Dr. Bernardo Kastrup, What Split Personality Tells Us About Consciousness |461|

I am aware of Trickster as an archetype, but do no believe archetypes have agency all on their own. I see, as you know, much more explanatory power in demons. BTW I lost respect for Jung, a lifelong hero, when I read the Red Book. Have you read it Chester?

The rest of your post was hard for me to understand, esp. the part about the Paradox.

The only thing that keeps me sane is the Perennial Philosophy.

I have the Red Book (the takes up most of my coffee table!)

The Perennial Philosophy leads to the final doorway to the Paradox and is, IMO the greatest gift of the Perennial Philosophy.

Let me add this last comment - I honor each and every individuals' forms and modes of interpretation. I would never tak a stand on a particular element within form as to being bound to a particular rule-set. For example, why could "the Phenomenon" itself not be influenced by an archetype be there such? Also, when does looking at things "literally" end and considering them from a perspective words just can't tackle other than to act as pointers?
 
I have the Red Book (the takes up most of my coffee table!)

The Perennial Philosophy leads to the final doorway to the Paradox and is, IMO the greatest gift of the Perennial Philosophy.

Let me add this last comment - I honor each and every individuals' forms and modes of interpretation. I would never tak a stand on a particular element within form as to being bound to a particular rule-set. For example, why could "the Phenomenon" itself not be influenced by an archetype be there such? Also, when does looking at things "literally" end and considering them from a perspective words just can't tackle other than to act as pointers?
Well I do like the more positive tone here. To say Trickster, or demons, or archons or tulpas or whatever one's word is for radical evil will carry the day is to grant them victory in advance. They may seem to have it vis-a-vis this planet but this is solely in its physicality. There can be no victory over the eternal / astral truth of who we are, and the evil ones can just take a flying you know what. They simply cannot win that game. Off to work I go, my cerebral friend!
 
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What if it is up to the individual conscious agent as to when they self annihilate? The Left Hand Path is based on the premise each individual expression of "this unified consciousness" can, if they so desire and if they work at the process, never self annihilate. It is Right Hand Path adherents that turn this over to a perceived external third party such as "yugas" or "God" or "Nature."

I do not see Kastrup's view eliminating one's individuated path from independently achieving eternal life... again, that choice would be in the hands of the individual.

I don't think it's even possible to self annihilate, because I don't believe in oneness or unified consciousness. Nevertheless, your description of the Left Hand Path seems interesting. Is there any book or website about this topic that you would recommend?
 
I don't think it's even possible to self annihilate, because I don't believe in oneness or unified consciousness. Nevertheless, your description of the Left Hand Path seems interesting. Is there any book or website about this topic that you would recommend?

Yes - there is a particular book which educated me greatly as to the origin of Right Hand Path and Left Hand Path and... because I am able to read materials regardless of what might be a sympathetic view towards one or the other, I read this book in that way.

The title is - Lords of the Left-Hand Path: Forbidden Practices and Spiritual Heresies by Stephen E. Flowers, Ph.D.

It is one of the five most important books (personally) I ever read. It shattered all my "views" (which were revealed as biases based on ignorance) of the origin of these two paths and what each term meant.

Be warned that the book progresses towards a final section regarding The Temple of Set (Michael Aquino) but is in no way a defense of abhorrent practices.

I have followed Dr. Flowers for many years and as of late, he has settled in on Zoroastrianism as his tradion of affinity and practice. In fact, he published (only two years after publishing Lords of the Left-Hand Path) the following:

The Good Religion: The Occidental Temple of the Wise Lord under his religiously affiliated name Darban-I-Den which I am currently reading.

One last comment. A Left-Hand Path adherent would never pronounce that "self-annihilation" isn't possible as that would then contradict their most sacred tenet - that an individual can decide for themselves their future. In other words, if an individual wished to commit "soul suicide" (metaphor) they would view that as an available choice. It would be anti-Left-Hand Path to consider any outside influence such as "God" or "Nature" as having primacy over you, the individual, unless you allowed (chose) that concept to hold primacy (which is the essence of Right-Hand Path)... but that would be your choice.

The rub against Left-Hand Path which is arguably earned is the risk one goes beyond the understanding of one's own personal responsibility to an over-balanced lower egoic state. This is why I always say I am a Left Hand Path adherent yet Left and Up. I classify most forms of Gnosticism as "Left-Up" whereas I see Wicca and witchcraft as Left-Left and I see Satanism and related as Left-Down."

