Non self.

[peter]

Dear Mr Staley and forum,



I have been visiting your forum for around ten months and have been reading the posts as well as being inspired here last August to visit the Dee exhibition in London and had a great day out. Your articles have also been of huge interest to me.



I am very interested in the concept of non self, how can I further discover this concept of self is false. What is creating the sense of self is it thought?


Thanks.

[Raj Don Yasser]

I highly recommend reading Michael Staley's essay "The Heart of Thelema" (can easily be found online). Also the writings and/or transcripts of Ramana Maharshi.

[Michael Staley]

The concept of "non self" is in my view best exeplified by Advaita, although - again, in my view - a lot of mystical traditions end up in similar territory, in terms of achieving Union with God or Godhead.

It's not really the case that the concept of self is false, as that it is a misunderstanding. There is an undivided consciousness or awareness which is at the root of all, from which all phenomena arise, flourish for a while, and then fall back. That includes us. However, we develop and consolidate a sense of self as a separate, enduring, sovereign entity rather than as a transient aggregation of a universal consciousness.

Yes, a lot of this consolidation of the sense of separation is down to thought, but some of it is at a deeper level that what is often considered as thinking. Fasting or deep meditation enables one to become more aware of the movements which give rise to thought. Those tendencies or movements at a deeper level are part and parcel of upbringing, education, social conditioning, etc.

In my own case, although I had a long-standing interest in Eastern Mysticism, my introduction to Advaita were the references to it in Kenneth Grant's books. I noticed, in particular, some references to the author Wei Wu Wei which intrigued me, so I started reading his books. The first ones I got were those originally published by the Hong Kong University Press, such as 'All Else is Bondage'. These are very terse and aphoristic in style, and it was only through repeated readings that glimmerings of understanding broke through.

At first, Advaita might seem a strange, alien, rather absurd idea, counter to "common sense" as we have been brought up to view it. Gradually, it seeps through from from an intellectual view to something more profound and intuitive.

[IGP=93]

cf ANATTA

[Gregory Peters]

There are some wonderful excerpts from Wei Wu Wei's writings online, which are a potent entryway via language into advaida weiwuwei.mysite.com/
I believe it is in the Ninth Arch where Kenneth Grant states that WWW is a western master of this tradition

[IGP=93]

the meaning of human suffering is in the conscious experience of pain is the beginning of compassion, and this is the opening of the grade of Magister Templi, which is called by the Buddhists, the path of the Bodhisattva, and is the final insight of Tathagata which is called in the Pali "dhukka" and Lo! thou art passed through the Abyss and partake of the Understanding of the mystery that Sorrow is Joy, the interplay of which is bliss.

the meaning of human aging is in the conscious experience of flux is beginning of true stability, and this is the opening of the grade of Magus, and is the second insight of Tathagata which is called in the Pali "anicce", and Lo! thou partaketh of the Wisdom of the mystery that Change is stability, the interplay of which is bliss.

the meaning of human dying is in the conscious experience of death is the beginning of true identity, and this is the opening of the grade of Ipsissimus, and is the original insight of Tathagata which is called in the Pali "anatta", and Lo! thou hath attained to the crown which is the mystery that selflessness is self, yea, thou hath attained to the crown wherein all is one and one is emptiness beholding itself.

[IGP=93]

In the negation of nothingness is the ONE, formless, yet being; timeless, yet momentary; dimensionless, yet posited; single, yet already dual – for IT is only itself in relation to NOTHING which conceives IT, and therefore is ONE and NOTHING, ONE and EVERYTHING the original duality, latent within oneness, before duality is manifest.

This we call “the lightning flash”, the “division hither homewards”, the inflation into multiplicity.

This why the Ipsissimus is forbidden to speak again of that attainment, for THERE IS NO ONE, it is NOTHING but the interface between Zero and Duality, and these are Three, and therefore is it said that BABALON is twin: “It’s all in the Egg”, as Amalantrah hath said.

There is no true ego: anatta : selflessness is self. Ultimately true will must tend toward this realisation of nibbana, cessation of conditioned being. Unity is an illusion, in unity is no awareness, will or any other quality as it is undivided: There is no god where I am. But, being posited in the context of zero, it is in fact already latently dual, and therefore is inflation. This is what is meant by the equation 0 = 2. Therefore the true will of emptiness must be division, and the true will of the divided must be dissolution. All else is a curse. Then I and my Nuit are one.

