Magically/Transcendently Repostulating Freewill for Stability

Many Hellenists and later Western esotericists held there is one higher sublime and profound experiential insight: being reborn out of the determined universe.

A common idea of Hellenistic religion-philosophy-myth was that after developing one's thinking and experiencing to most fully appreciate one's embeddedness in a determined universe, one can be lifted even higher, up out of cosmic determinism, beyond the sphere of the fixed stars.

The emperor was divinized at death to become a star, but many cults then grabbed the idea of ascending beyond the stars. If the emperor was chosen by Fate, initiates escaped and eluded the clutches of Fate, Necessity, and were miraculously and divinely set free from the deterministic cosmic prison.

Godmen were chained and fastened to the material realm, died, and were then lifted up beyond the deterministic material realm -- thus so were those initiates who were lifted up by the godmen. The levels of initiation and ascension were somewhat standardized (with contention about variations). Start at bottom and move up through experiencing each level:

9th -- beyond rationality, divine transcendence, transcendent freedom

8th -- fixed stars - timeless cosmic determinism

4th-7th - slow planets

1st-3rd - fast planets

0th - earth - change, time

A miracle happened, the prison doors fell open and the chains fell off, and I was set free. High philosophical magic may elevate this same sense of 'miracle' as the idea and mystic experience of transcending cosmic determinism, because nothing less than a miracle can lift a personal agent out of the deterministic block universe.

The ancients fully believed we are part of a determined universe, and some went beyond to believe in the greatest and purest miracle of all, that of being lifted outside of the deterministic block universe. Plotinus' system connects directly to this system, but with different ways of framing the elements; I should read Plotinus specifically on the issue of transcending hiemarmene/Necessity.

Believing in miracle to restabilize self-control

Artist: Ozzy Osbourne

Album: Blizzard of Ozz

Song: I Don't Know (excerpt)

Nobody ever told me, I found out for myself

You gotta believe in foolish miracles

It's not how you play the game

It's if you win or lose

You can choose

Don't confuse

Win or lose

It's up to you

Analysis: The following theory is tentative, and includes some reported ideas that were in the air at the time, whether correct or not.

Nobody ever told me, I found out for myself

[during peak of very loose cognition, during self-control system short-circuit and breakdown]

You gotta believe in foolish miracles

[pray to Isis/God as transcendent compassionate controller outside time, to plot a kind trajectory for your forthcoming mental construct series so mental stability returns and you are not obliged to cancel your control as "sentenced" and liable to]

It's not how you play the game

It's if you win or lose

[though the mind reached this point through perfect hardheaded razor-sharp rationality, jumping up a level to transcendent miracle salvation from self-destruction can be considered fair -- if the choice is between perfect rationality that leads to self-destruction of self-control, versus prayer for a miraculous solution via a time-transcendent controller-god descending onto the stage in a divine intervention, why not give up the perfect rationality that failed to save your ass and simply be rescued by miraculous faith?

That faith idea is what the impossible, miraculous Isis/God puts into the mind, and one is thus "saved by divine intervention via the savior" -- this is all done with full recognition of truth and perfect rationality, so it's not delusion in any way; it's a transcendent jump out of the trap of ego death.]

You can choose

[ironic -- next album concludes "There's no choice", but such is choice -- and the God, according to the soberly calculated miracle-level-jump, is the one who put trust of him into your mind. How does this work? "It's a transcendent miracle."]

Don't confuse

[peak loosecog state is both confusing mayhem, and frighteningly clear-thinking like a mythic sword]

Win or lose

[the choice: believe in a miracle (faith in Isis as extra-time benevolent controller of your near-future thoughtstream and be spared from self-control destruction, or, cling to the sinking ship of perfectly pure rationality and be liable to be a victim of the self-control chaos monster]

It's up to you

[ancient philosophy debate: is anything "up to us" as a sovereign, primary control-origin, or is the mind's control only that of a secondary control gear?]

I'm picturing "Christ" as a cybernetic mental model and mode of self-control that centrally relies on a Hofstadterian transcendent core, called "faith". One becomes a "Friend of God", calling God "daddy" or "pop", as in "here, assume a miracle happens".

If this theory is true, if the mind's self-control system ultimately explodes into chaos when self-control is rationally analyzed with absolutist Reason, then the transcendent mind, to be viable, is forced to tell itself the egoic lie which it knows can't be true, like a thorn in the flesh, one must carry around a little devil, must continue playing the false ego game, but that little ghost is now made holy and made acceptable to God -- that is, to pure rationality and self-consistency.

The mind now knows that it cannot be self-consistent; rational self-control causes self-control to seize in a religious seizure of control chaos. These ideas might be wrong, but should be considered. The ego delusion is now replaced by the Holy Ghost, the spirit of Christ, the Christ pattern that is officially declared spotless, holy, sinless, acceptable to God. "How can I logically be rational and also be viable?"

