Exteriorization of the Senses

[The following article was originally posted to my former blog, Left-Hand Path, in March of 2011. Though my understanding of astral projection and out of body experiences has evolved since that time, I still feel that it is worth sharing as I (perhaps inadvertently) touched upon several important concepts that have shaped my thinking in the years since.]

I first became aware of the concept of “exteriorization” while reading August Strindberg’s Inferno, an autobiographical novel which details the playwright’s involvement with the occult.  During a bout of what he describes as “perverted affection,” Strindberg longs to be united with his wife (with whom he is going through a divorce) and their child.  He decides that the best way to attain this goal is to perform a black magick ritual in which he curses the child to fall ill.  “Small children are always falling ill for one reason or another,” he says.

Shortly afterward, Strindberg is informed by letter that his children from a different marriage have been admitted to the hospital.  As a cautionary tale to the reader, he says the following:

In the spring, just at the time when I was so much oppressed by my own reverses as well as those of my companion, I had a letter from the children of my first marriage, telling me that they had been seriously ill and had had to go to hospital.  When I compared the date they mentioned with the date of my experiment in bewitchment I was seized with horror.  By playing with those mysterious powers, out of pure folly I had given the reins to my evil desires, but they, guided by the hand of the Unseen, had struck at my own heart.

I am not trying to excuse myself.  I am only asking the reader to to bear these facts in mind, should he ever be tempted to practise magic, particularly the kind known as bewitchment, or witchcraft in the true sense of the word.  De Rochas has shown this to be a reality.

Strindberg is referring to the French parapsychologist, Albert de Rochas, whose seminal work The Exteriorisation of Sensibility is cited in the book as a footnote at the end of the second paragraph quoted above.  Despite a prolific career in the French military (at one point rising to the rank of battalion commander), de Rochas is most well known for his study of parapsychology and the occult, having dedicated his life to an attempt to interpret occult phenomena through the lens of empiricism.  Among the concepts that de Rochas explored were hypnosis, telekinesis, reincarnation, past life regression, and the effect of music on human emotions.

It was through working with patients as a hypnotist that de Rochas documented the phenomenon he first described as “externalisation of sensibility,” meaning that the subject is able to sense stimuli at a distance, such as feeling pain if a certain spot is pinched away from the body.

It’s interesting to note that one of the core concepts of the Church of Scientology is a practice known as “exteriorization,” during which a human subject functions independently of the physical body as a thetan (which they define as “an aware of awareness unit”).  Despite the bizarre language, this concept seems to be consistent with de Rochas’ findings.

The truth is that throughout all of history, occultists have realized that within the human animal, there exists an innate ability to “sense” objects and dimensions outside of the physical body.  Our technology has developed to the point where this phenomenon can now be induced immediately through the use of chemical agents.  That our senses expand far beyond the limits of our earthbound bodies is quite obvious, as the phenomenon of exteriorization is an intrinsic part of the human experience, but it is difficult to describe such events in words, as experiences outside of the body are far removed from the language of everyday reality, and therefore often go unnoticed.

If you get into these spaces at all, you must forget about them when you come back.  You must forget you’re omnipotent and omniscient and take the game seriously so you’ll engage in sex, have children, and participate in the whole human scenario.  When you come back from a deep LSD trip or a K trip — or coma or psychosis — there’s always this extraterrestrial feeling.  You have to read the directions in the glove compartment so you can run the human vehicle once more.  After I first took acid in the tank and traveled to distant dimensions, I cried when I came back and found myself trapped in a body.  I didn’t even know whose body it was at first.  It was the sadness of reentry.

– Dr. John C. Lilly

In waking life, one’s immediate consciousness seems to arise primarily through the senses of the physical body (of which we now know there are far more than 5).  Typically, we think of these senses as being separate, but in reality, we are experiencing, or “sensing,” each of our physical and psychic senses simultaneously, coming together as a unified whole in the form of the present moment.

However, few would argue that the vessel through which one acts in the dream world (astral plane) is of the same manner as the biologically determined animal body in which he is imprisoned during his waking life.  If not, then what is the nature of said astral body, and what is its relation to the concept of exteriorization?

