Messages

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Main Hall / Re: My oh my we are a sad little place

« on: February 04, 2018, 04:59:47 PM »

You also seriously overestimate the effort it takes to reply on a forum. I am a naturally wordy person, so it is not some extraordinary effort on my part. You should see my Facebook replies. They are even longer than this.

Sorry but nope, you don't get to write 1300 words about how much you don't care about something. That's a performative contradiction.

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Main Hall / Re: My oh my we are a sad little place

« on: January 24, 2018, 06:27:17 PM »

I don't care about magic nor do I care about debates concerning it.

For something you don't care about, and don't care to debate about, you seem to invest a fair bit of energy into thinking, talking and debating about it

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Main Hall / Re: My oh my we are a sad little place

« on: September 25, 2017, 07:32:10 PM »

Rayn - I'm gonna keep this short and sweet, because it's a nice spring afternoon and there are better ways to spend it than dredging through your pseudoscientific diatribe.

1) I never said anything about  "super duper duper special teachers" or "ancient secrets," you're projecting your own preconceived notions onto what I said.  All I'm saying is that if you want to train in a system which will help you develop "metaphysically," then you're by far most likely to do so successfully if you find a system with practitioners who can demonstrate success (whatever that happens to be to you - not everyone has the obsession with flashy-but-useless psychokinetics that you seem to possess), and then follow the same method under their guidance. Exactly as you would in any other field of endeavour.

2) A lot of the rest of what you're rambling on about we've already discussed to what I feel is more or less the point of conclusion in a thread from last year: http://forums.vsociety.net/index.php/topic,22957.0.html If there's anyone here reading this who cares (which I doubt) they can find my objections to your "inductive reasoning" and etc. in my posts in that thread.

As I'm fairly sure I said there, but I'm going to reiterate nobody would be happier than me to see science finally make a genuine and wholehearted effort at studying these phenomena, but until that happens (and I'm fairly convinced it will within our lifetime - although people were saying the same thing over a century ago), my attitude is that the most practical approach is to make do with using pre-existing cosmologies as working models.

3) You seem incredibly invested in a lot of things you claim to not believe in, given the amount of time, effort and emotion you're going out of your way to repeatedly pour into arguing about it on an empty website. I'd suggest you try some introspection, chill out and look for something better to do with your time. Maybe some meditation would help you relax

I'm bowing out. If you wanna keep jumping all over this dead horse, have fun.

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Main Hall / Re: My oh my we are a sad little place

« on: September 25, 2017, 01:57:42 AM »

Hence why I did not respond to Kemetin's post.

Except you did... twice now... 

I don't believe in Qigong, Hermetics, Vedic whatever, or anything like that, and your argument has no numbers attached to it, so there is no reason for me to think it even pragmatically valid.

Believe or disbelieve whatever you want, it's your life, but I feel obliged to point out that nothing you've said so far has had numbers attached to it either. Personally, belief isn't a huge factor for me - I care first and foremost about personal experience of practical results.

So basically every system is bullshit. Right? Because that's what I'm seeing so far.

I'm still curious - exactly what you were practising for all those years, and why on earth did you keep practising it for so long if you weren't getting notable results?

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Main Hall / Re: My oh my we are a sad little place

« on: September 23, 2017, 12:47:52 PM »

There are multiple flaws in the reasoning of your thinking. First off, Eastern practices do not exists in some void. Taoist, Buddhists, Vedic, Hindu, so on and so forth ideologies are culturally dominant in Eastern countries, right? Well, what is the frequency of people in those countries who historically and currently have any a large amount of say psychic ability? Not many. The reason why observable instances of psychic abilities large enough to be seen without analysis  is so hard to believe is because it is so rare. If it were not, then it would be a common and familiar experience endemic to human society. But it is not! The same could be said for Western religion and spirituality. Inductively, this means there is no reason to think that supplementing your practices with Eastern ones will have any effect, because the frequency of people who actually have experiences that are large enough to observe without analysis is just about the same for either or. The majority of people on this planet are religious or spiritual in some shape or form; however, most people aren't moving objects around that can be seen without analysis, which is why people have a hard time believing that someone can make an object levitate.

