach this level, at least not meaningfully.

This stage is characterised by the production of art. Probably the first ever expression of it was music, perhaps something as simple as a man drumming a tune on a hollow log to amuse a woman.

Developing over time, this impulse found expression in all manner of great works of architecture, literature, music, sculpture and painting.

This stage is not easy to distinguish from the second stage, because it isn’t clear where the border between art for art’s sake and art specifically for the sake of attracting women is. Perhaps the best way to distinguish them is that acts made in the second stage do not produce much else apart from an orgasm.

The fourth is the conscious sublimation of the sexual drive into a creative endeavour, which only the highest of men partake in. It is entirely absent in some ages and places – and in the vast majority of men – and corresponds the the state of gold in elementalism.

Relatively few men dabble with this drive, although doing so may have been popular in times and places that revered the art more.

It isn’t easy to summarise all of the behaviours that fall into this category. This is for a couple of reasons.

This is because actions in this category are particular to the individual. A man might create a work of art to impress a woman, or as a conscious sublimation of his sexual impulse, and in either case the work of art will be the same (or at least similar).

The second reason is that very few men have the necessary education to understand where his sexual energies ultimately come from, and without this knowledge it is impossible to consciously direct where those same energies might ultimately go.

Taken together, these four great masculine drives explain much of why men do what they do.

The Dualistic Perspective, Positive Thinking and the Lower Self

There is a tendency in society for people to praise so-called ‘positive thinking’, because it is believed to oppose negativity and negative thoughts. How do you oppose negativity? Opposition is not the same as allowing, and allowing is not the same as capitulating.

Fighting negativity is the equivalent of war on terrorism. You cannot cease aggravation with aggravation, and you cannot wrangle the world into a peaceful situation by insisting that your perspectives have raised you above it all. From the perspective of duality, you are always inextricably complicit in the world’s dysfunction.

While it may be true that the subject of your thoughts involves ‘nice’ things, say, generosity, or hope, or love, the upshot is that you are still dreaming the dream of duality. Reality is already here, and does not correspond to the thoughts and judgments we make about it.

Much of the motivation behind positive thinking, as with any other branch of dualistic thinking, is that it is crafted to oppose or ward off other kinds of thoughts or events, like a talisman. What appears to be loving and peaceful turns out to be an elaborate exercise in nonacceptance. Dualistic ways of thinking oppose accepting the way things appear at this moment at the cost of peace. Duality always has an agenda to push, whether it is destructive and wishes to make things ‘worse’, or constructive and wishes to make things ‘better’.

Things don’t ultimately get better in a dualistic world. This is the ‘bad news’ if you are intent on staying within that limited paradigm (in reality, this is neither ‘bad’, nor is it ‘new’). It means that all of your efforts to screen and filter incoming experience for both yourself and others will be doomed to failure.

This is not fatalistic, because this too is merely a perspective. This is a natural consequence of your insistence on seeing reality divided into fictional categories, including ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, ‘holy’ and ‘unholy’, ‘beautiful’ and ‘ugly’, and most other polarized words you will come across in any dictionary. Things don’t get better in a world where you have designated the rules as dualistic and therefore inherently unstable and combatative.

From the viewpoint of unity, there is peace and deep acceptance of whatever comes to pass, because it is acknowledged deeply that everything is unified. This could be called many things, but essentially it means not minding what happens. This is not the same as apathy, or fatalism.

Apathy could be defined as not caring what happens because the world is seen as unsatisfactory, irrespective of what it should happen to contain. This is clearly an expression of duality.

Fatalism has two distinct philosophical meanings, the first is the belief that everything that happens is fated to happen. This may or not be true, and does not fall within the relevance of the present moment. How could anyone know this? What difference would it make to reality for you to believe it?

The second meaning is that of an extreme form of pessimism. This again is duality. Perspectives always see the world through a lens, which means they always imply an agenda – shoulds, should nots and endless efforts at negotiating with what is.

Reality has no agenda, it simply appears unfolding in the moment. Any notion of there needing to be something different to how it presently is occurs only within our cranial vaults. The view from beyond duality reveals the entire cosmos to be marvellous perfection. This can only happen when the false tyranny of the fragmentary mind has been deposed. When the conditioned structures which cloud your vision and prevent you from seeing clearly are removed or at least become transparent, you will see for yourself the breadth and perfection of the Divine.