In dreams, one often survives events that would immediately result in death during waking consciousness.  Likewise, one often finds himself performing feats that defy the physical laws he had known previously.  Nevertheless, this does not suggest that the astral plane is necessarily “non-physical.”  Consciousness of astral realms (an exteriorization of the senses from our “physical” bodies, attained through dream and trance states) appears to be a mode of sensory perception different from the physical universe we identify with during our waking consciousness only in the sense of modified physical laws, rather than the absence of such.

We must consider the implications of unconscious psychic material within this framework.  The psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud was the first to elaborate on the concept of the “unconscious mind,” which he said consists of active psychic material which is not permitted into our consciousness for one reason or another.  To put it simply, the unconscious is anything that one is not consciously aware of at any given moment.  The vast majority of our psychic activity resides within the unconscious.  According to Freud, the physical laws of the universes one experiences through dream states are arranged in such a way that the unconscious is able to communicate symbolically with the conscious mind (and occasionally have direct communion).

Having determined that our immediate consciousness of the present moment is the totality of our perpetually active physical and psychic senses, we see that this has tremendous implications as to the scope of the unconscious.  If, as we have seen, our senses are able to “exteriorize” themselves beyond our physical bodies and well into the myriad universes that manifest on the astral plane, it follows that the unconscious and the depth of one’s perception are boundless and potentially infinite.

This is an essential experience of any mystical realization.  You die to your flesh and are born into your spirit.  You identify with the consciousness and life of which your body is but the vehicle.  You die to the vehicle and become identified in your consciousness with that of which the vehicle is but the carrier.  That is the God.  Behind all these manifestations is the one radiance, which shines through all things.

– Joseph Campbell

The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

In the following video (recorded in October 2014), I discuss The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, a massive collection of notes and essays that the author compiled in the wake of a religious experience that he underwent in 1974:

An Ode To The Overcast Sky

I have grown to absolutely loathe the sunlight. I don’t know what it is exactly, but to my eyes, the aesthetics created by the sunlight in the area that I live are deplorable. Perhaps it is that all the hideousness and flaws of an industrialized nation are exposed to a greater extent under the light of the sun while an overcast sky downplays these foul aberrations, in the same way that the dim lighting scheme of my room conveniently serves to obscure the numerous stains on the carpet (courtesy of its former tenant). However, this is not a sufficient explanation. I prefer dim lighting purely as an aesthetic preference, regardless of stains or gaudy corporate eyesores, and a cloudy, overcast sky seems to be nature’s equivalent of this particular scheme. When I wake up and am greeted with such a pale, grey atmosphere outside my window, I immediately feel more content and at ease. In fact, I feel relieved. Relieved that I don’t have to spend the daytime hours under the oppressive glow of that loathsome, reprehensible sun.

Many people apparently love the summer, considering it their favorite season and eagerly awaiting its arrival all year long. In my mind, the popularity of summer is in fact evidence of its essential mediocrity. Summer is indeed the most democratic of all seasons, and therefore the most unrefined. You’ll notice that as soon as the weather begins to warm towards the end of spring, the proles who had been hiding away all winter begin flooding the streets like roaches. The sun-drenched summertime allows access to everyone as warm, moderate weather requires no resilience of any kind. Winter of course is the exact opposite and its harsh cold serves admirably as a sort of quality filter for the types of people that venture out into public during these months. One will predictably observe that those who are predisposed to withstand or even enjoy the winter climate are often of a higher stock than the detritus drawn out by the tacky sunshine of summertime.

There are of course those who will protest that grey skies are “gloomy,” and I would argue that this is either incorrect or that perhaps these naysayers are wrong in thinking of “gloom” as an inherently negative characteristic. For me, a grey sky creates a novel atmosphere and establishes a palpable air of mystery not unlike that felt under particularly luminescent moonlight. This type of setting inspires reflection and awakens the creative impulse. For those of a certain temperament, a dark and even vaguely ominous atmosphere is greatly preferable to the boring populism of sunshine and blue skies. To those poets and dreamers, it is the latter that is insufferably dreary.