You can't have viable self-control at the same time as you have perfect rationality about self control; seizure results and liability for chaos. The "acceptable solution", the Christ or Saving Solution that preserves one's viability as a practical self-controller system, is to officially sacrifice your firstborn childself, and adopt the miracle faith solution, which amounts to simultaneously believing the lie of egoic self-control at the same time as you reject such an impossible logical absurdity.

How can the mind be so inconsistent and yet be declared righteous and rational and consistent? How can the mind be formally and consciously self-contradictory? That is found to be necessary and at least the lie is emphasized out in the open, rather than hidden and denied.

If this theory is true, then the exagerrated self-thrashed arrested king on the Cross would serve as an emphatic reminder that, although practical requirements demand that I pretend to be a self-controller, I very openly emphasize that I am not really such a controller. This is living with the Christ "acceptable pattern" in one's cybernetic heart as opposed to living with a goatishly self-willed, asinine and foolish demon in one's cybernetic self-control heart.

I am now a liar, but I am no longer a foolish liar -- I am redeemed. The image of a donkey on a cross is equivalent. And the donkey cannot or must not be destroyed; the mind *uses* delusion, or the animal logically chaotic system of self control, but that logically false pattern is put on display in the middle of the town to remind everyone that their controllership is make-believe, virtual controllership only, merely virtual sovereignty.

I had to learn faith; I had to learn to make believe I am an ego, although I emphatically, formally deny that such a notion of egoic controllership is logically viable when pressed to the limit and observed clearly. I learned to act like I'm lying, to hyperconsciously pretend this mind contains an ego -- to do so is like staking one's life on an impossible miracle; that's the peak cybernetic discovery of "faith".

I now carry a demon, but he is a godman-shaped redeemed demon; a transcendently acknowledged and licensed demon (authorized by my own pure-rationality mind). My mind is converted from a state of prostitution to virginal purity.

This theory is very much frontier exploratory research: all I can say for sure is that these ideas warrant consideration and something along these general lines appears to be warranted. If we are puppets of blind Fortuna, if the universe is a stupid heartless rock and it is the puppetmaster injecting my thoughts, and my thoughts are radically freed even while frozen in the spacetime block... that might be an unstable scenario when examined with too bright a light and too-perfect rationality.

Solutions then may include prayer for a transcendent miracle in the form of being rescued by Isis as a controller outside time -- that might be the meaning of adopting the godman pattern of thinking; and that might be equivalent to pretending to be an egoic sovereign even though such an idea is now considered a grotesque logical impossibility, a deepest offence to one's integrity and mental honor.

I have "sold out" and "given up" on rationality, although rationality is the religion I had to adopt to reach all the way to enlightened self-knowledge about my cybernetic core. Perhaps in the end, studying Douglas Hofstadter, we *are* forced to jump up a level to "trans-rationality" -- after we have played every last card and come to prove our own defeat of egoic control rationality or a purely rational personal-control model.

One of my stronger hunches here is that a purely rational personal-control model leads to dangerous religious self-control seizure. There might have to be a degree of slop, of donkey-mind, of non-rationality, for personal self-control to be viable.

Perhaps my coveted "transcendent control rationality" system I've been engineering for years inevitably has "here a miracle occurs" at its very heart. This would be compatible with Wilber, Watts, Hofstadter, and Godel -- such is the heart of mystery. Where there once was an egoic chaos-demon at my heart, there is now "the mystery of Christ in me", explicitly acknowledged and neatly catalogued and adopted as a transcendent covenant, arrangement, configuration, or deal.

It's a system that works, even if part of the system is "mystery" and an "inner alien God". I can continue living, can consider myself to have full rational self-knowledge, and can have a neat, justified, and logically acceptable slot for "here at the heart, a transcendent miracle occurs".

So, esoteric Christianity may, after all, require something comparable to the supernatural -- but something specific and exact, not the whole magic kitchen sink. A better term would be "transcendent", rather than "supernatural", though the term could possibly include ideas like that of the compassionate controller outside time: Isis or God, who sends a transcendent saving pattern of thinking to my mind, in conjunction with revealing my embarrassing, true, logically contradictory self-control nature to my mind.

If the mind really must utilize a logically invalid system of self-control, rationality needs some kind of transcendent way to accept this flaw at our core and make it righteous, justified, or reconciled.

3 levels of evolving attitude to supernatural-magic themes

There is a 3-tier scheme:

1. Stupid and inexperienced people are supernatural literalists (low magical thinking);

Low literalist magic/astrology/alchemy

2. "The 'rational' Enlightenment" -- dull middling people do away with transcendence and true mysticism together with getting rid of vulgar literalist religion, but fail to understand the potential and referent of mythic allegory

Dull rational uncomprehending rejection of all things magic/astrology/alchemy

3. The best and most experienced people return again to supernaturalism and magic and myth deliberately, in order to harness and explain it as entheogen-determinism allegory.

High mystic mythic allegorical magic/astrology/alchemy

This forms an odd alliance between those who know religion is all entheogen-determinsm metaphor, and those who take it literally (group 1 and 3); there is a combat I'm embroiled in between group 3 and 2. Group 2 loathes 1, and group 3 has to fight to transcend group 2, preserving what's good in group 2 but moving on to reintroduce true religion, which is entheogen determinism metaphor.

