[Opinion] Psychological Model is Correct, Technically

[HoldAll]

Please forgive me my previous flippant remark, it's just that it took me some time to wrap my head around your post.

What you're saying, in simpler terms, is that the strict psychological model leaves the All, God, the Source, etc. out of the loop - in this light, Lon Milo DuQuette's famous quip is just an invitation to spiritual solipsism. The All is the Mind but it's not just my mind. Thus the psychological model is technically correct but in its strict version limited because it excludes the Source. However, as soon as you do include it, you may become prone to a false sense of omnipotence. The solution… there isn't one, not in a purely philosophical way. In practice, people would stress the importance of grounding yourself while remaining open to infinite possibilities, i.e. the Source at work. Tricky, to maintain that mindset.

I really have to think about my kinda sorta atheism now. Not acknowledging something like the Source does seem to limit the efficacy of rituals, seen in that light. Hmm... something to mull over.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

I'll admit I thought it was just panpsychism with bells and whistles.

 

[pixel_fortune]

I have been trying to chip away at my atheism via logic (coming from the absolutely biased perspective of wanting to convince myself, but not being able to just believe by fiat)

One way is via panpsychism, which is legitimately...well not science based in the "testable hypothesis" sense, but basically there's only two solutions to the problem of how consciousness arises from unconscious matter, and they're both wild (option A, it didn't - matter is conscious or Option B, matter produced something of a completely different nature to itself. Scientists don't like either of these, but don't have a third alternative to offer. So panpsychism is one of two leading theories, and is the Occam's Razor option to my mind.)

That's step 1. But even if I accept that the cosmos is conscious, why should I pay it any respect?

Step 2: analogy. If I am swimming between the flags on a lifeguard-patrolled beach, and start drowning, and a lifeguard saves my life, i would be deeply, intensely grateful towards that person, possibly even feel love for them. But they were just doing their job and acting according to their nature - it wasn't personal, or out of love for me, and they would have been publicly condemned if they didn't try and save. That doesn't change my gratitude. Ditto if a medical professional saves my life. And I don't need the medical professional or lifeguard to be a good person to feel intense gratitude at return saving my life. If I found out they were a shitty person, I would be sad, but it couldn't change that one fact that they saved my life

so, the cosmos (for me, represented by our local sun) is the lifeguard. In creating conditions suitable for human life, it wasn't doing anything out of any personal affection for me, it was just acting according to its nature. But I can still feel intense gratitude and love for being given the opportunity to be alive, and for the fact that every artwork or piece of human ingenuity got to exist. And this gratitude doesn't require the conscious cosmos/all-mind to be a good being, just like the lifeguard doesn't have to be

The third thing has been reading about the very very very beginnings of the universe, in the moments after the big bang, and also what the large Hadron collider has been up to. Because it's so much crazier than you think, and the level of craziness makes you go "well fuck it, why not god, it's no crazier". Max Planck (of "extremely important physicist" fame, said that learning the laws and constants of nature was learning the mind of God

"As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear-headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force is the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter."

Really important to understand that is Max Planck talking, not Blatvatsky or whoever. Not that he's infallible, but any opinion he has on his field of science (the nature of the universe) is worth hearing out

Anyway, those are the chinks in my atheist armour that I'm trying to hammer wedges into. They may not help you, but the process of chipping away has been a good one, starting with the places where you see logic gaps and going "what's the wildest answer to this question that I can possibly believe, without causing cognitive dissonance"

Post automatically merged: Dec 29, 2023

Oh a tiny tweak that's helped me is calling it the All rather than the One (or All-Mind, which I came up with because it makes sense, but later learned is in the Kybalion)

All and One mean the same thing, but it's easier for me to conceptualise All. I guess it's easier to indulge I'm part of an All, than part of a One. It's just semantics, but semantics is key to hacking the mindset shift you want

Post automatically merged: Dec 29, 2023

Indulge= imagine. Lot of autocorrect errors on this one sorry

 

[Mannimarco]

I'd say the psy and spirit model are more about different perspectives than right or wrong.
If i can make my will manifest, i don't care which is "true", or even "truer". On the other hand, if someone wants to debate philosophy, that's fine too, though I might not be very keen to join in.
Didn't Crowley say something like "It doesn't matter whether or not the gods are real, the universe behaves as if they are"?