People who despise the world, having mistaken part of the world for the whole and identifying suffering as essential to existence, are often some of the most vociferous. If you really don’t care, why is it that you care to have your opinions expressed to as many people as possible? Is it a sign of strength to want for others to know your opinion of not caring? What is the nature of the fleeting sense of satisfaction this expression offers you? Do you achieve a specialness from feeling more separate, do you feel adulated as a victim?

All cultures and subcultures, like all individuals, claim specialness, either overtly or implicitly.

It is ironic that there are even subcultures which claim their specialness by being indifferent to wider societal values. They are never so indifferent as to cease insisting that the society they wish to be seen opposing recognises them, even if only to push them away.

Even the most anarchistic and refractory of these subcultures insist on showing their open contempt for the rest of society and their rejection of its values and interests.

It is not enough for them to quietly keep their thoughts, beliefs and values to themselves. Like most egoic entities, they want you to either agree with them, or react against them. If they were truly indifferent and special in the way they would have us believe, why do they do they continue to insist that their differences be recognised by those whom they claim to be possessed of less wisdom?

Again, because all social divisions claiming special status or exclusion are ego based, it is that they want to be recognised as being different (and therefore special) by everyone else. Otherwise, ego would have no audience, and that is not a game that interests an entity whose only conception of being is based on perception of popular opinion – reflected image.

Within both society and individuals there is a strongly ingrained egoic yearning to appear special and to ‘stand out’. Advertising is built upon exploiting this self-induced fiction. The way that egos attempt to establish specialness and distinction is limitless, but they all derive from the same source, the same fictitious drive to appear in order to appropriate being or ‘realness’.

The compulsion to identify with unpopular or unconventional things is not indicative of freedom/authenticity or having somehow transcended the cycle of suffering, rather it is confirmation of the mind/ego’s insistence upon rating everything according to popularity and convention, even when expressed in ‘negative’ terms.

People are particularly aggrieved when something which they like which is relatively unpopular suddenly catches on as a craze. This is why there are bumper stickers and t-shirts which say “I liked (x) before it was popular”. Why should this happen? What is the relevance of this personal investment?

Liking something which is relatively unpopular confers a certain exclusivity. When this thing, whether it is a food, band, or a person, becomes widely appreciated, i.e. ‘popular’, then your claim to exclusivity is forfeit – a piece of life which you thought made you special is now lost, and there is a resulting pain.

This has curious effects. One might be that the thing which was previously identified with is rejected, and your attitude undergoes complete reversal in reaction to popularity – you become a ‘hater’. Otherwise, you might continue to enjoy it, but not feel the capacity to let go of your story about how at one point in your life you had the wisdom and refinement of taste to appreciate (x) before it gained popularity, hence the perceived need for the t-shirts and bumper stickers which congratulate your good taste.

There are people who reject popular films solely by virtue of their popularity alone and insist on praising the merits of less-popular films. This is where the terms ‘overrated’ and ‘underrated’ become especially relevant. You can be in chains by playing the role of the conformist, but you can be equally chained by playing the role of the dissident.

The lower self will happily work either way. One ego might see strength in crowds, popularity, and herd mentality, as in the case of most religions and global fads.

Another might reject the popular on the grounds that they would not be highlighted as sufficiently special, and adopt unconventional beliefs, dress, tastes, lifestyle in order to stand out. They see their implicit rejection of society as a show of force and a testament to their strength.

Ego will work with anything it has available in order to appear stronger. Going with the flow of society appears to have strength and momentum, and opposing it creates ripples. Either way, ego seeks confirmation of its relevance and specialness.

Awareness itself has no dog in the fight. It does not even register the conflict, since it does not arise from inherent duality as the lower self does. Mind is dualistic and therefore highly selective about the kinds of experience it would like to have and those it would rather avoid. It separates possible experience into categories and forms strategies for manipulating life in what it perceives to be its favour.

Awareness just watches. It does not discriminate between fictitious categories of experience or quality. It exists in radiant openness to this moment.