The Christ Conspiracy book and discussion group are absolutely restricted to group 2, on the whole; totally and overwhelmingly dominated by the struggle for group 2 to establish supremacy over and against group 1. Group 3, mine, is partly allied with group 1, and partly allied with group 2, so the people who have not evolved beyond group 2 but are struggling still to finish evolving from group 1 to group 2, perceive me (3) as a threat and enemy.

Group 2 suffers from what Wilber calls "repression"; rather than embracing and surpassing level 1, they are struggling to oppose and negate group 1 entirely, without actually understanding how group 1 elements have the potential to transform to 3.

Naive freewill, seized determinism, and high supernaturalism

The peak state is the state of perceiving the universe as ruled by mindless, heartless determinism, a giant fascist corporate-State Borg mechanism that would demolish one's stability of viable self-governance just as soon as it would sustain and preserve the viability of the personal control agent.

>>Why are we born not realizing this? It is not our natural state of consciousness, then? Why would we be born into an unnatural state of consciousness, thinking we have free will?

Humans when young think as freewillists, because freewill is conceptually simple and is practical, an assumption and sense-feeling like animals use, and because young people have limited experience, not having undergone a series of entheogenic initiations. This starting state is metaphorically described as "original sin": freewill thinking and mental structures of moral agency premised on the egoic freewill assumption and sense-feeling. Ego is delusion of freewill; ego is delusion is freewill thinking.

The mature initiate retains the structures of freewill thinking, now "justified" and "forgiven" and "paid for" because consciously acknowledged as merely a practical, convenient illusion of convention the cosmos uses to get its work done.

Common in esotericism is the idea of graduating to deterministic thinking but also to trans-deterministic thinking which fully sees through the illusion of freewill and fully concedes determinism but also is capable of leaping beyond the restrictive limits of definite reasoning, especially when in the peak window of the intense mystic altered state of loose cognition.

First we learn ordinary-state, freewillist thinking, then we learn mystic-state, determinist thinking, which pretty much includes mystic-state transdeterminist, high-magic, trans-rational thinking (the latter phase is highly pertinent to the full, practically problematic experience of determinism, and follows quickly on its heels, which is why high magical thinking is usually found essentially together with deterministic mysticism; in a series of 9 initiations such as astrological Hermeticism, the first have freewillist thinking, #8 has determinism-discovery, and #9 has divine trans-determinism (emphatically not naive freewillist thinking).

High magical thinking could be defined as rejecting freewill as naive and rejecting determinism as true but finite and practically problematic as in leading to self-control seizure. It's better to be a high supernaturalist than a naive freewillist or a seized determinist.

Michael Hoffman wrote:

>>High magical thinking could be defined as rejecting freewill as naive and rejecting determinism as true but finite and practically problematic as in leading to self-control seizure. It's better to be a high supernaturalist than a naive freewillist or a seized determinist.

Brian wrote:

>I'm interested in this concept of self-control-seizure. Could you please elaborate. I could use some more self-control. What, for example, is keeping me from mowing the lawn or changing the oil in my van, or any other thing that I _should_ be doing? I'm looking for practical methods of self-control-cybernetics in daily life.

The rabbi creates his golem creature from deterministic clay from the Ground of Being, bringing it to life by the magic of freewillist thinking so that it becomes a useful servant. Day by day, initiation session after initiation session, the golem's power of self-control and freewillist thinking grows; the golem grows taller but then threatens to run amok, as control instability is reached, when self-control realizes that it has grown too strong to be controlled by its own power.

Then the rabbi must rush to erase the start of the word "truth" to form the word "death", to put an end to the golem of freewill self-control. The magically self-animated golem then collapses back into its real material, deterministic clay from the Ground of Being, and the rabbi is then approved by God. The golem is then placed in the synagogue attic, where no mortal man can gaze upon it and live.

The quest to attain full self-control cannot succeed, but it can bring metaphysical enlightenment and knowledge of all the higher things. Metaphysically, the controller ultimately is the Ground of Being or magically postulated divine hidden powerful controller outside the clutches of the deterministic cosmos.

I began theorizing in order to attain full self-control as promised in the personal development seminars. They promised, and I sought to develop, practical methods of self-control-cybernetics in daily life. But as in the speech attributed to the figure of Saint Paul the Apostle, I was unable to follow such a law, such a code of conduct based on the premise of expecting full self-control. Those things I determined not to do, I did, and those things I determined to do, I did not do.

But I did find a certain peace and mental coherence *about* self-control and about assumed expectations about self-control. That much, I can guarantee to people who read the theory I pulled together -- not attainment of full self-control, but mental peace about our inability to attain full self-control.

The oral teaching is forbidden to put into words, but it is shown here in sacred letters on the scroll from the angel -- not tasted here, though, even though it smells of pungent honey.

http://www.egodeath.com/driedamanitaphotos.htm

>What is high magical thinking?