 

[Roma]

the cosmos (for me, represented by our local sun) is the lifeguard. In creating conditions suitable for human life, it wasn't doing anything out of any personal affection for me, it was just acting according to its nature.

Does the human do the same: maintain an ecosystem of a trillion intelligences that form its body?

Does the human operate its body only because that is its nature?

Some humans consider they have a higher purpose in living?

Does the cosmos have a higher purpose?

Would that purpose pre-exist the cosmos?

 

[pixel_fortune]

Keeping in mind this is just my best guess so far, so I'm not saying "this is definitely true" - I'm answering questions according to my worldview, not saying it's definitely correct:

Does the human do the same: maintain an ecosystem of a trillion intelligences that form its body?

Yes, but they are much simpler. There's a concept called "holons" that I find helpful. A holon is a homeostatic structure that is whole in itself, but that can be part of a larger holon and contain holons within it. So my liver is a holon, and so is an individual liver cell, and so is the local community I'm a part of, and the city, and the earth, and the solar system, etc.

All these levels have different forms of consciousness.

.Does the human operate its body only because that is its nature?

From the perspective of my liver, yes. I do not have a greater plan for my liver.

But also, my experience of the acts of heroism I've witnessed is that they almost always say "I had no choice". To them, seeing a child dangling from an apartment balcony made climbing the building an inevitable action. What makes a hero is not exactly their choices, it's what they feel they have no choice over (many other people on seeing the child might feel they DID have a choice not to act). That's not a philosophical position, it's observational. And when I have done something "good" it has typically not felt i had a choice, but that helping was the only available action

I have also noticed that when people treat me badly, it is typically not because of any characteristic in me, but because of their nature. They treat people badly, and I was in their orbit. It wasn't something about me that triggered it, just like the apartment building hero saved the child because it was in his character, not out of a personal love for that specific child, which was a stranger to him

This does NOT make heroic actions any less heroic (the whole point of this analogy is that I still deeply admire beneficial actions when they are acting according to their nature, and knowing that allows me to have gratitude to the cosmos for giving me life, even if it wasn't done as a personal favour to me

Some humans consider they have a higher purpose in living?

Yes, I don't disagree with that. As I said, I do not consider the operation of my liver my higher purpose. And yet, my liver may well be grateful for the blood flow and energy it receives from the ecosystem of my body.

Does the cosmos have a higher purpose?

Please remember the context in which I said the above stuff. I said I found it impossible to leap straight from atheism to deism. So these are logical arguments that find the cracks in atheism, which I offered in case they were useful to other former/current atheists who are trying to chip away at their own atheism.

I found a logical way to feel gratitude and love for the cosmos, because that is a baby step towards theism that doesn't trigger a dissonance reaction in me



they are shared as tools, not as a complete belief system, and they are only a midpoint in a developing philosophical process, not the finished product

Would that purpose pre-exist the cosmos?

This is unknowable. We cannot learn about anything before the Big Bang. We do not know if there was something, or nothing. We do not know if it is cyclical, and there was a whole different cosmos before the Big Bang, or if there was an eternal infinitely dense singularity point which decided to unfurl for the sake of curiousity - this is all just completely inaccessible to science

Again, remembering the context in which I shared the above views, that it was about chipping away at atheism via finding the chinks in the armour - only scientific/ logical/ observational based tools are useful for this specific, narrow purpose and context, so it can have nothing to say about anything earlier than the Big Bang.

If you want to share your own cosmological views, just share them - hinting at them indirectly via questioning other people is a very inefficient communication method.

 

[Diluculo_DelFuego]

What exactly is "the psychological model"? There are many psychological models.

 

[Roma]

This is unknowable. We cannot learn about anything before the Big Bang. We do not know if there was something, or nothing. We do not know if it is cyclical,

On the other hand there may be an thread of Beingness within the human that predates and postdates Existence. I have had dreams that tested as within Beingness but not within Existence

 

[Anziel_Merkaba]

What exactly is "the psychological model"? There are many psychological models.

