Thoughts on the Cosmic Doctrine
Over the last few years I've studied the Cosmic Doctrine with the help of J. M. Greer's welcome monthly discussions of new chapters. I pick it up for a month or so, then put it down. In general, I advance very slowly, and apply myself to different areas of the text. I've mostly left out the middle, and am now trying to stick it out and get from the earlier part to the middle part. Some of the text in the latter part of the book holds me rivetted. In fact, once I got my son to help me memorize and recite this passage because I found it spoke directly to me:
It is death alone which enables you to utilise experience. Learn to trust death. Learn to love death. Learn to count upon death in your scheme of things, and regularly perform the exercise of visualizing your self as dead and conceiving how you then shall be, for thus you will learn to build the bridge between life and death so that it shall be trodden with increasing ease. See yourselves as dead and working out your destiny. See yourselves as dead and continuing your work from the plane of the dead. Thus shall the bridge be built that leads beyond the veil. Let the chasm between the so-called living and the so-called dead be bridged by this method that men may cease to fear death.
From Chapter 27, "The Law of the Seven Deaths"
I love the boldness of her writing, and the musty drama of it ("Let the chasm between the..."). I can see her saying that the life of the soul is indeed one of high drama, and that it deserves an outsized, even heroic treatment. I see this style as paying respect to the import and magnitude of the journey we all make.
If you are reading the book, then my notes below might be interesting to you. If you aren't, then God Help You! Everything below will sound like "bar bar bar..."
On Good and Evil as a "thrust block"
I shared these thoughts in an open post on ecosophia.net:
it came to me in a flash that I am moving in sympathy with the prime evil in the central cosmos of our progress-driven culture. And I call this good.
In a world of countless cosmoi, when one of them aligns with poor ideas such as Progress above All, and Endless Growth, the fibrous networked relation of all cosmoi are threatened. Beings that intersect with this cosmos, and who, with gratitude overflowing, know the harmony of greater cosmoi whose evolutionary line fills them with the greatest sympathy and desire to participate, cannot help but move at right angles to the centripetal force of the errant cosmos.
What’s more, they will seek to awaken other beings, and lead them out to the Ring-Pass-Not. To lead them to a place where they are now on the outside. Sparing no thought to looking back, because this could be an unfortunate re-enchantment, they continue on to better arcs of being.
We move to the fringes. Most of us here have done it our whole lives. We know and expect, in the end, we will be identified as Enemy by the great cultural cosmos in which we’ve spent so much of our energy.
We shouldn’t worry too much. Thinking recursively, it must follow that an errant cosmos (I’m defining this as one whose ring cosmos is aligned with what I regard as a ring chaos of another, greater cosmos), is itself moving out…out to the Ring-Pass-Not and beyond of some higher cosmos. Culture isn’t everything, after all. It is perhaps a world, but not the world.
Beings who identify with the Ring Cosmos of our Growth Culture may at times seek to use people like me to evolve further on their line. Describing me as always and only pessimism incarnate, they’ll create new visions of planetary exploration (perhaps). They may even succeed to a degree. I will not resist their efforts. Seeing the greater cosmos in which this one is drifting out, I hold to my own line — falling out of their world, moving ever toward the center of my own.
I find it strange/whimsical that I’m imagining from this point of view: I am an “evil” about which “the good” attempts to form a thrust block!
What I felt good about here was that the thoughts above emerged only after sitting and imagining these lines of force. The spinning Ring Cosmos, and it's attractive and repulsive relationship with the Ring Chaos.
On the conditioning that appears as implicit structure
Notes from my journal, March, 2020:
I'm very interested in the idea of conditioning, that is, when a Being has undergone trials and new modes, new reaction-capabilities, new stances to hold in the name of homeostasis.
After this conditioning, the very thoughts of this Being are so conditioned. What was experienced "physically" (this is metaphor) is now encoded as implicit reaction-capabilities. These learned ways-of-being will be reproduced in the subjective space of consciousness.
The conditioning itself remains hidden. It is part of the sub-conscious of the Being in question. Or rather...actually that's not right. Let's say: It is part of the sub-conscious of the new experiential consciousness that is arising in the Being under the stress of evolution.
Let's say, the Being knows it's winding path. But it's thoughts know not the history.
The thought-forms were truly, unwittingly created in the image of the Being, and the abilities of that Being are fully there, though only implicitly...destined to emerge in Time. They await the necessary stimulus.
The Thought cannot turn and see it's Creator. No man shall look on the face of God and live.
A bit later, I used the language of individuality and personality:
The "Higher Self," or Individuality, is fully formed in the fires of the preceding evolutionary phase. The Personality, or "Lower Self" is a kind of "Agent" thought-form extruded into being by the pressures of evolution. These appear repeatedly, like pulses. They are the artifacts of the Individuality chewing on a problem.