High magical thinking is distinct from vulgar or low magical thinking, which is literalist. High magical thinking is studied by Western esotericism studies including high alchemy and high astrology.

High magical thinking essentially amounts to the acknowledgement that during the peak window of the mystic altered state, the mind commonly encounters and discovers a need for the ability to think beyond reason and beyond determinism -- not falling down into low superstition, literalism, and freewillist thinking, but retaining reason and deterministic thinking and affirming their elegant validity while also having the ability to stabilize the psyche and the personal self-control system in a way that reason and the elegant deterministic worldmodel cannot do.

This transcendent divine mode of thinking can be said to go beyond Reason and beyond the determinism that Reason (combined with mystic experiential sense-feeling) leads to, or it can be said to be the ultimate phase of Reason which is the ultimate potential mode of Reason, when the mind realizes that common Reason cannot solve the problem of control-instability in the face of cosmic determinism.

The mind is brought to go beyond Reason; that is, graduate from common Reason to transcendent Reason which is mysterious like Godel's Incompleteness Theorem or Hofstadter's Strange Loop of Control and Self -- I put together the latter as the 'strange loop of self-control'.

Hofstadter

http://www.egodeath.com/geb.htm

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0465026567/

Ordinary cognition doesn't perceive the strangeness of the self-control loop; loose, mystic-state cognition does perceive and experience that strangeness, leading to the peak religio-philosophical experience of self-control seizure, which is released through the mind's being pulled up into the divine, transcendent, trans-rational, high-magical religious mode of thinking, which rejects freewill as naive and which rejects deterministic thinking as practically incompatible with the needs of practical self-control stability.

Mystic magic and skilled ultra-allegorization

At its best, magic was deliberate ultra-allegorization of mystic phenomena. A sophisticated joke with a serious mystic dimension, because authentic mysticism is so heavy it needs comic relief. There is a key bit of transcendent magic in relating to the absolutely hidden mysterious puppetmaster that is clearly experienced in the mystic state.

Miracle = conscious transcendent use of freewill illusion

>sweet miracle -> miracle of (pseudo) freewill will

The miracle is also the mind's ability to discover no-free-will but then transcendently re-postulate the impossible -- free will, personal power -- in order to bring practical controllership stability back again. This is divine thinking: neither naive freewill, nor denying determinism, but now, the freewill illusion deliberately utilized; delusion now gone, illusion is transcendently embraced and utilized. Virtual freewill has consciously become my possession.

Ancient magic, religion, and metaphorical thought

>>With Campbell, who needs Frazer?

Campbell is pretty good in recognizing myth and religion as essentially metaphor. I think I have Jung's model and its limitations figured out, but I need to study and critique Campbell more. I listened to his Moyers interviews, which are not bad but not terribly enlightening either.

Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth (CDs, unabridged)

Joseph Campbell, Bill Moyers

http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/1565115104

I liked better Campbell's book about the metaphorical nature of Christianity:

Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor

Joseph Campbell

http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/1577312023

I suspect that Campbell doesn't put any emphasis at all on myth as being grounded in the mystic state -- unlike Ralph Metzner book about metaphor in spirituality, The Unfolding Self.

The Unfolding Self: Varieties of Transformative Experience

Ralph Metzner

http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/1579830005

Daryl wrote (paraphrased):

>>This idea gives me something to ponder:

>>*Magic* gives humans the power over nature

>>*Religion* admits that only god controls nature, and humans must propitiate him/her

The key question in pondering ancient thought and conceptual categories is, would the ancients have thought of 'magic' and 'religion' that way? We need to use the strengths of modern thinking while still differentiating between modern and ancient modes of thought. Key words such as 'humans', 'nature', and 'god' are all highly shiftable within frameworks of meaning and experience. Ancient thinking about magic was not just how we today would think of a person doing ritual for power over what we call nature.

Ancient thinking about magic and religion was more along the lines of, "I have been, through initiatory, non-ordinary religious experiencing, raised to the divine level of the supernatural, reaching my true home outside the cosmos, beyond the clutches of the sphere of the fixed stars. I was brought to do that through being lifted up out of the cosmos by the divine compassionate rescuer, with whom my spiritual level of self is united. Now that I have so transcended the world through divine help, maybe I can rely upon that divine help to help solve other problems, and fulfill other desires and longings."

>>How do we differentiate religious thought from philosophy? As Platonism, a philosophy, has influenced Christianity, a religion, to a large degree. Where do we draw the line there? Is it because religion assumes a god? ... Does religion require ritual, and philosophy only thought and talk? ... I ask it to help define what motivated the proto-Christians.

Overall, ancient philosophy was religious philosophy and mystic philosophy, including mystic speculative philosophy. Modern philosophy restricts its mode of thinking and the kinds of experiencing it takes into account. However, ancient philosophy is practically a different major field than modern philosophy; it's misleading to use the simple unqualified term 'philosophy' as though it means the same for us as for the Hellenistic era -- for us to understand them, the word 'Esotericism' is more appropriate and effective than 'Philosophy'.