[Michael Staley]

I'd like to copy here a remark by Raj Don Yasser from another thread:

Oddly enough, the most outwardly "religious" take on the Fourth Way is William Patrick Patterson's version of the teaching, in which G is deemed a prophet. Nevertheless, I like his periodical quite a bit along with his appreciation for Advaita Vedanta. A number of years ago Patterson devoted a series of articles on Gurdieff and Advaita, with a serialized essay on Ramana Maharshi in his quartely publication.

(original thread: theprimalgrimoire.proboards.com/thread/22/light#ixzz4iMvXq100)

What has always interested me most about Gurdjieff's work is the idea about being awake, about being present in the here and now. When we are "awake", we are still dreaming for most of the time — thinking about past or future events, about what we need to do later today, etc.

What we think of as our self is an agglomeration of social conditioning, upbringing, habitual patterns of thought and behaviour, memory, etc. It is animated by universal consciousness, but like the sun on a cloudy day this source of consciousness is obscured.

By 1952 Kenneth Grant had considerable accomplishments in magcik, in mysticism, and in Tantra. And then he had an epiphany, described in a letter to Paul Brunton in October 1952:


“Perhaps it is only fair to give you a rough (a very rough) idea of the nature of my deep interest in all matters connected with Sri Ramana Maharshi, and from what source my devotion springs. For about twelve years (I am now 28) I have been intensely interested in Occultism in all its forms, and I have concentrated more particularly in the study of Oriental metaphysics and philosophy. During this extended and very absorbing study of the subject I naturally had the usual ups and downs associated with the subject, and finally discovered a thread which I followed throughout the mazes and labyrinths of the occult jungle. Then, suddenly — and with no apparent warning — I was, through a friend, acquainted with the Life of Bhagavan Sri Ramana through the book 'Self Realization' by Sri Narasimhaswami. And then my edifice of power and poetry toppled about me and I knew that I had been feeding the insatiable cravings of the ego throughout these long years of devotion to a subject which became at once puerile, purposeless, and even dangerous. So I wrote to the Ashram for all the available publications on and by Sri Ramana, and, through some great good luck, was able to get in contact with two of the Devotees who had actually lived in the Ashram with Bhagavan — Mouni Sadhu and, later, Mr. Arthur Osborne.

“It was through reading the book 'Maha Yoga' by a writer calling himself 'Who' that I first understood and grasped the profound significance of Advaita Vedanta, of Buddhism (which I had always misunderstood) and of practically everything that had proved in the past an intellectual or emotional stumbling block. I mean that although I had studied the subject deeply from various angles, I had never before seen the entire field with such singular lucidity and depth — had never fathomed the subject at all deeply enough to realize that one must give up all the things that interest the ego and devote oneself to the task of 'unlearning' all that is unnecessary to the great Quest of Atmavichara. Naturally I have difficulties in re-adjusting my outlook and ruthlessly cutting out my past ideas on the subject of Magic, to which too close and detailed a direction of attention and concentration has created certain vasanas within me which are proving painfully difficult to dislodge, let alone totally eradicate.”


Of interest also is the following from a letter to Arthur Osborne in January 1953:


“I was very interested to read what you had to say about Rene Guenon. I have never read him, although — of course — I know his name. My initiations, as it were, into the Eastern Sadhanas generally, came from reading and studying Arthur Avalon (John Woodroffe) and Lama Kazi Dawa Samdup, who through the channel of Evans Wentz flooded the West with light concerning the Tibetan aspect of Tantrika. The theories of Consciousness underlying Dvaita, Vishishtadvaita, and Advaita, which Avalon expounded, fired my imagination at an early age and I avidly consumed all that I could in the way of Oriental literature which dealt in any way with Yoga or Occultism of any form. Then came my introduction to the life and works of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, and soon after this to Bhagavan Sri Ramana Himself. It was only with the beautiful and amazing expositions of Advaita as issued by the Ashram of Sri Ramana Maharshi that I slowed down my avid search for fresh literature on the subject; only then that I found peace — even if only of an intellectual kind — and stopped my restless mind from searching for still newer sources of Light. Such illimitable brilliance as I had never imagined capable of streaming forth from the mere written page beamed upon me from such books as WHO AM I?, MAHA YOGA, SAT DARSHANA BASHYA &c., &c., and I knew that at last I had comprehended — even though only intellectually — the basis whereon true Mysticism ultimately rested. My introduction to Bhagavan's Teaching came, curiously enough, through a broadcast talk [note by MS: ’The Sage of Arunachala’, broadcast 12 June 1950 on BBC Home Service, printed in ‘The Listener’ issue dated 22.6.50] given by one Francis Watson. I am enclosing a copy of this talk which was printed in the Listener (a paper devoted to radio talks &c) as you may be interested to read it if you have not already done so. After hearing the talk I was not moved to enquire further into the matter although I never forgot the content thereof for it seemed to haunt me. One day, about a year after the broadcast, I found several of the Ashram's publications on the shelves of a friend of mine with whom you are at present in communication, I think — Mr. Gerald Yorke.”

