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All of us, deep in our inmost hearts, know that we are phony; and that all our pride and glory are just masks we wear for other people, so they won't see that we are actually ashamed of ourselves.
What we don't all know is that everyone else also feels the same way; and that in fact it is our society which imposes this burden of shame and silence upon us. Precisely why society does this to us, and what we
can do about it how we can overcome our guilt and "helplessness" and build a true self-esteem in line with our true feelings will be the subject of this book.
What we will be talking about here are our
feelings;
and feelings are extraordinarily difficult to talk about. How, for example, could we describe the feelings of e.g. hunger, or sadness, or orgasm to someone who has never experienced them, in such a way that he or she would truly understand them? Feelings can be shared directly, but they cannot be comprehended intellectually nor communicated verbally (except in poetry).
This book is not a poem;
but neither is it a presentation of ideas which can be developed in a linear, discursive fashion. In the four chapters of this book we will discuss the theory of thought forms from four very different points of view (astrological, psychological, metaphysical, and magical); and it must be borne in mind that we are not changing the definition of the term "thought form" as we go along. Rather, just as the elephant appeared quite different to each of the six blind men who touched different parts of its body, so too will our idea of what a thought form is depend upon how we approach it. Thus the following exposition should be regarded as a highly metaphorical account of what mind is and how it functions i.e. as an intellectual model which can help us to get a handle on what we are truly feeling inside rather than as a scientific or academic treatise.
Two further volumes in the present series are in preparation: one about the moon (the principle of memory), and the other about Venus (the principle of desire).
Certain techniques mentioned en passant in this book (past life and probable reality regressions, recapitulation, and lucid dreaming) will be fully expounded in the companion volumes. The present series of books represents an attempt to build a bridge between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung on the one hand, and Carlos Castaneda on the other that is to say, between the psychotherapy of the twentieth century and the psychotherapy of the twenty-first. The practice of magic must indeed be viewed as a form of psychotherapy: it is founded on the proposition that what we call the world or reality is in fact the creation of each individual, influenced by his or her social training. There is no objective, factual reality out there what we perceive to be reality is but a collection of thought forms inculcated into us by our parents and society. Hence, by changing our individual perceptions of the world, we can indeed change the world.
At the present time mainstream society's stand on magic is about the same as its stand on sex during Freud's time:
it pretends that magic doesn't exist, and that only weird or evil people indulge in it or discuss the issue openly. But just as Freud didn't invent sex, neither did Castaneda invent magic. Rather, these two revolutionaries merely pointed out society's hypocrisy on these issues and for that temerity they were both vilified.
Magic particularly black magic is what everyone is doing all the time and pretending they're not doing it.
Just as until recently the society we live in forced us to repress our sexual feelings (e.g. pretend we aren't masturbating, pretend we are disgusted by oral sex, pretend that we men aren't casting furtive and predatory glances at the breasts, legs, buttocks, etc. of practically every woman we lay eyes on, etc., etc.), so too does it force us to pretend that magic doesn't exist; that we aren't actually bewitching and cursing one another, and engaging in all sorts of evil sorcery, beneath a superficial veneer of social niceties. Our society is, at root, evil; and it has a vested interest in keeping us its individual members as dissatisfied, angry, and fearful as possible in order to control us and keep us quiescent. What makes this issue so tricky is that our personal unhappiness and our ability to think and reason are inextricably intertwined. We are the only thinking species of animal on this earth, and we are the only truly miserable and self-destructive animal on this earth; and this is not a coincidence but rather cause and effect, as will be explained in these pages.
What we will be describing in the present series of books is an astrological map of consciousness.
Freud's theory of the id, ego, and super-ego constitutes a simple map of consciousness; similarly, Castaneda's theory of the body of light fibers and the assemblage point constitutes another map of consciousness rather more encompassing and far-reaching than Freud's. The astrological map of consciousness described in the present books falls somewhere between these two in both scope and complexity. However, it must be remembered that a model is only a model it is not reality. It is merely a means of orienting ourselves intellectually, since understanding is necessary to pave the way for will to follow. Mind is the scout of intent.
Except for the astrological chapter, most of the material in this book was channeled. Some of the ideas discussed here derive from Castaneda, but a different nomenclature is employed.