Low Magick

As I understand it, “low magick” is magick that is performed for the purpose of affecting change in the physical world in order to achieve one’s goals. It is magick performed for personal gain, in other words, at least to the extent that the “gain” relates to the material world. It could also be called “egoic magick.” Low magick can be utilized for the purpose of attracting a particular partner or making one’s self more attractive in general, financial gain, physical fitness, sexual ability, artistic ability, creativity, eloquence, health, longevity; anything that relates to that which occurs on earth. This is diametrically opposed to “high magick,” the purpose of which is to transcend the physical realm and attain spiritual union with the Divine Source of All Being.

Given that my ego is fully intact and I identify with a particular physical body while living on this planet, low magick is naturally quite useful for me. I believe that I have been performing magick all of my life in the sense that it is understood as “causing change in conformity with the will.” However, I have found that much of what can be considered “low magick” is able to be performed without any type of formal ritual. It has always been my experience that if one has a particular goal in mind, there are specific steps that can be taken toward realizing that goal. The intensity of one’s focus and effort will determine the speed and efficacy with which he will be able to do so. Of course, spiritual practices such as meditation and the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram dramatically sharpen one’s focus and are therefore greatly useful as a supplement to earthly pursuits. Vanity seems to be the driving force behind many of these endeavors, but is that necessarily a bad thing?

Determinism and The Search For Meaning

I have always been reluctant to declare the truth of hard determinism but the more serious thought that I give to the issue the harder it becomes to deny. Determinism seems most apparent to me when reflecting on my past and considering the manner in which my life has unfolded. I allow for the concession that even if humans do not have free will in the grand scheme of things our default mode of consciousness is our perception of the sensations of an individual organism and the identification with such and entails at least an elaborate “illusion” of free will which is basically equivalent to the theoretical “real thing” (which is an impossibility). It is becoming increasingly clear to me that even that illusory free will through which I enact my daily activities and write down my thoughts in the manner such as I am presently must be completely and totally determined. In the face of the countless number of forces (both internal and external) that I am at the mercy of it would be absurd to imagine that I possess some indefinable “separate” faculty by which I am able to freely make choices of my own will. It is without question that my individual identity is not real in any sense so of course this applies to the choices and decisions made within and through that framework.

Either I am one of a great many humans in the midst of the sea of confusion and dysfunction that is this planet or I am singularly experiencing a vast illusion of staggering complexity. For some reason I have been unusually conscious of the inherent meaningless of my earthly endeavors as of late. Given my firm decision to neither marry nor procreate, any romantic or sexual experiences that I seek out would ultimately be for the purpose of fleeting pleasure, a manner of which I have experienced to a great degree of intensity several times in the past. It is obvious that such pursuits could never possibly lead to any lasting fulfillment (and this would be the case even if I were to reproduce, as that too is merely an end in itself), so basically my life between birth and death amounts to an endless attempt to find novel distractions after my basic survival needs are met. This is not entirely bleak as there are many aspects of life in this current society that I do enjoy but I am nevertheless left wanting for a sense of purpose. It seems that the only things I do that have any real meaning are my various spiritual and magickal pursuits which all entail, in their essence, a deliberate attempt to transcend my individual identity and this earthly realm to that which is beyond my current understanding. “We’re here to go,” as William S. Burroughs once said.

Mission Statement

I aspire to lift the veil. Not in the fleeting sense of a psychedelic experience wherein the truth is briefly glimpsed and then promptly forgotten once the effects of the chemical wear off. Not in the sense of a revelatory dream that remains forever inaccessible to the waking mind. No, I wish to permanently transcend this world and this body and become one with the truth. This is my life’s work. I was not made for impermanent things. Ironically enough, I understand intellectually that I am in fact already there and it is not possible that the present moment could be separate from the Eternal Source of All Being, but yet I cannot help but feel that there must be some manner in which this truth can be fully realized and internalized so that it is not merely something which I must continually remind myself but is rather the immediate and ever-present totality of my experiential awareness.