If you read Lords of the Left Hand Path, you might experience, as I did, a complete shift in thinking and being.

The best thing I took away from it was that I adopted the operational protocol that I was 100% responsible for everything in my life... not just my thoughts, words and deeds, but experiences (that they be karmic reflections and/or soul lesson opportunities I was ready to explore). The greatest benefit of adopting this view is that no longer can I ever be a victim of anything. The positive take away I have with regards to "what is possible" for another, I don't even consider as, IMO, that's their business - such as eventual self annihilation pathways like Hinduism or Westen world Abrahamic religions.

"God," for me is post the Absolute. The Absolute is considered "actual reality" and that the Self (consciousness, God) is ultimately illusory. The Self I like to describe in this strange "thing" that came to me one day about six years ago -

“I (as us all) am (are)

simply the ‘All that Is’

that found a way to trick Itself

that It wasn't Itself

and simultaneously

hid Itself within Itself

such that It might (re)discover Itself

alive and individuated

within Its self-created Magick Kingdom.”​


That is my view and so though I see from the POV of "actual reality" (The Absolute) that God, consciousness, myself as an individuated being or any "being" (self) for that matter, is ultimately illusory, because I am experiencing this way (as a being anchored in a sub-reality and encased within a perceived corpus), I embrace the illusion and as fearlessly as possible... I embrace this thing we call life and embrace the opportunity I choose to believe I have the choice to experience it for as long as I wish, eternally if I wish, as an unbroken continuous individuated expression of being, even if part of the fun is forgetting experiences at the ordinary level of consciousness that occurred prior to this lifetime.
 
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I've tried pretty hard to get him on Skeptiko. I think his premise is flawed... more LHP apologetics.

IMO everyone has something to offer. Also, IMO, it is up to each individual to discern that which, for them, is "babies" and which might be, for them, "bathwater."

For example, Flowers makes a case there's an objective reality. For me, unless he is only talking about The Absolute (and I did not think he was), I disagree. Just because I disagree with that does not mean I disagree with the importance of personal responsibility that Flowers emphasizes.

If you go to Wikipedia you get a reductionist view of the two paths. If you try and obtain information on the history of development of these two paths, you can't find it online. But what you can do is look at history and see how there is an underlying lean towards one path or the other with regards to how the cultures progressed with regards to their dominant religions... almost all reflecting RHP. And then, if you do a deep dive, you see many of the authorities outwardly practicing the popular religions and privately... something else. Why is that?

And why, if an individual embraces the fundamentals of LHP does one have to be a "bad guy?" Or emulate evil? Or practice in ways that harm others? Am I the only exception to this, if this is the case? Should I come up with some new name for my own path?
 
IMO everyone has something to offer. Also, IMO, it is up to each individual to discern that which, for them, is "babies" and which might be, for them, "bathwater."
just finished recording an interview with connor abib... he made a great point on this topic... paraphrasing... it's not about babies and bathwater but about digging deep enough to expose the falsehoods so that the truth can be liberated from them. he says it better :-) but the point is, I don't give people a lot of credit for being wrong even if there's a kernel of truth buried inside their work.
 
Yes - there is a particular book which educated me greatly as to the origin of Right Hand Path and Left Hand Path and... because I am able to read materials regardless of what might be a sympathetic view towards one or the other, I read this book in that way.

The title is - Lords of the Left-Hand Path: Forbidden Practices and Spiritual Heresies by Stephen E. Flowers, Ph.D.

It is one of the five most important books (personally) I ever read. It shattered all my "views" (which were revealed as biases based on ignorance) of the origin of these two paths and what each term meant.

Thanks for the recommendation. I just ordered that book.

Although I don't believe in anthropomorphic gods, this article describes my views on this matter perfectly:
The Runestone - Spring 1998 (Fire and the Fog by Stephen A. McNallen beginning on page 3). To me it seems that there are a lot of similarities between the views mentioned in that article and in LHP.
 
just finished recording an interview with connor abib... he made a great point on this topic... paraphrasing... it's not about babies and bathwater but about digging deep enough to expose the falsehoods so that the truth can be liberated from them. he says it better :) but the point is, I don't give people a lot of credit for being wrong even if there's a kernel of truth buried inside their work.

I am not sure I understand how you get to the truth without weeding out the bathwater, so, for me, the metaphor is a good one.

Now factor in that there are things we could call fact and then there are things we can only call opinion. So often you find people attempting to make a case that something is "fact" for what is really only their opinion.