Modern Philosophy has only paid attention to the 10% of Hellenistic philosophy which manages to squeeze through our filter; the ancients did discuss some topics that modern Philosophers discuss, but overall, there was far more emphasis on experiential gnosis-type speculation.

Related books:

Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic: Empedocles and Pythagorean Tradition

Peter Kingsley

http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0198150814

Toward a New Interpretation of Plato

Giovanni Reale

http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0813208548

Homer the Theologian: Neoplatonist Allegorical Reading and the Growth of the Epic Tradition

Robert Lamberton

http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0520066073

The Neoplatonists

John Gregory

http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0415187850

>>… the gnostics: seems to me we can't generalize. ... Some felt the end of the world was coming, some felt when you became pneumatic and approached gnosis, the kingdom was here now.

We should not assume that Gnostics and other Hellenistic religionists thought of 'the end of the world' in a literal sense; to assume that they did is just to project modern literalist assumptions back onto the premoderns. More likely, the idea of 'the end of the world' in ancient religion poetically referred to an experience of timelessness and a certain type of mental chaos during initiation, marking the end of one way of thinking and the beginning of another.

If we can generalize about Gnostic (and maybe other pre-modern) thinking, there is literary interpretive evidence supporting the assumption that typical Gnostics conceived of 'the inevitable immediately approaching end of the world' in a metaphorical, mystical sense rather than in a literalist sense.

The Hellenistic world (Alexander to Constantine, 325 BCE to 325 CE) mapped Alexander's sudden conquest of the entire world onto the phenomena of the mystic state of experiencing, with Persian religious metaphor and Jewish mystic apocalyptic writings serving as additional sources.

My interest in ancient texts is based in systematic double-meanings, modes of reading, and concept-meanings. Look at 'sin', 'salvation', 'imperishability', 'redemption', 'judgement', 'end of the old age', and 'end of the world' and look for a systematic alternate mystical/metaphorical meaning for all these concepts together. Sure, this means heavy study of the ancient texts, but the entire question we must hold out and remember is, what mode of reading is possible and appropriate to use when we read these ancient texts?

If there are two modes of reading -- literal and metaphorical -- then the work at hand becomes not just the work of reading literally, or of finding just any metaphorical system of reading, but rather, of finding a systematic appropriate match, a metaphorical system of reading that overall fits the ancient (or Hellenistic or pre-modern) mode of writing and thinking.

A common flaw in scholarly study of these texts is to adopt an overall literalist frame of mind when reading, and then consider isolated concepts as being metaphorical. Instead, we ought to be looking for and debating about the best from among several proposed metaphorical frameworks in which to do our reading and studying of the texts.

Transcendent rescue via originless, rationally unjustifiable rescue-faith

Self-transcendent rescue through being given originless, nonrational, rationally unjustifiable rescuing-faith

Faith is about one's destined near-future thoughts and movements of will are positive, life-preserving, and kind. There is no logical basis for this assumption, only a rationally exempt assumption out of nowhere, a logically null transcendent magical miracle. The 'mind of Christ' is the mind which is filled, out of a completely hidden source, with the faith that its near-future thoughts and movements of will. What can I do to make this faith or grace or prayer for faith happen?

Nothing -- agency logic fails and nullifies here; here is where the mind is given religion, here is where you get religion, where the 'getting' is and isn't your own initiated action. My movements of will are preset in the future and arise like a spring given to me from outside me. What can I do, as a spring-spewed agent, to control the spring's future spewage?

Nothing; everything that arises from the spring is out of my control, as I, as control agent, am only a projection that is put forth and therefore controlled by the spring, the fountainhead of my world of mental constructs. I, as a merely secondary and virtual control-agent, cannot take credit for my own thoughts and movements of will. I, as pure consciousness, am a straightjacketed helpless observer, fastened helplessly to spacetime, awaiting the actions that come from outside me.

There is consciousness in this mind, and there is secondary-only control agency in this mind, and there is a spring coming into this mind -- this mental-construct cave -- from outside of the cave, from the underworld, with a completely hidden source. Here I am, as pure consciousness and virtual-only control agency, affixed helplessly to spacetime -- the question "what can I do to regain controllership" logically collapses as nonsensical.

There is the man on the cross, chained to the rocks, affixed to the wheel, tied helpless to the mast, nailed inside the box in the river, chained to the rock in the sea as a sacrifice to the chaos monster, hanging from a tree, trapped down in the jaws of hell and belly of the big fish, locked up in the prison, and we ask, incongruously, what this helpless princess of empty, illusory egoic controllership should do as a real and solid free controller to regain her sovereign controllership -- though it is set up to be by definition a perfect, ideal, archetypal *rescue* type of situation.

To give the bread to Judas is to put yourself in a complete rescue type of situation. You ask if you should drink the cup given you -- I answer "Are you prepared to absolutely be dependent on being rescued by a completely hidden mysterious rescuer about whom you know nothing, nothing more than the complete mystery man found by the good Samaritan?

Putting faith in the godman or god to rescue you is like having faith that the unconscious man on the side of the road is a good man -- or like assuming that that man can be trusted with control of your thoughts and movements of will.