Basically the "it's all just self hypnosis and mental preloading with no real effect externally". I'm sure there are people who can explain it better than I can, but that should give you a rough idea.

Post automatically merged: Jan 1, 2024

Please forgive me my previous flippant remark, it's just that it took me some time to wrap my head around your post.

What you're saying, in simpler terms, is that the strict psychological model leaves the All, God, the Source, etc. out of the loop - in this light, Lon Milo DuQuette's famous quip is just an invitation to spiritual solipsism. The All is the Mind but it's not just my mind. Thus the psychological model is technically correct but in its strict version limited because it excludes the Source. However, as soon as you do include it, you may become prone to a false sense of omnipotence. The solution… there isn't one, not in a purely philosophical way. In practice, people would stress the importance of grounding yourself while remaining open to infinite possibilities, i.e. the Source at work. Tricky, to maintain that mindset.

I really have to think about my kinda sorta atheism now. Not acknowledging something like the Source does seem to limit the efficacy of rituals, seen in that light. Hmm... something to mull over.

All good, but yeah, you got it. One thing I will note is that for it to truly become effective you have to see yourself as All in a manner of speaking. I ascribe to the idea that the higher self referenced in other works by people like Crowley and the Golden Dawn is really the conceptual ideal form of yourself as if you literally were All. So when I throw around "Yourself as All" and "Yourself as God", I am referring to what people commonly call your higher self or godself, since I feel my way of saying it is more indicative of the process of it.

 

[HoldAll]

Basically the "it's all just self hypnosis and mental preloading with no real effect externally". I'm sure there are people who can explain it better than I can, but that should give you a rough idea.

Post automatically merged: Jan 1, 2024

All good, but yeah, you got it. One thing I will note is that for it to truly become effective you have to see yourself as All in a manner of speaking. I ascribe to the idea that the higher self referenced in other works by people like Crowley and the Golden Dawn is really the conceptual ideal form of yourself as if you literally were All. So when I throw around "Yourself as All" and "Yourself as God", I am referring to what people commonly call your higher self or godself, since I feel my way of saying it is more indicative of the process of it.

I feel like the psychological model excludes all the mysticism, all the romance of magic, so when I address a given archangel in the LBRP, for example, I'd like to have a specific being in front of me that has different qualities from me (which I lack and would like to acquire), not just a figment of my imagination or an archetype but something that's other from me.

I currently wrestle with/yawning through "The Concepts of the Divine in the Greek Magical Papyri" by Eleni Pachoumi (highly scholarly and half of it in Greek). Here is a quote from p.28:

The magician’s knowledge of the god, which is an important factor in this
theurgic or divine/mystic union, reaches the level of identification at the end
of the invocation, when the magician asserts: “for you are I and I am you,
your name is mine and mine is yours,” (PGM VIII.36–37)

It's not really an invocation but a full identification with a god - hard on the imagination if you are not convinced of this god's separate objective existence. I am having more and more trouble with my old chaos magick position that random paradigm shifts concerning worldviews are easy or even desirable. Those old mages didn't just believe in the gods, they knew they existed, and that's what made their magic efficacious, or so I believe.

 

[Anziel_Merkaba]

I feel like the psychological model excludes all the mysticism, all the romance of magic, so when I address a given archangel in the LBRP, for example, I'd like to have a specific being in front of me that has different qualities from me (which I lack and would like to acquire), not just a figment of my imagination or an archetype but something that's other from me.

I currently wrestle with/yawning through "The Concepts of the Divine in the Greek Magical Papyri" by Eleni Pachoumi (highly scholarly and half of it in Greek). Here is a quote from p.28:

The magician’s knowledge of the god, which is an important factor in this
theurgic or divine/mystic union, reaches the level of identification at the end
of the invocation, when the magician asserts: “for you are I and I am you,
your name is mine and mine is yours,” (PGM VIII.36–37)

It's not really an invocation but a full identification with a god - hard on the imagination if you are not convinced of this god's separate objective existence. I am having more and more trouble with my old chaos magick position that random paradigm shifts concerning worldviews are easy or even desirable. Those old mages didn't just believe in the gods, they knew they existed, and that's what made their magic efficacious, or so I believe.