You could take every single word in Lords of the Left-Hand Path and label it as falsehood (and you may be right) but Flowers claims there is one foundational component of the Left-Hand Path that if one analyzes anyone or any movement with regards to this one factor, then one could make a case that that individual or movement is a worthy example of an adherent to the Left-Hand Path.

And that factor is the degree to which an individual or movement emulates acceptance of personal responsibility. Yet, to say that personal responsibility is 'important' (and possibly the very most important trait to hold) can only be categorized as an opinion. In fact, you have a whole ideology that exists today based on "the victim" and "the perpetrator" mentality raised to the status of fact to be what the world suffers from and that the solution is to empower those who convince others they will champion their cause.

I can only decide for myself which view to hold and the only fact regarding both is that you can't hold both views (unless you are a dishonest individual that plays both sides). Which view is the right one? Which view is the true one that would lead us all into a better world? I know which one works best for myself, but to insist this is "the truth" for everyone else poses a big problem because if I force that view on others, I take away their freedom to chose for themselves and rob them of their opportunity to find out through the course of their soul journey (be there such and I bet on "there is such").

This is the problem with "truth" because when it comes to something like I described above, my opinion is that this would need to be concluded as "truth" for an individual on a case by case basis by that individual.

The two 'take aways' I got from Flowers book are the import of personal responsibility and that I can decide for myself, as an individuated being, my (own) fate. Those two "take aways" were the foundation of a personal transformation where, guess what? All my loved ones (save for a few sick ones), but healthy family, healthy friends, and then those I pass on the street and those I may never meet have all benefited from.

At least that is my opinion an opinion based on testimony from the ones who have experienced my personal transformation and based on my opinion that my actions have measurably improved. But again, there's no way I could prove it to be "fact" (thus true).
 
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Thanks for the recommendation. I just ordered that book.

Although I don't believe in anthropomorphic gods, this article describes my views on this matter perfectly:
The Runestone - Spring 1998 (Fire and the Fog by Stephen A. McNallen beginning on page 3). To me it seems that there are a lot of similarities between the views mentioned in that article and in LHP.

Very interesting as Dr. Flowers has spent much of his life researching the same influences of the original Indo Europeans upon this very religion and its evolutions. Even his Wikipedia page appears reasonably accurate - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Flowers

Another book he wrote is entitled, Hermetic Magic: The Postmodern Magical Papyrus of Abaris

The book has a chapter called Self Initiation and in that chapter, on page 160, is this one statement -

"For the Hermetic, eventually all of life becomes a great working of mageia. The more advanced the initiate, the more this is true. The more advanced the initiate, the more likely the initiatory stimulus will come in the form of what appear to be to the profane to be mundane events. This is why the most advanced initiates never seem to do magic. This is because they have become magic."

I have, at times, forgotten this most impactful statement (impactful for me personally). An example is what I posted about several months back regarding my "mulling the idea" of using Dr. Skinner's technology in enlisting the aid of a demon that could carry out the task of implanting a dream into my son... a son who had mistakenly believed I had committed (and then accused me of) the most heinous of acts and my desire was that a dream of the truth might shake loose his belief. Is there anything morally wrong with wishing your beloved son could see he had come to believe something that wasn't true and that essentially destroyed our relationship? Is there anything morally or ethically wrong in employing what Dr. Skinner refers to as a technology to facilitate the goal? Could the result either be nil or, perhaps, crack open his mind to the possibility he was wrong? I could not see any possible negative result.

And so I posted about that on this very forum. And, in part, because of one particular reply I read (I believe it was from dpdownsouth) I decided not to follow my impulse. Just after making that decision, my wife reminded me that she prays for those who are or have been close to her in her life, even if (as in the case of her mother) the relationship was difficult, painful, even terrible (her mother had been violent with her and just as bad, emotionally violent throughout my wife's life. And my wife doesn't pray for an outcome, she prays for their well being. With that in mind, I began to pray for my son in that way... and the first time I didn't feel the heart in it, but starting with the second time I did.

And interestingly enough, by making this prayer work a habit... just praying he's ok, that he is at peace, that he is safe and that he does well for his family and that his family also is at peace and healthy (especially spiritually)... well, I felt all the darkness around this terribly sad situation lift. I felt a release. I felt that regardless of whether he ever understands in his heart he was wrong, he had come to a terribly wrong set of conclusions in this lifetime... I felt that he is on his own path and that the best thing I could do is release him from my own resentments (which is what naturally happened from this prayer work).