Secondly, when you speak of a "lineage", you are speaking of how things are taught to people and how those things are further taught. You are speaking of a culture, essentially. Something is not true by virtue of having a particular culture. Abstractly, you can say how people learn things on line is indicative of a culture the same way you are learning where there is a difference in pedagogy and whether or not something is vetted. Besides cultural differences, though, it seems as if you are making an assumption that one culture is more likely to give results than another based on what appears to be age and how closely it matches up to some arbitrarily proposed cannon of beliefs. Think of technology. Technology is not just the end result, but it is also the ideas, concepts, and techniques taught to people to come up with that technology. This means there is a cultural component to it where current technology is very effective where those disciplines are relatively new.

This boils down to pretty much there being no logical reason, based on evidence, to think you will get better results if you supplemented or switched to Eastern practices and there is no logical reason to think one culture is more effective than another based on its age. Since culture is something that is taught and learned, all cultures technically have a lineage.

We have some pretty fundamental gulfs between our perspectives, so I doubt anything will come of a protracted discussion, but I'll try to address a few of your comments anyway.

- "Well, what is the frequency of people in those countries who historically and currently have any a large amount of say psychic ability? Not many."

Firstly, thanks to a century of immigration and globalisation (not to mention, in the case of Daoism and Chan & Tibetan Buddhism, violent persecution), we're talking less about a geographical "East" than the we are about the training methodologies which historically descend from that location, especially when discussing beginning and intermediate training. Of course it's an incredibly vague description no matter how we define it, but without going far more in depth, it'll have to do.

Secondly, we're not talking about the population at large, we're talking specifically about dedicated practitioners of what I'll group under the label of systems of metaphysical development (Yoga and Tantra, Qigong and Neigong, Internal Alchemy, assorted other systems of meditation, various systems of magic, etc etc), since I'm not a fan of the "psychic" label for a huge number of reasons.

Third, what matters in the context of the point I was making isn't the absolute number of people who have achieved success in these practices, but the relative number of people who have achieved that success using traditional Eastern training as opposed to training in the traditional Western esoteric current, attempted self training or bastardised syncretic methodologies. Of course, in absolute terms, such success is rare within any given general population group - just as successful authors, athletes, scientists or what have you are also rare in any given general population.

Fourth, as there has been very little in-depth scientific examination of these systems, East or West, let alone detailed polling of how many people have achieved what level of success with which systems, you're basically saying "well, in absolute terms success is rare everywhere, so it doesn't matter if it's more common, even by a large degree, in certain traditions/lineages." I'm sure I don't have to point out how flawed that line of reason is. There's also the issue of the definition of "success" varying from system to system - another of the issues I take with the Western traditions is that in the modern era, they hold the bar for success extremely low, and don't even have the  conceptual framework, let alone practical methodology, for the higher levels of practice and attainment found in Eastern traditions. Even at the beginners level, there are huge holes, such as the complete lack of physical training in the Hermetic system prior to the adoption of Vedic Yoga by the Occult Revival era practitioners.

- "If it were not, then it would be a common and familiar experience endemic to human society."

Not necessarily. Nobody doubts that world class athletes can perform extraordinary physical feats, but if I walked into a random party and claimed to be an Olympic gold medallist, then people are likely to be sceptical unless I can back up my claims. They might be less sceptical if we instead met at a gym run by world class athletic coaches, but they would probably still maintain reserve until proof was provided either way. Metaphysical achievement is much the same - a surprising number of people believe it's possible, especially once you get outside the bubble of Western middle class reductionist materialism, but that doesn't mean they'll believe every asshole running around claiming to be a grand master (rightfully so).

In short, what you're ignoring is that the vast majority of Eastern traditional lineages maintain that to progress in these fields, extraordinary dedication and hard work is required, just like any other human endeavour.

 This is another one of the flaws within Western esoteric teachings - due to misinformation caused by the problems I mentioned in my last post, and perpetuated by popular culture, many people are lead to believe that attainment is either purely a matter of luck (ie. that "powers" are something you're born or gifted with - one reason I avoid the word "psychic," since it has come to heavily imply this), or that it can simply be obtained by following spells and rituals the same way you would follow the recipe out of a cook book. This is less the case than it used to be, but it's an attitude which seems to still seep in at a subconscious level, as opposed to the emphasis on hard work and dedication generally found in Eastern lineages. Putting aside methodologies, this gap in approach alone is, imo, quite likely to account for a solid chunk of the difference in the levels of success found in Eastern schools v. Western schools.