The funny thing is I started with chaos magic, but then I sort-of came to the realization that the end-result of practicing chaos magic in a serious manner is more-or-less Hermeticism. I struggled with that for a while before I fully rose to the idea. Chaos magic has a lot in common with the psychological model in how it's more about your mindset than anything else, and I've already explained how it sort of leads into Hermetic philosophy and principle once you get far enough along.

It's all tricking the world into following your own self-delusions. Whether or not those self-delusions are real or not is irrelevant, since the end result is more-or-less the same.

 

[Konsciencia]

As Above So below. As within so without. As The Universe, So the Soul.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

It's all tricking the world into following your own self-delusions. Whether or not those self-delusions are real or not is irrelevant, since the end result is more-or-less the same.

Since the way one perceives the world is a model, then it's a case of matching your model against a matching version of the world. "Self delusion" is technically correct but that's like saying "it's only the placebo effect"

 

[pixel_fortune]

The magician’s knowledge of the god, which is an important factor in this theurgic or divine/mystic union, reaches the level of identification at the end of the invocation, when the magician asserts: “for you are I and I am you, your name is mine and mine is yours,”

A point I found interesting in De Biasi's Rediscover the Magick of the Gods and Goddesses is this:

"A part of us is divine, but [...] after centuries of brainwashing it might be difficult to believe in our own divinity and to understand what it is. For this reason, it is useful to be helped by an outer divinity, which has a close relationship with who you are."

It's almost an opposite direction way to arrive at the same idea - to experience our own divinity, some people will find it easier to attach to an external deity that that relates to their life path

That was a good book, I should read it again now that I'm somewhat more on the theurgic path, I'm sure there's a tonne of stuff I mentally skimmed over

 

[HoldAll]

It's almost an opposite direction way to arrive at the same idea - to experience our own divinity, some people will find it easier to attach to an external deity that that relates to their life path

A similar mechanism may be at work when it comes to the HGA - many people seem unable to accept the "myself made perfect" idea of the HGA and would rather experience it as a Abramelian apparition.

 

[Anziel_Merkaba]

A similar mechanism may be at work when it comes to the HGA - many people seem unable to accept the "myself made perfect" idea of the HGA and would rather experience it as a Abramelian apparition.

That's the tricky part, every system has different terms for what is fundamentally the exact same thing. "Myself made perfect", "Myself as All", "Higher self", "HGA", "Myself as God", ect. are all terms for the same thing at their core. Yeah there is sometimes different flavors of context on top, but they are all fundamentally the same. Just like the headless rite and bornless rite are the same thing but were translated slightly differently because different people did the translations.

 

[Diluculo_DelFuego]

So the psychological model is the path to the HGA then? Sorry, I know I am a tad dense at times.

 

[Roma]

"Myself made perfect", "Myself as All", "Higher self", "HGA", "Myself as God", ect. are all terms for the same thing at their core.

In my view there are 5 selves/souls in the standard human format, and many levels/selves in the transhuman intelligence that temporarily uses the human manifestation

 

[Anziel_Merkaba]

So the psychological model is the path to the HGA then? Sorry, I know I am a tad dense at times.

Not really what I was saying. It's just another potential path to the same end result. All paths, assuming the practitioner doesn't give up, eventually lead to the same end result; it's just a matter of whether or not the practitioner is dedicated enough to it or progresses fast enough to reach the end before they die.

 

[8Lou1]

the only reason i can agree with the psychological model is due to the fact that my psyciatrists all said and i qoute: " we dont know what you got, but we understand its not normal. we can give you haldol, but you just have to learn to live with it."

i researched the meaning of my diagnose in the dsm and did research in the occult area. some things are not the same and should not be treated as if. i also found that certain things are played out in the world because medicine men want money. the little ones and the big ones. so not just only are you not sick, due to that knowledge you are now labeled as crazy and you are legible for medicine so have some haldol its good for you.