What is my ultimate purpose in seeking to explore my subconscious mind? The subconscious is literally “that which is below consciousness,” so I am seeking parts of my mind or consciousness which are not immediately present in my everyday experience of the world. But why? This impulse to “pierce the veil” feels just as natural as survival. I wish to see what lies beyond the banality of consensus reality and use that knowledge to benefit myself and others. For as long as I can remember, even in childhood, I have been aware that there is more to reality than most people seem to believe or is immediately evident to my senses in a normal everyday context. While the religion of my childhood provided some answers, I had not yet had the experiences that were necessary for me to understand these answers as truth. And that is what lies at the heart of this seeking: experience. I am the type of person who is constantly seeking novel experiences, whether they be in the form of art, insights, or ideas. I trust in my own subjective experience above all else as it is the only thing that I can directly verify. I have understood for a long time now that I can never confirm the conscious experience of others, and though I do believe that each body has a subjective experience as is generated by its neural circuitry, my immediate perception is the only reality I have ever known, at least since I have identified with this particular body. None of this fully answers my question of why I seek to know that which is beyond ordinary consciousness and to obtain occult knowledge, and that may be because I do not have a precise answer as of yet. The impulse, however, is unmistakable, and I trust it and I choose to follow it. This is who I am and to pursue my interests in this regard feels as natural as breathing.

Dreams and The Unconscious

Dreams have utterly fascinated me for as long as I can remember. To this day I am proud of the fact that I read Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams when I was only 17 years old. I have been blessed with the gift of incredibly vivid and immersive dreams. On several occasions I have become lucid while dreaming though never intentionally. I would like to develop the ability to trigger lucid dreams at will as this would undoubtedly allow for a greater range of subconscious exploration. That the brain is able to construct entire realities that are completely realistic and believable to the one experiencing them is truly one of the wonders of the human experience. As many philosophers have noted, the temporal nature of the dream experience calls into question the extent to which one’s “waking life” can be considered real. Since all of us experience complex realities that prove to be mere mental constructs on an almost nightly basis, how are we to know for sure that our “waking lives” are not of the same nature? I’ve often wondered if others experience their dreams as vividly as I do because it seems that if they did the topic would be discussed far more often. How can one experience a highly vivid dream and not be totally mesmerized by it? I suspect that dreams are so completely at odds with the consensus reality that most people choose to forget (or repress, rather) these nighttime journeys immediately upon waking.

To my mind, one of the most important questions is to what extent dreams are “real?” Also, are there degrees of reality and if so how do dreams compare to what I describe as my “waking life?” What is meant by “real” in the first place?

The illusory nature of the ego has been emphasized by several mystics and religious philosophers throughout history, but it is only as of late that I have personally been able to internalize and occasionally have direct experience of its truth. For instance, at this moment, there is an office, there is a desk and a chair, there is a computer on the desk and a young adult human male seated in the chair. The human is typing on the computer. Clearly there is no “self” involved in any of this. The human has a complex brain that allows it to experience sense perceptions including a sense of individual identity, but its immediate perception is merely what emanates from the natural functions of its living body. It experiences thoughts but these thoughts are not “real” in any tangible sense. They cannot be seen or felt or heard or experienced outside of the consciousness of the human in question. These thoughts are almost always in a human’s native language, in this case English. It is humbling to consider that to the majority of people on this planet, the English language is heard only as incoherent sounds, in the same indecipherable manner that the English-speaking human hears other languages in which he is not learned. But if thoughts are not real, then what are they exactly? What is the substance of thought? As I stated above it is evident that thoughts have no substance which can be identified with any traditional human senses, but they are nonetheless experienced by the mind (which I also believe to be a fiction). If selfhood is an illusion and phenomenological experience is merely the organic body’s conditioned responses to its immediate environment, then thought is likely an evolved mental process which serves to facilitate such responses, much in the same way that the pleasure derived from the sexual act serves as an incentive for reproduction, though not exactly.

As I have mentioned before, there is no time during which the absence of self is as abundantly clear as it is during dreamless sleep. Indeed, dreamless sleep is the complete absence of any sort of experience, one of the few known physiological states through which one can abstractly conceptualize nothingness. One has the experience of getting into bed, closing his eyes, and gradually becoming more tired and relaxed. His experience then resumes without any identifiable break at the moment that he wakes up in the same bed, though he is able to conclude that some amount of time has passed during which his body was sleeping. Is such a complete absence of experience possible for a living body or is one in fact dreaming every single time that his body sleeps and is that which he has traditionally thought of as “dreamless sleep” simply an occasion on which he has no memory of the dreams that he nevertheless did experience as it would be impossible for him not to have? This line of questioning leads us straight into another dilemma, however. “If a tree falls in the woods…” You know the drill. If one’s conscious experience resumes seamlessly at the moment of waking after laying down to sleep, and there is no memory of any dream state in between, it would be an unfounded assumption to suggest that there was any experience in between. With this in mind, there exists the possibility that by training one’s memory and strengthening dream recall so that it is more consistent, one can essentially expand the scope of his consciousness and uncover aspects of reality that were previously hidden.