I am one such Personality and I only hope that I am a good tool for my master, the Individuality. When I die, others will be born that build on "me" as a subsequent thought is built on a prior one.
The Change of Medium: how a universe is the result of experience
I love the idea, first imparted in Chapter Seven, "The Evolution of a Great Entity" in the final paragraph:
A Great Entity commences its evolution by developing, not the Cosmic Rings, but the concept of those Rings.
Consciousness of self is born when you begin trying to integrate the experiences you've been through. The God of our Universe certainly had been through a lot! It settled into it's work, and the artifacts of our world grow out from that.
But here is an ingenious twist: the material substrate on which the God works are materials not wholly owned by it. They are the Atoms which gathered around the Great Entity as it made it's way to outer planes. Note: If I call the Great Entity a God, then I'm referring to it's role in the Universe taking shape in it's "mind." If I call it a Great Entity, that is it's role in the Cosmos. Metaphorically, the Cosmos and the Great Entity are "real things," and the Universe of which it's a God is a mental construct. I don't mean to imply reality or unreality of any particular thing here -- I simply want you to hold the idea that the Cosmos is "more real" than the Universe because the Universe is "more subjective" in relation to it. The Universe is a working out of experience from the point of view of the Great Entity.
So here is a question I posed to myself:
Is dimensionality just reflection through a prism of focused consciousness?
If a Universe is the reflection of the conditioning Cosmos in the subjective thought-space of a Great Entity, then that Universe exists in another dimension from the Great Entity.
Why wouldn't all notion of dimensionality be similar to this? Dimensionality is reflection. What makes the experience of it rich is that the material out of which the space is composed is not part of the dimension. It is material of the "parent" dimension and thus has a resistent quality that imbues the new dimension with frission, with unanswerable mysteries. I suspect this "otherness" in the very fabric of dimensional existence fuels evolutionary growth.
I know it excites me.
I can look out the window. I can see a house with black windows, and feel a strangeness peering back at me.
This is, perhaps, the scent of other worlds. Hiding in plain sight.
Update: There is one important tweak here. I said that the material of which the dimension is constructed does not "belong" to the Great Entity doing the "thinking." This is only partly true. The material is in fact the projection into the space from those foreign Atoms that surround the Great Entity, now slumbering in deep thought. I'm not sure to what degree those Atoms have influence over that projection, unless their attitudes and actions are noticed by the Great Entity, who updates the projections accordingly. Or perhaps, they enter into the dream of the Great Entity in a sense, controlling their own projections. Either way, the important thing here is that the Entity is imagining a space and has the uncomfortable feeling that the space is not wholly-owned. I really think this is one of the best parts of the design! What a great way to ensure that the urge to secure freedom and explore can never fully be satisfied no matter how much "horizontal" terrain it manages to place under dominion.
There is a lot to say in this area, and I'm sure it needs years of study by people much smarter than me. But I'm trying to get at the real birth of consciousness. What's exciting is that each of these processes that occurs at very grand levels are reproduced in our mundane world. By grappling with these weighty "Great Entites" and "Atoms" I am sure we get insight into ourselves and how our daily world unfolds.
One more missive in this space. I wrote the following to a friend:
"My thought last night was that dimensional boundaries may well come from boundaries of consciousness. That is, you experience things. In your mind, those experiences coagulate with what you already know. Objectified consciousnesses grow in that space, and experience a miniature universe (of which you are the 'god'). You are (to them) in an apparently unreachable 'dimension.'
"And all of this is recursive. Our universe is itself a reflection of experiences had by it's God, and is a 'working out' of them to reach a harmonious whole. Zooming back in to you and I, our grappling with resentment over the idiocy of voice mail prompts spawns inner experience that is felt as real, dark and quite serious by the localized consciousnesses involved in the working out of our feelings.
"It raises the question: from what level in this grand cake comes the stimulus which appears in our existence as 'Corona virus?' It must be rather impressive, as it's made an impression on our entire world of 7.8 billion!"
Is the "Logos" the self-concept of a dreaming cosmic Great Entity in the subject universe that emerges from it's dream-time?
Hmm. I'm unsure of the exact definition of this very important word Logos. In the quote below, I see it defined as the Great Entity. But which aspect of the Great Entity? These adjustments of consciousness are interesting, complex, and important:
The consciousness of an object produces a reaction in the Logoidal consciousness. There is a subject-object adaptation, and this adaptation produces a corresponding modification in the reflected universe which becomes capable of an object-subject reaction. Thus a relationship, or reciprocity, is established between the Logos, or Great Entity, and that projected image of the Logoidal consciousness which is the incipient Universe.
From Chapter 10