- "The majority of people on this planet are religious or spiritual in some shape or form; however, most people aren't moving objects around that can be seen without analysis"

You can't equate "being religious/spiritual" with having success in metaphysical development. The former is simply a worldview, the latter is a result of hard work within the context of correct training.

- "Secondly, when you speak of a "lineage", you are speaking of how things are taught to people and how those things are further taught. You are speaking of a culture, essentially."

Not quite. I'm speaking of a specific practical methodology for training to attain certain results, being passed down correctly from one individual to the next across generations. These systems are obviously coloured by culture, and colour the culture they exist within, as with any field of human endeavour, but they're based on the demonstrated success of certain schools of training techniques. Roughly speaking, a pedagogy, as you more accurately termed it later.

 - "Something is not true by virtue of having a particular culture."

Of course not - but something either achieves the desired results or does not based, at least to a large degree, on whether it consists of the proper methodology.

"it seems as if you are making an assumption that one culture is more likely to give results than another based on what appears to be age and how closely it matches up to some arbitrarily proposed cannon of beliefs."

No, I'm making the evaluation that one system of learning (or group of systems of learning) is more likely to provide results than another system (or group of systems) of learning based on the ability of the students of that system to demonstrate the relevant results.

To go back to analogies - If I wanted to be an Olympic athlete, I'd do it by looking to see which coach was having the best success at producing students capable of competing in, and winning, Olympic medals. If I wanted to be a silicon valley programmer, I'd do it by looking to see which University's tech department was producing students with the greatest hiring rate and career trajectory in silicon valley (and, obviously, move to America). If I wanted to be a world class surgeon, I'd look at world class surgeons and find out which medical schools they graduated from. All I'm doing is taking that same train of logic and applying it to metaphysical matters. I decided on what I wanted to achieve, I looked at who had achieved it, and then I went to them with the hope that they would guide me through the process of achieving it that they themselves had undertaken.

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Main Hall / Re: My oh my we are a sad little place

« on: September 22, 2017, 06:35:52 PM »

I have been at this stuff since roughly 1994 and I never got that "Holy Shit this is real" moment. I don't know how some people do it. You'd figure that with all the time, effort, and energy that I've spent towards this. I would have something that would anchor the validity of it. Sure I could look back and what I went through a few years ago. Needing money for something unfortunate. Getting it and the results being a minimum of what I had expect. Sure I could say that it was magick that made it happen. But that just the results mundane stuff. You've got people claiming to have been visited by gods and demons, rampant psychokinesis. That shit just never happened to me. Sure I've got a history of weirdness, but that proof positive moment, never came. Unfortunately or fortunately I can reduce all my experiences to common psychological explanations. So it feels like a massive waste of time.

What were you practising for all those years?

Either way, your situation is a common one. I personally think a huge part of the problem is the state of Western esoteric tradition - for historical reasons, it's just too watered down, too much has been lost or distorted or corrupted or mashed together with other things that just aren't compatible. There's just not enough left to serve as a viable system of development, which is why even the allegedly "successful" Western magicians almost universally supplement their training heavily with Eastern practices.

I had similar frustration when I first started studying this stuff, but eventually  I decided to cut the bullshit and go to the source, and I only wish I'd done so sooner. I found teachers who had achieved the things I want to achieve, and now I study under them, just as you would with any other human endeavour. It requires a lot more initial investment than downloading a few dozen PDF's and trying to wing it by yourself, but there's a reason these systems of training have always thrived in situations where they are passed down through a direct lineage of teacher > student. Nobody would try to learn surgery or chemistry or any other serious pursuit using books downloaded off the internet (and nobody would trust them to practice it if they did), it's insane to think that magic or spiritual development are somehow the exception.

 And it bypasses the whole question of faith or belief and the whole stupid mess of trying to "prove that it's real" out of old grimoires or shitty newage books (or god forbid, websites like psipog), because any teacher worth studying under can demonstrate their attainment firsthand.

I've learned and progressed more in a year of direct training under competent teachers than I did in all of the time I wasted floundering around under the hacks who cling to the Western tradition so they can take advantage of desperate seekers who have a preconceived notion of what their path should look like, or the time I wasted messing around with books before that.

These days I personally lean towards thinking that we need to recognise a lost cause for what it is, and cut off the rotting branch so something new can grow, but that's just me.