Given that my “self,” my ego, my sense of being a unique individual is an illusion and not real, then my true identity is “life,” the force that animates all living beings. It is tempting at this point to say that I am everyone else (and many have made this mistake) but that would be to forget that there is no “I” or “me” to be anyone else in the first place. There is only life, and it is eternal and self-existent and unbound by the limits of space or time. Space and time can only occur within the confines of human perception; these measurements are imposed on reality, once again most likely as a survival mechanism like the “ego” itself. One follows from the other. Individual identity, space, and time, are all limits. LIFE is limitless. What then is the scope of the unconscious? I pose this question as an individual navigating the world through my immediate conscious perception of this body and its environment. I have always thought of the unconscious within the traditional Freudian framework; that it consists of the individual’s thoughts and psychic processes which are not immediately available to or present in consciousness as experienced through the lens of the ego. But is the unconscious limited to content related to the individual? In light of everything I have written up to this point it is blatantly obvious that it is of course NOT limited in this sense or in any other. Jung proposed the concept of the collective unconscious which is shared by all humans on this planet and is made up of various archetypes and symbols and instincts/impulses, among other things. Let’s define the unconscious as simply “that which is not conscious.” The process of preparing and eating food is one that I perform at least semi-consciously while the flow of blood through my circulatory system is of course something I have no control over; it occurs automatically. The same applies to the growth of my fingernails and hair and many of my body’s other natural functions. These latter processes occur within the domain of the unconscious. The same life force that causes my hair to grow causes dogs’ hair to grow and the blood to flow through the veins of all the living citizens of China and all of the other countries of the world.

Time

What else is our life but a series of preludes to that unknown Hymn, the first and solemn note of which is intoned by Death?—Love is the glowing dawn of all existence; but what is the fate where the first delights of happiness are not interrupted by some storm, the mortal blast of which dissipates its fine illusions, the fatal lightning of which consumes its altar; and where is the cruelly wounded soul which, on issuing from one of these tempests, does not endeavour to rest his recollection in the calm serenity of life in the fields? Nevertheless man hardly gives himself up for long to the enjoyment of the beneficent stillness which at first he has shared in Nature’s bosom, and when “the trumpet sounds the alarm”, he hastens, to the dangerous post, whatever the war may be, which calls him to its ranks, in order at last to recover in the combat full consciousness of himself and entire possession of his energy.

– Franz Liszt, Les préludes

The consideration of time is of great importance when attempting to get to the essence of one’s phenomenological experience. Much of humanity’s current understanding of the nature of time has been arrived at through the science of physics, a subject on which I am not an authority and am therefore not going to pretend as if I am. With that said, I do have a basic understanding of Einstein’s theory of relativity and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, both of which are relevant to the topic at hand. I am convinced that the apparent linearity of time is merely an illusion created by human perception. The human experience is essentially the perception of events which occur between the time of an individual’s birth and death. We divide this time into years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and seconds for the sake of convenience but these are only mental constructs and truthfully the experience between birth and death is but one continuous moment, a brief flash of light in eternity. When the body is sleeping or otherwise unconscious, the individual will either immediately experience an alternate reality such as a dream or there will simply be an absence of experience after which his consciousness will seamlessly resume upon awakening with nothing to indicate that there has been any sort of break or pause other than the passage of time which can only be discovered by looking at changes in the sky, a clock, or asking someone else. As a metaphorical analogy, imagine an individual’s life as a light that turns on at the moment of birth and turns off at the moment of death. It is surrounded on both sides by eternal darkness (or nothingness). Once the light is turned on at birth, it never once darkens or flickers or turns off until the moment of death. Consciousness is constant. As long as a body is alive it will never not be conscious as to be unconscious (such as in the state of dreamless sleep) is to have an absence of experience and obviously an absence of experience cannot be experienced. Like I stated above when considering dreamless sleep, an individual has the experience of getting into bed, becoming increasingly tired, and then his consciousness immediately resumes at the moment that he wakes up. There is no experience of a break in between and nothing to suggest such a break other than the passage of time which cannot be experienced when unconscious. I trust that at this point I have sufficiently demonstrated that an individual’s consciousness is constant between the moment of birth and the moment of death.