Advaita is fundamental to Grant’s work, and it cannot be properly understood without it.

[Raj Don Yasser]

Oct 15, 2017 17:52:30 GMT Michael Staley said:

Advaita is fundamental to Grant’s work, and it cannot be properly understood without it.

My experience confirms that an understanding of Advaita is necessary for one to, even partially, grasp Grant's work. I first became familiar with Sri Ramana Maharshi through Patterson's publication Telos (later titled Gurdjieff Journal) which is unfortunately no longer in print. Half-way into reading Osborne's Collected Works of Ramana Maharshi I set the book aside feeling his teachings were too abstract and vague (I was in my late 20's at the time) even though the basic core-teaching, non-duality, was congruent with my world-view. It was only after having read Grant's At the Feet of the Guru that I began to appreciate Advaita more fully. 

In another thread on this forum I had asked for feedback into the Angel, Will, and Word (or something to that effect) and the answer from Michael (if memory serves correct) settled the issue for me: that they are one. This was an epiphany for me and completely reconciled what I had previously deemed the disparate nature of Thelema and Advaita. I actually laughed out loud saying "Of course! Of course! It's so obviously one!" Then, the works of Ramana Maharshi no longer appeared obtuse as they had when I was in my 20's. The apparent contradictions I struggled with regarding Western Kaballah no longer appeared problematic, either. 

It's very, very unlikely that I would have returned to Grant's work, and Thelemic ritual work in general, if not for At the Feet of the Guru. Advaita brought me back to the Typhonian tradition, just as Grant seems to have brought many to Advaita.

[N0T 2]

Oct 26, 2017 15:03:12 GMT Raj Don Yasser said:

Oct 15, 2017 17:52:30 GMT Michael Staley said:

Advaita is fundamental to Grant’s work, and it cannot be properly understood without it.

... In another thread on this forum I had asked for feedback into the Angel, Will, and Word (or something to that effect) and the answer from Michael (if memory serves correct) settled the issue for me: that they are one. This was an epiphany for me and completely reconciled what I had previously deemed the disparate nature of Thelema and Advaita.  

Maharshi might say - they were always one.  The false dichotomy we've all had to deal with is Crowley-created, when he kept banging on about how much better, and different, Thelema was than Buddhism, without having attained the first Realisation of that (either?) path (which would have indicated their unity in Reality, or Self). He was, as Grant says, too "positivist" (really, too egoist, too Orientalist, too ignorant, and too pretentious) to fully realise the essence of the very doctrine he was saying that he was promulgating (i.e., Theosophy - he was continuing Blavatsky's work, remember, or so he said, when he was trying, but mysteriously failing, to attract theosophists).

Advaita is present as a (the?) primary motive behind Theosophy (the title Stanzas of Dzyan directly derives from Dhyana, the same meaning as Chan, Zen, etc. in their respective languages). It is intrinsic in the GD-taught cabala (which rests entirely upon Nothing, beyond Self), and even obvious in Crowley's own expositions of Tarot arcana, to say nothing of the Book of Lies, Trigrammaton, and insights derived from dedicated performance of Liber Resh, Liber Nu, Liber Had, and in Crowley's own analysis of Liber Reguli, with glimpses in Liber Samekh and elsewhere.  Despite Crowley having intellectually or intuitively recognised the basic realisation behind these streams, and despite his poetic talent for reformulating them in terms and symbols attractive to those who learned the same romantic-era symbolic languages he knew from the GD and from his reading (as he shows in these Libers), he nonetheless is responsible for corrupting the premise with incoherent narcissism, meant for worldly purposes at his end.

A Master (like, say, Maharshi, or Grant) would instead have Realised the source (the Self), and taught from there, unifying rather than dividing. That is, according to Crowley's description of how Masters behave, for what that's worth.