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Main Hall / Re: My oh my we are a sad little place

« on: September 09, 2017, 07:44:54 PM »

Message boards in general are a dying medium, this place in particular lost momentum a long time ago as older members moved onto other interests and weren't replaced by newer members. All of the drama didn't help.

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Hello and Goodbye / Re: Yo

« on: March 14, 2017, 10:56:04 AM »

Sorry dude, this place is dead. Nothing but tumbleweeds up in here...

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Magick / Re: Initiation into Hermetics - differences in translations

« on: November 08, 2016, 08:44:39 PM »

I prefer the second translation, personally. I find it a bit more warm and precise, but I don't think the difference is such that it would cause problems for anyone.

No idea why they chose to redo the translation.

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Magick / Re: Franz Bardon Hermetics & Astrology An Interview with David Coleman

« on: September 06, 2016, 12:21:17 AM »

These interviews are interesting, but maybe condense them into a single thread?

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Psionics / Re: Adfeng's Technique Stash

« on: August 14, 2016, 03:39:51 AM »

Introduction to Pyrokinesis

Pyrokinesis is the psychic ability to manipulate or create fire. Generally, one begins manipulating a candle's flame. In more advanced practices one can extinguish a candle flame or reignite a flame that has went out. Pyrokinesis is a branch of psychokinesis. Another common name for Pyrokinesis is "Flame Manipulation".

Flickering Candle

1. Familiarity with the flame

It is important to first understand what fire is. Fire is a chemical reaction resulting in the burning of material that produces a flame. Light a candle and look at the flame. Concentrate on how the flame stands still. Close your eyes and visualize this flame. It may help to meditate briefly, visualizing this flame.

2. Familiarity with Energy

As with all practices, it will be very helpful to understand what energy is. If it helps, meditate and get ready to perform psychokinesis on the candle flame.

3. Concentration on the flame

It is important that you are in an area that has no air current. If there is air current, it may not be you moving the flame. Concentrate on the candle flame. Visualize it moving in your mind. Establish a link between yourself and the candle flame so that it is easier for you to manipulate the flame.

4. Move the flame

Use your energy to manipulate the flame. Take your visualization and push the flame with your energy, making what is in your mind become enforced on the candle. This may take a few tries. When you are able to shift the candle to one side, allow it to come back to rest. Shift the candle back to the other side. Allow the flame to flicker.

5. Retrospection

Were you successful? Were you struggling? Consider the successes and failures of your practice and try again later. Understand that more practice will help. Do not confine yourself to one brand of psychokinesis, but rather journey to others. Always learn from your mistakes, and remember your triumphs.

Dimming/Extinguishing Candle

Read the above steps, one through four. We will then continue on from four.

1. Dampen the lights

Visualize the lit candle in your mind inside a dark room(perhaps the room you are currently in). Visualize the room getting darker, and as a result, the candle getting dimmer. The candle is now very dim, and almost extinguished. As the room becomes dark, so does the candle.

2. Down the flame

With your energy, manipulate the flame to be smaller. Because fire lives on oxygen, it may help you to visualize putting something over the candle that prevents oxygen from getting in, therefore reducing the candle's size. Come up with your own way if this does not work. There is no right way, only the way that works for you!

3. Retrospection

Did the candle dim? Were you able to extinguish it? Always seek answers to questions you have while practicing, and always ask more. If you could not dim the candle, practice again or perhaps try another form of psychokinesis.

Re-lighting the Candle

1. Extinguish the flame

Either manually or through psychokinesis, extinguish the flame on the candle. Due to the wick being hot, it will help the wick re-ignite.

2. The Phoenix

From the ashes, the phoenix rises again. Similarly, a flame can come again where there is but a burnt wick. Visualize the extinguished candle in your mind, and focus on it re-igniting. Watch as it re-ignites. Do this multiple times until you feel satisfied with its re-ignition.

3. Performance

Using your energy and visualization, focus on the extinguished candle and concentrate on making it re-ignite. Visualize a spark on the wick growing into a flame, aided by your energy. You can use your own method, as the one stated is one of many.

4. Retrospection

Did the candle re-ignite? If not, do not worry. This is one of the most difficult tasks in psychokinesis. Practice makes perfect.

Exactly how far are you claiming to have taken this technique?