During the experience of life, the individual perceives time as being linear; one moment comes after another. I started reading philosophy books when I was 17. Now I am 26 and I am writing a philosophical essay, having been influenced by the numerous books I have read between then and now. To those in the future, however, every moment of my life, including the present in which I am typing these words, is in the past. In fact, the vast majority if not all of the people living on this planet in one hundred years will never know that the event in which I sat in this office and typed these words on this computer ever occurred. I myself may be forgotten entirely. This of course is not up to me. I am not one who deliberately endeavors to be remembered. I understand that if I am meant to be remembered then I will be and if not it is just as well. Every living being is essential to the unfolding of the divine plan. As is explicated in the theory of the “butterfly effect”: every minute event that occurs in this universe has a tremendous impact on the manner in which the future shall unfold. Certain prophets, teachers, artists, and thinkers such as Jesus, Plato, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Goethe as well as many others are still remembered long after their deaths not because of the magnificence of their individual identities but because they were divinely inspired and served as vessels for the deliverance of eternal metaphysical truths to humanity. One must remember that all of these men were shaped by the societies in which they lived and that this reinforces the truth of the importance of every living being and indeed every single minute detail of the universe. When living through a particular time, it can be difficult to “see the forest for the trees” as they say. The importance of certain persons and events is often not understood until many years after they have passed. Take for instance the number of artists whose work has only been recognized posthumously. With this in mind it is clear that one should not work or create for the purpose of one’s own glory or in pursuit of public adulation but rather give the glory to God and surrender to and align with the universal will. All is as it should be, for it cannot be otherwise.

I stated above that in the absence of invented measurements the life of a human being can be understood as one continuous moment. Following this train of thought, and keeping in mind that the linearity of time is merely a bias of human perception and has no objective truth, one could consider all events that have occurred since the beginning of the universe as well as those that still will occur before its end to be happening simultaneously as part of the same single moment. As I am typing these words on my computer in my office in the state of Michigan in the United States on the planet Earth on the date of January 1st, 2015, Aleister Crowley is being born in Britain in 1875, and Jesus is being crucified 2015 years ago, and a major war is being fought in a still uncertain future. Only within my subjective perception have past events “already happened” and future events “haven’t happened yet.” The Marquis de Sade is writing The 120 Days of Sodom in prison in 1785 and within his perception the act of writing that work is the immediate present. The soldiers fighting in the wars of the future experience the fighting as “happening now.” All events are inevitable. I am going to avoid the tendency of many contemporary mystics to speak as an authority on the subject of quantum physics considering that I (like the majority of such mystics) am decidedly not. However, I do know that a physicist named Heisenberg discovered the “uncertainty principle” and that its basic consequence is that we cannot predict the manner in which quantum systems will unfold. This by no means negates the truth of determinism, however. The uncertainty principle merely implies that the human mind cannot predict exactly the manner in which future events are determined, but determined they are nevertheless.

The Left Hand Also Rises

With the arrival of the new year, I have decided to unveil my new blog, which will be called Left Hand Rising. I intend for it to serve as a personal memoir and journal as well a reliable source of information on the occult, spirituality, self-improvement, and art (with an emphasis on cinema and literature). My first attempt at this was in 2009 as I created a blog called The Holy Mountain (inspired by the 1973 film of the same name) which I wrote and updated from my dorm room at Western Michigan University. Within a year I lost interest and The Holy Mountain quickly fell into obscurity. At the beginning of 2011 I started Left-Hand Path, with which some of you may be familiar. This was not only a blog but the name under which I released all of my creative work at that time, particularly short films that dealt with true crime and the occult. In the middle of 2012 I underwent an existential crisis and impulsively deleted Left-Hand Path, thereby erasing some of my best writing to date. It was not until early 2014 that I began seriously writing again and I have had plans for Left Hand Rising since around that same time.