Only in this Hofstadterian sense is transcendent knowledge "beyond rationality", and we can define precisely how, just as clearly as we can study "This sentence is false." We are actually always dependent on a hidden source that controls our thoughts and movements of will -- but we only realize and discover this in the refined mystic peak. Reading the preface to the second edition of Godel, Escher, Bach, there is reason to wonder if his interest in strange loops and consciousness was inspired.

It is a control emergency. You are completely helpless. What can you do? Use rationality to try to save your life -- but here it utterly fails; in fact rationality is what caused and led to this hapless entrapment in dire straits. Rationality is the problem, not the solution -- though it does offer the advice that the solution transcends rationality.

Cybernetically, how can this problem be solved with pure religion rather than with myth?

What can you do? Nothing. It is a spiritual emergency. What can you do? Be rescued. Be given faith. Then a miracle happens: abracadabra, your hidden savior waves his wand. The angels cause an earthquake and the jail breaks open.

Be rational. Resue yourself. But rationality concludes that you are incapable as control agent of exerting the required type of effort to rescue yourself. "Save yourself by acting rationally," we say to the illusory control agent. But acting rationally, in the sense intended, is a frank contradiction in terms. Personal action is inherently not rational in its origin -- it is simply given from God-only-knows-where -- from the transcendent creator of the spacetime block, or from the spacetime block itself.

Here is a spacetime block upon which you are totally dependent even for your every thought and near-future movement of will. Can you trust IT? Can you trust the mysterious hidden JHVH? Can you trust this BLAH that is now revealed to be the true hidden fountainhead (which is now revealed and unveiled to your mind) of your every thought, your every movement of will? As Watts writes, why shouldn't you trust it -- it got you here.

Foolish Balaam on your way to curse Israel, listen to the wise voice of the words coming out of the mouth of the ass -- "Why do you beat me? Have I not been your faithful ass, that has carried you all your life?"

Acid rock song: Magic, by the Cars, from Heartbeat City -- an album worth reading from the point of view of the intense mystic altered state.

http://www.usats.com/dale/thecars/lyrics_heartbeat.html#magic

Acid rock song: Help!, by the Beatles

http://www.egodeath.com/johnlennonhelp.htm

Acid rock song: No One at the Bridge, by Rush

http://www.egodeath.com/rushlyrics.htm#xtocid22921

What is the name by whom the rational person should be rescued and saved? Some call him Christ, some call him Dionysus, some call him St. George, some first call him 'Snow Dog' and later, in complete contradiction, call him 'Prince By-Tor'. By any name, this is The Transcendent Strange-Control-Loop Rescuer. That is the true name of our savior.

There is only one name by which we must be saved: The Transcendent Strange-Control-Loop Rescuer, the helper, the advocate, your good lawyer... also known by one philosophical mystery-cult as By-Tor.

You can even be challenged to prove that the personal name doesn't matter. You could even theoretically label the Christ/savior principle "light bringer" as long as you don't depend on your own free will moral agency power to save you. As a sort of arbitrary label I could call the savior "Lucifer" but certainly cannot call the savior "my own power of free will moral agency" -- *that* is what it means to "know Christ" and to recognize the paraclete.

The principles are what matters, not the choice of symbols or metaphors such as "annoited savior-king" or "light-bringer" or "shepherd" or "goatherd". True, in some contexts Lucifer = goat = freewill delusion, but if the context is changed, we could set up Lucifer = shepherd = no-free-will. Similarly, it's legit to say "Jehovah = creator of lower world = delusion" -- because metaphor elements are context-relative or system-relative.

To make us prove our worth as theorists focused on the principles rather than the labels, Neil chose the "By-Tor" name for the rescuer principle, though that name was used in the context of his previous album to represent evil -- there, the savior/rescuer principle is labelled "Snow Dog".

Theologians say "paraclete" refers to the holy spirit, but on principle, 'paraclete' points to the rescuer principle itself, which is why the description of who or what Jesus will send after he goes away is left so mysteriously vague. The holy spirit is the mental state in which the mind reconstructs and rediscovers the "depend on transcendent self-control rescuer" principle -- so "paraclete" doesn't just mean the holy spirit, but more specifically, the cybernetic transcendent rescuer principle while in the mystic state.

DaVinci's esoteric crowd seems to have set up a (presumably mystically coherent) symbolic system where 'John the Baptist' = truth, 'Jesus' = falsity -- that's not far from the symbolic scheme Mary "John" Magdalene" = truth, 'Peter' = falsity.

When I say that depending on being transcendently rescued is "rationally unjustifiable" I mean:

not based on rationality

logically null

outside the domain of what can be decided with rationality

rationally undecidable

I don't mean "contrary to rationality". Rationality is a tool that can be used for most things, but as Godel proved, not for everything. One of the few things the tool of rationality can't be wholly applied to is dependence on being transcendently rescued during the ego death state. After we have noted that specific, definite, particular, identified, isolated and cordoned-off factor, we can say that enlightenment is fully rationally explainable.