For example, the terms waking consciousness, dream consciousness, and dreamless sleep are used instead of first attention, second attention, and third attention; the terms customary moods and customary concerns are used instead of human form; and the term demons is used instead of flyers. Also, we will employ the terms God or TheSpirit rather than the more accurate appellation The source of light fiber emanations.
The approach here is astrological, but no previous knowledge of astrology is required of the reader to understand and apply the astrological techniques.
Technical information that would only interest a practicing astrologer is relegated to the appendices.
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Philosophers of language tend to be fond of extolling the glories of human language as our "triumph" over the animal kingdom.
In point of fact, language is but a vestigial remnant of humans' primordial telepathic ability, which we moderns have been taught to repress along with our other senses.
However, we modern humans still rely upon our latent telepathic powers when language fails us. For example:
1) Mothers know exactly what their babies want; some mothers even let their milk down a few minutes before their
babies wake up.
2) Lovers know the exact instant that the decision is made to go to bed together for the first time.
3) In foreign countries, we usually know exactly what they're saying to us, even if we don't know a
word of their language.
4) We often know when we're being observed from afar (lift our eyes from reverie to the exact spot from which someone is watching us); this awareness is a remnant from our hunting days.
5) We often
recognize someone we know from way far away, long before we can make out their features, posture, or gait.
6) And, of course, prophetic dreams, precognition, intuitive hunches the types of so-called ESP that practically
all of us have experienced at one time or another but cannot consciously control, but which our forebears relied upon in place of thinking and language.
To them it wasn't "E"SP it was a normal part of SP.
These sorts of telepathic communications are not a matter of body language or subliminal cues (as the rationalists would have it); rather, they are examples of true telepathy, which was a part of humankind's original equipment.
The most important concomitant of the invention of agriculture was the invention of the lie. As long as people could communicate telepathically, lies were not within the realm of possibility, since everyone knew exactly
what everyone else was feeling every minute. Similarly, even we modern humans are not as easily fooled when we're dreaming as when we're awake: in dreams we can sense exactly who or what is evil or to be avoided, in spite
of superficial appearances.
When mindlessness replaced mindfulness, thinking replaced feeling, and the inner dialogue replaced paying attention to the now moment, on a social level verbal communication replaced
telepathy. And the gist of verbal communication is the lie: all thinking is a lie, in the sense that it is the denial of feeling, of not paying attention to the now moment. IT'S ALL A LIE. That's the gist of waking
consciousness. All rationalism comes down to science; and all science comes down to mathematics; and all mathematics comes down to logic; and all logic comes down to a proposition known as The Law of the Excluded Middle, which
states, in effect, that "either a statement is true, or else it is false." And that statement is false. The ability to lie to ourselves, and other people is what "elevates" us above the rest of the
animal kingdom, and enables us to work hand-in-hand with demons.
Demon consciousness is far more elaborate, refined, and aesthetic (you might say) than human consciousness. In fact, demons are as far above humans,
consciousness-wise, as humans are above animals; and their opinion of us is about like our opinion of animals. On the other hand, they are even nastier and more uptight than humans are (further separated from the Spirit).
Actually, they're pretty slimy and sleazy The point is that it's the demons who taught us how to lie, and the lie is what makes modern society, which is a pack of lies,
possible. When good faith and mutual respect are gone, contracts and lists of duties and obligations are necessary.
Humans, guided by their demon mentors, intuitively perceived that a greater degree of mind would
result from a greater sense of separatedness. And so, over millennia, by painful trial and error, they tried different experiments in separatedness.
Agriculture was the big move, and then it got into greater degrees of division of labor and social complexity. Humankind went on a rambling, meandering walk for several thousand years. And it discovered that any separatedness which depends upon denial of true feelings will only lead to self-hatred and self-destruction.
And now, at this time, humankind has pretty much reached the limits of waking consciousness, having cut itself off from its very roots in dream consciousness. It will now enter into lucid dreaming. Dream consciousness
is too erratic and mutable;
waking consciousness is too ordered and routinized. Only in lucid dreaming do we have a healthy balance of mind and feeling working together (instead of one dominating the other). Lucid dreaming is the true union of reason and direct feeling it is our true estate and destiny. It is the reason why humankind, at the time of the invention of agriculture, explored and refined waking consciousness. At that time waking consciousness was to humankind what lucid dreaming is to us today: a new frontier to explore and develop.
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