At the time of this writing I have been actively studying and practicing occultism for about six years. In those years I have experienced religious visions, astral travel, lucid dreams, telepathy, a countless number of stunning synchronicities, dark nights of the soul, radiant bliss, and soul-numbing depression. It is not without a great deal of apprehension that I begin the journey of telling my story. I have wrestled with the idea for months, weighing the pros and cons and searching my soul to decide whether or not I want to put my life and my experiences out there for the public to judge, scrutinize, and interpret as they see fit. However, I am sincerely convinced that as a result of the unique circumstances of my life and the experiences that I have had, I may potentially be able to provide insights that could be of assistance to others who are on a similar path. You’ll notice that I use the word “experience” quite frequently and that is what, in essence, this blog and even life itself are all about. It is self-evident that our knowledge of the universe and existence is arrived at through our immediate conscious experience, as this is the one and only vantage point from which we “experience” and live out our lives. We can never know anything for certain beyond the immediate reality of our perception.

Without a doubt, the beginning of my magickal practice can be traced back to a psilocybin mushroom experience in February of 2009. Valentine’s Day, to be exact. My friend and I each ate an eighth of the mushrooms and, after listening to assorted electronic music, settled in to watch Alejandro Jodorowsky’s mind-bending 70s head film, The Holy Mountain, which, as I mentioned above, came to serve as the inspiration for the title of my first blog. The narrative of The Holy Mountain traces the spiritual journey of a lowly, earthbound thief as he gradually ascends toward enlightenment. In the process, the hypocrisies of the society in which he lives are exposed as his ego progressively fades away. The film includes myriad forms of esoterica, ranging from the Tarot to meditation to psychoanalysis. The effect of the film’s surreal imagery was greatly amplified by the effects of the mushrooms and the experience during and after the film was truly indescribable and permanently life-changing. The materialist scientific worldview that I had subscribed to before then was essentially blown to smithereens and I found myself eager to look into the spiritual teachings that I had ignored up until this point in my life.

Since the intrinsic power of the Tarot was especially emphasized in the film, I immediately went about acquiring a deck of my own. I was initially skeptical, fearing that this supposedly formidable occult tool would prove to be little more than a child’s toy, but not long after I began to experiment with the cards, I started to witness synchronicity the likes of which could not be explained away as mere coincidence.

Around this same time I made the decision to seriously pursue the practice of meditation, which I had been vaguely interested in for the past year or two. I was initially informed of the benefits of meditation through the activism of David Lynch, who is another one of my favorite filmmakers. Lynch is an ardent proponent of the school of Transcendental Meditation which was founded by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. I did not pursue TM specifically as I was put off by the organization’s sizable entry fee, but I soon began to learn much on the topic of meditation through my own efforts. The next summer, I attended a 10 day Vipassana Meditation retreat. For 10 days, I lived in complete silence among a few dozen other seekers, meditating in sessions that amounted to 10 hours each day. Even aside from the substantial power of the meditation itself, living away from society and its constant barrage of useless sensory input for an extended period of time was revelatory. This meditation retreat was yet another watershed experience in my spiritual journey.

The magickal properties of the universe were beginning to be revealed to me at an increasing frequency in the form of synchronicity, which is essentially “coincidence” that cannot be explained by scientific laws or a traditional understanding of space and time. At times, the synchronicities that I would experience were so impressive as to be downright frightening. I eventually came to understand these occurrences as being indicative of the interconnected nature of all things, while also beginning to appreciate the awesome power of thought in shaping my experience of reality.

One of my most recent epiphanies has been the realization that my “self” is essentially a fiction. I have always understood this theoretically, having come to terms with Freud’s concept of the “ego” and the eastern view of the illusory nature of identity when I was still a teenager, but until recently I had never fully “realized” the truth and gravity of the fact that I do not exist, at least not “I” in the sense that it is commonly understood. My immediate perception and consciousness is the result of the inner workings of my living body and its brain. My actions and feelings are, without exception, conditioned responses hardwired into my genetic structure over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. All of our earthly striving can be reduced to attempts to maximize our odds of survival and replication, which is an instinctual, hardwired impulse that appears to have no purpose or meaning; it is merely an end in itself. However, my true identity is the pure awareness which lies behind the functions of my body; it is life itself. This is unchanging, eternal, and free from all duality and value judgments. I am still integrating this concept into my everyday life and working out exactly how it applies to my magickal and spiritual practices.