This transcendence is like the anti-rational aspect of Zen: we have to consciously be made to rely on the Tao, but note that we are ever dependent on the Tao anyway, we just are normally unaware of that non-rational state of dependence.

When threatened by Mara, Buddha's fancy, transcendent, brilliant, complex etc move is simply: touch the ground; he is made by the ground to touch the ground; he is rescued by being made to touch the ground.

Down and up: I point down to the ground of being that produces me and makes me utterly dependent, and point up to the transcendent principle of being mysteriously rescued. As control agent, I have one foot on the Ground of Being (or perhaps egoic thinking), and one foot firmly resting on the foundation of arbitrary, nonlogical, baseless heaven or transcendent thinking -- which I'm aware is mysteriously given to me from outside my conscious control center.

A mature, aware, enlightened control agent depends half on egoic thinking and half on the baseless, floating, mysterious transcendent givenness of all thoughts.

Desperate prayer to a transcendent deity or Self

Michael wrote:

>>our hand is forced by the Ground of Being. During the mystic state, one's hand (heart, will) is seen to be forced. My hand is firmly on the wheel of choice and decision, but now I see that someone is forcing my hand. The ego is the controller of the personal will, but the ego is secretly controlled by the Ground of Being.

>>When that is seen as terrifying and a dangerous state of dependence on a hidden manipulator-force, one may pray to that manipulator force, feeling that one's only hope is to hope that the manipulator force is a conscious and benevolent being -- God conceived of as personal and benevolent.

>Isn't that where "surrender" comes in. I'm not afraid of the hidden-manipulator-force as [because?] I've experienced it before. However, since I have had severe "psychotic breaks," I'd be afraid to do psychedelics ever again -- I might not come back. Once I forgot who I was.

>What's a person to do in a situation like this one? Sounds dangerous for me.

People commonly forget who they are, during loose cognition, when the familiar cognitive structures are effectively lifted, suspended.

We have every reason to assume that psychedelics -- cognition loosening agents -- are dangerous for people, especially for those with a propensity for psychotic breaks, even if they are familiar with the functional strategy that so many writers have called for, of a "ritual framework" that includes praying to a deity. There appears to be a close connection between the events in this evidently standard sequence:

o Desperation during loose cognition

o Prayer to a system-transcendent deity that utterly transcends the usual self-agent and its matrix (spacetime ground)

o Immediately, quickly recovering mental stability.

That sequence is *standard* and universal in popular mystic religious experiencing, and is reflected generally across world religious myths. The person unites with that transcendent deity -- but only the higher, transcendent part of the person unites with the deity and (to adopt standard heretical mystic views for a moment) awakens to being that deity.

Why pray to some god if you -- some part of you -- *is* that god? Why pray to oneself to rescue oneself from one's own helplessness? The problem is a semantics problem: the word "oneself" means both 'self' and 'Self', lower and higher self. When a person discovers that they

The person is subject to the divine death-sentence punishment for breaking the divine law and stealing and eating the food of the gods. The person doesn't realize that at first. But suddenly this death sentence, which is the requirement to sacrifice one's egoic controllership claim, dawns on the mind and swoops down like a devouring eagle of death carrying away one's childself.

The person prays to the divine for rescuing, "forgiveness for breaking the divine law" (by claiming controllership and later for eating the entheogen), and will pay any price for stability so that one's life may continue, rather than enter a disaster scenario. Only a minor disaster, a minor payment is required: to put king ego on the spacetime tree, crucifying and terminating its claim to rulership.

Thus oneself prays to oneself for rescuing from dire straits, but specifically, the lower 'oneself' prays to the higher 'oneself' that is, for the first time, necessarily postulated "by faith" as being outside the spacetime system and its laws. To the mystic, the "laws" that the "religion of the Jews" is based on, the "laws" that Christianity does away with, really means the law of spacetime determinism; the law of divine Necessity.

The ego is killed upon conceptually seeing the "naked goddess", the frozen spacetime block, and is cast into seizure and ego-death and control-chaos. How to recover? Mentally "have faith" -- postulate and construct and affirm that even though the frozen spacetime block is a perfectly coherent model of how things really secretly are, there can yet be a validly postulated realm that transcends the now confidently postulated frozen spacetime block. The thoughts arise in this sequence:

o I'm sure the world is a frozen spacetime block

o I'm sure I'm doomed to lose control, because of realizing the above

o I require an escape from this lawlike mental system

o Prayer to the divine

o Identification of the postulated transcendent part of oneself with the postulated divine controller outside the frozen spacetime block

This is the essence of intense religious experience and the source and origin of the universal religion-myth of the "compassionate, rescuing deity" that can be found in every religion that is influenced by mystics -- these same dynamics and isomorphically equivalent religion-myth ideas can be found in Judaism, Gnosticism, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, and other religions.

Salvation (rescuing, mental stability) is remarkably rapid after praying to the newly born and mentally constructed transcendent deity outside the spacetime block. "When he saw his persecutors, baby Jesus flew at once into the compassionate protective arms of Mary, Queen of Heaven, so quickly one sandal was lost." This "flying to the deity" mytheme appears in other religion-myth as well.