The more energy and ‘time’ that is invested in a life replete with mind, the more plans your mind will make for you, which means fabricated problems, disappointments, thrills and complications.

The more energy is withdrawn from mind and back into the source of that power, which is pre-reflective awareness, the more you live a life that is peaceful, ordinary, and free from the desperate need to stand out or ‘make it’. Identity is free to rest as itself in vibrant awareness.

From a higher perspective, none of this is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. It is just where you happen to be at this point in life. Not everyone’s relationship with this moment is dysfunctional, but most are. Some of the effects of this are stress, dissatisfaction, yearning for specialness and recognition, anxiety, depression and a persistent sense of disconnection from life as well as other people.

It isn’t surprising that people gravitate towards consciousness when their suffering increases. Some people feel that they are pleasurably lost in the complexities of life – that’s fine. That’s part of the game too, only sooner or later everyone will be reminded that all experiences are temporary.

Simon P. Murphy is the author of His Master’s Wretched Organ, a collection of short horror stories that deal with questions of transcendence, terror and spiritual absolution.

Spirituality Is The Ultimate Threat To The Government

The quintessential psychedelic experience is to gradually but irreversibly become aware of any of a range of truths about reality, such as that there is no such thing as death, or that life is only a dream, or that on the other side of the illusion is bliss. Few understand that it is becoming aware of these spiritual truths that has given the control freaks cause to make psychedelics illegal.

There’s nothing more illegal than true spirituality. There will never be anything more illegal than true spirituality – by definition – because true spirituality is the antidote to all forms of slavery, whether by iron, silver or gold.

In order to enslave someone, it is necessary to first cause them suffering, so that an alleviation of that suffering can be offered in exchange for acquiescence. This is true of every level of primate hierarchies from monkeys to humans, and is even true of some mammals and reptiles.

The suffering can either be physical in the form of pain or psychological in the form of fear (or, most commonly, both). If either of those is present in a target it is possible to enslave them by granting them alleviation.

However, there is a trick, not known to everyone: that all suffering is an illusion borne of an incorrect (if tempting) over-identification with one of the temporal forms of the material world.

In other words, if you refrain from identifying excessively with one of the ever-changing patterns that present themselves to your consciousness, you can exist in the full knowledge that you are that eternal, indivisible consciousness.

An excessive identification with the phenomena of “your body” is the most common of these.

The more strongly a person identifies with their body, the more sharply they will feel the pain of that body, and consequently the more passionately they will resist being put in situations that cause them pain – even if their escape from them comes through causing others to suffer even more.

This excessive identification with one’s body is fundamentally an error caused by a lack of spiritual knowledge. Therefore, anyone aiming to enslave anyone else must begin with the spiritual enslavement of his enemy, for without this no other form is possible.

And so, slavery begins by separating people from their birthright – which is to know the spiritual truths.

After all, how can a person be controlled when that person is no longer in fear of death?

The whole point of Government is that, if there was ever a war, you’d be the one fighting it and the people who currently make up the Government would be giving you orders from a safe distance.

How they get you to be the sharp end of the spear and not themselves (or their offspring, or their political donors or their offspring) is the result of the successful application of a set of mass psychology tricks that have been refined ever since Babylon.

The main objective of this set of tricks is to separate people from their birthright to know spiritual truths by instead filling their heads with lies, violence, deception, hatred, rape and destruction.

The more a person’s head is filled with such, the more easily they can be enslaved.

Ironically, the more afraid of death a person is, the more powerfully they attract it – a fact understood by men of gold since Egypt. The more powerfully they attract death the more fear they suffer, and the more fear they suffer the more easily they can be enslaved.

Or more to the point, the more easily they can be persuaded to submit to slavery in exchange for amelioration of the suffering caused by the fear.

Hence it has been said, by men of gold in all times and places, that “The truth will set you free.”

Anyone truly spiritual is invincible; this is true of all levels of the Great Fractal, from individuals all the way back to complete unity of consciousness.

For the sort of person that seeks to enslave rather than to co-operate on even terms, spirituality is effectively their ideological enemy.

And so, it is possible to get life imprisonment for giving a person some LSD – even with their informed consent – even while people are given much more lenient sentences for physically or psychologically brutalising their fellows.