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Magick / Re: Lost all faith

« on: July 24, 2016, 01:41:09 AM »

Sigil magick (A.O.Spare style) was the only system to every truly work for me. Because it's of the psychological model and there are very simple principals behind the how and why it works. There is no faith nor belief involved. I've lost faith and belief in the spiritual aspect of magick. That 'God' has some meaning to anything, and for some stupid reason 'demons' and other such supposed entities will do what you say just because of self-entitlement.

Well for starters, I haven't done a ton of spirit work, but most systems have pretty specific justifications for why it works that have nothing to do with self entitlement.

But beyond that, it sounds like your issues run deeper and have more to do with an existential dilemma than whether any specific phenomenon does or doesn't exist. Some things can be demonstrated objectively (psychokinesis, clairvoyance, any magic which creates environmental changes which can be statistically measured, etc etc) but all that they demonstrate is the existence of the phenomena in question.

 Even if someone turns up at your door levitating through the air, manifesting gold and jewels out of thin air with one hand and blasting lightning bolts out of the other, all that demonstrates is that human capabilities are exceptionally greater than is normally accepted in today's Western society. It makes no statement about the existence of a creator deity, primordial consciousness, immortal soul, or anything similar.

Now the individual themselves could allege to possess such knowledge, and use their powers as proof that they should be taken at their word, claiming that those powers are an outward demonstration of inward spiritual enlightenment or attainment. And this of course happens all the time (although generally on a lesser scale), where individuals use preterhuman/psychic/magical abilities (or alleged abilities, if you don't want to accept their existence) to endow themselves with authority to make grand statements about the nature of reality and tell people how to live their lives, but you are still, at the end of the day, taking their word for it.

Even if they give you some kind of empowerment which elevates your consciousness and allows you to enter what feels like a state of divine union, you have no way of knowing whether what you experience and learn in this state is real. After all, every day thousands of people experience similar states through the use of drugs - if a plant or powder can make you feel at one with the universe, surely a psychic could potentially induce the same sensation?

So where the hell does that leave you? I would say the best route is to decide on what you want out of your practice, seek out a system which has a good reputation for achieving that result, and then dedicate yourself to pursuing it. In your case, you seem to be seeking some method of reaching a greater metaphysical understanding of the universe and coming to terms with it - which is a great goal, but probably not something you'll achieve by working with sigils, or for that matter most of Western magical practice. You seem to be using the wrong toolset for what you want to achieve.

Maybe you'd be much better off pursuing Eastern mysticism? There's a wide assortment of schools of Buddhist, Daoist and Hindu thought and practice which have spend centuries attempting to answer the questions you're asking, exploring the nature of consciousness and human experience. Of course I have no way of knowing whether any of them have succeeded in truly proving beyond a shadow of a doubt the existence or nature of God/The Soul/etc, but at the least, their practitioners have scientifically demonstrated the capability of reaching states of constant calm and contentment, which suggests they're doing something right, and have, through their experiences, generally come to remarkably similar conclusions about the answers to a large number of the big questions you seem to be frustrated by. Even if the answers you find aren't the ones you hoped for, the right practice should be able to help you come to terms with that.

 I hope you find what you're looking for.

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Magick / Re: Lost all faith

« on: July 23, 2016, 01:34:48 AM »

https://www.ics.uci.edu/~jutts/air.pdf

Even that doesn't convince me.

Why not? And what would?

If it's purely internal is that so bad?

Not if it gets you the results you want.

Why not take something which would establish once and for all whether magic has an objective reality, dedicate yourself to it, and see what happens? At least that way you can stop agonizing over the issue and get on with your life.

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Magick / Re: Lost all faith

« on: July 20, 2016, 11:37:10 PM »

Not to put too fine a point on it, but what have you been doing for the past 6+ years that you're still questioning the validity of your practices?

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Psionics / Re: Psi and brain damage??

« on: July 14, 2016, 07:31:16 AM »

^Yup, see a doctor if you suspect you have some kind of head injury.

That said, I suspect what you're experiencing are placebo symptoms (which isn't to say they aren't real) as a result of a fear of injuring yourself which was either set off during practice or existed underlying within your psyche from the beginning. IMO you'd be best off to stop with the psi work entirely and take up mindfulness and quiet sitting to work on getting a hang of your emotions and reaching a state of calm and balance.