Date of my 'Apophatic theology, trans-rationality, miracle, unknowable God' idea formulation

A key insight was when I wrote something like, in the Determinism discussion group, "The one real miracle is our ability to postulate the impossible, freewill, while under deterministic self-control seizure during the peak window of the mystic altered state, to regain practical stable sense of being a self-controlling agent." Also, the day I read some Dionysius Areopagite type writings in the book The Other Bible -- all around Fall 2003 -- when I was at last able to agree with Ken Wilber's "transrationality" ideas, but on my own terms and with my own conceptual framework, against his.

In most postings before that insight, I had always rejected Wilber's acceptance of paranormal and trans-rational levels above the level of egoic rationality. But I figured out the legitimate and clear meaning of the "black box alien unknown God" sometime around Summer/Fall 2003.

It is always artificial to assign a single day's date to an insight that blossoms over a week or two period, such as my figuring out, discovering, and recognizing the mystic-state meaning of the metaphors about "apocalyptic end of the passing age" (I think I assigned a date to that of March 24, 2003).

What is the purpose of assigning a date to my key insights? It provides a structure to judge the import of key supporting beams for a viable systematization of transcendent knowledge and the history of esoteric religion, or perennial philosophy. It's a somewhat arbitrary or artificial exercise that provides a tangible method of weighing the import of ideas to identify which are key and which ones are more filler. The exercise helps therefore to formulate nutshell summaries, such as in my long .sig:

"simple theory of the ego-death and rebirth experience. The essence, paradigm, origin, and fountainhead of religion is the use of visionary plants to routinely trigger the intense mystic altered state, producing loose cognitive association binding, which then produces an experience of frozen block-universe determinism with a single, pre-existing, ever-existing future. The return of the ordinary state of consciousness is allegorized as a transcendence of Necessity or cosmic determinism. Myth describes this mystic-state experience. Initiation is classically a series of some 8 visionary-plant sessions, interspersed with study of perennial philosophy. Most religion is a distortion, corruption, literalization, and cooptation of this standard initiation system."

What is missing or weak in that long sig is ideas about transcendence of determinism/nature, transcendence of rationality, and the high metaphor meaning of Hermeticism, and of negative, apophatic theology: knowledge of the unknowable God.

To regain self-control, acknowledge transcendent controller

Control instability: what can you do to save controllership when it collapses? If you ask me how to save your life during control seizure, memorize this answer.

____________________

What should I do to regain viable self-control? Say "I acknowledge the transcendent controller."

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This solution is developed below, using mythic elements mostly from the Jewish and Christian scriptures, but which are also found equivalently in world mysticism across religions.

Compassion/love/mercy: self's saving act yet done to self

In the mystic peak, the mind's personal agency awakens to its empty, impotent powerlessness. I'm totally vulnerable to whatever near-future thoughts and acts of will the Ground has already created in my near future thought-stream. What "strategic action" can I actively do as agent to save myself -- given that all my thoughts are given to me, from the metaphysical point of view?

I can't *do* anything, where I'm considered as an ultimate originator of my thoughts and potent original author of my fate. On what logical basis can I trust the Ground of Being to have created life-sustaining actions in my near future? There can be no logical basis, and there is nothing I can do to save myself from radical self-control instability.

I could say I can save myself by personhood-sustaining compassion, love, and mercy, but I cannot take credit for that self-saving strategic move, because all moves ultimately are given to me. So if divine non-logical personhood-sustaining compassion/love/mercy happens in my mind, I as ego agent get zero credit. The Trinity provides some model for this relation; Father and Son love each other (via Holy Spirit) with one love.

The compassion and life-preserving, personhood-sustaining, control-restabilizing love with which I love and trust (as merciful personal high controller) the transcendent Ground is a love that goes out from self to Ground, but more emphatically, before that, it goes from Ground to self. The Ground always gets first credit for the love (control-sustaining, life- and personhood-sustaining attitude of personal mercy and compassion).

You ask me what you can do to save your sorry ass during control instability in which you become radically impotent and powerless and vulnerable to the near-future control-thoughts that are already forced upon you in the preexisting near-future. I could say "pray to the transcendent compassionate merciful divine ultimate level of control", but that makes it sound like *you* as ultimate author of your thoughts are creating this strategic move that saves yourself, preserves your sovereign kingship.

More accurate would be for me to tell you "save yourself by being given trust in the Ground by the Ground". What can you do as agent to make the Ground give you trust in the Ground? In a key sense, nothing; again, salvation and restoration of your kingship is something done to you by the Ground. The Ground puts the visionary plant in you; the Ground brings down your sovereign kingship; the Ground then revives your kingship, now purified of the delusion of your wielding ultimate sovereign personal power.

Will the Ground give you this trust in itself? Can the Ground be trusted to inject you with trust in itself? That is logically unanswerable even though we can point out that all evidence seems to show that the Ground always follows that pattern. Through negotiation, the Israelite leader has to *remin