On August 2, I saw an e-mail with (No Subject) from my son come into the inbox.

He wrote: "I just wanted to tell you I still love you."

I conclude he has begun to be his own inner work on his own and I am very glad I did not try and use magical "demon harnessing spiritual technology." I cannot know if there was any true power behind the process I adopted from my wife's example, but it was pure and it became fully heartfelt.

This is, for me, magical. Magical living, magical being. I didn't need to conduct initiatory rights to get here... but my life, especially since 2012 and my self-imposed NDE, has been truly magical... and first revealed via the impact upon others (myself last).
 
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just finished recording an interview with connor abib... he made a great point on this topic... paraphrasing... it's not about babies and bathwater but about digging deep enough to expose the falsehoods so that the truth can be liberated from them. he says it better :) but the point is, I don't give people a lot of credit for being wrong even if there's a kernel of truth buried inside their work.

I go back to the quote the Gospel of Thomas - Jesus said, "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."

Maybe it isn't true, but the metaphysicians I have encountered, without exception, shared the view that ultimate truth is within each of us and we just have to experience direct apprehension of that truth (and that this is the only way one "gets it"). The best "knowers" can do is point. And sometimes the pointing is to "truth" which is surrounded by "other than."
 
I just completed an interview dr. Mark Pitstick. I am pretty backlog so it could take awhile to publish

Good to know. But if possible you need Schwartz not Pitstick. No new info from him. If its 2 or 3 months old, there is nothing new to know. I can tell you everything right now:

1. They have tried to use the device to contact God
2. They have a patent in partnership (exact relationship needs verification) with another engineer that is a breakthrough that allows the soulswitch to become a keyboard.
3. The research is being published in Schwartz own journal
4. It is claimed to have the backing of skeptics (which I believe are just parapsychologists) and also a well known major scientist.


This brings us very close to being inside the nested russian doll. Where are we Alex? And why won't you throw some money at it? You might ask me that, but I worked as a forklift operator and now am working for the census. I just don't have your money-talent.

I mean, if money talks, who knows. Maybe you already did throw some money at it. Who knows. And if not, why?

Who else around here has some answers isn't the right question to rhetorically ask. We need better questions.
 
1. They have tried to use the device to contact God
A device? I was under the impression that we had what was required built-in to each of us already. Seriously - the question is not one of technology but of where we place our conscious intent and in what we choose to believe as well as what we choose to ignore. Adding a chunk of hardware won't help to resolve those things.
 
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@Raimo

I have developed a few "rules for self" (what I prefer to call "operational protocols"). Several days ago a combination of a few of these operational protocols kicked in because of you and your post I quoted above.

These are - "Remain ever open minded about all possibilities, all things." Also - "Never stop researching, never stop investigating." Another - "When you find yourself viscerally opposed to something, that's your clue to dig deeper."

All of these apply to what I have discovered in making it over, first, to the Tymn materials at this website - http://whitecrowbooks.com/search/c0917078324ec39921cad14050e61727/

And then to the website itself - http://whitecrowbooks.com/

What a treasure trove
 
I find this discussion perplexing given the title of show. "what split personality tells us".

Here. Take a gander.

https://www.soulproof.com/multilocation-are-you-having-simultaneous-life-experiences-now/

Is multi-location covered by your interview Alex?

Its clear to me that Pitstick doesn't talk science. He talks about spirituality. He has a science background, but Schwartz is the big heavy hitter scientist. You must know something!

Perhaps, the solution to the dilemma may lie in an individual's discovery of their (possible) multiple states of being. If possible and once apprehended, one can then see that their primary experience is anchored to this 5 sense consensus physical reality which one awakens to everyday (Alex calls "ordinary reality") yet, they might also exist in these other states simultaneously, some of which have no time, some of which have no form, some of which have no identity, some with two of the three, some with only one of the three... and then there's The Absolute.

For me, the "soul" state exists with one foot in a continuum and the other foot in timelessness (continuumlessness).
 
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Perhaps, the solution to the dilemma may lie in an individual's discovery of their (possible) multiple states of being. If possible and once apprehended, one can then see that their primary experience is anchored to this 5 sense consensus physical reality which one awakens to everyday (Alex calls "ordinary reality") yet, they might also exist in these other states simultaneous, some of which have no time, some of which have no form, some of which have no identity, some with two of the three, some with only one of the three... and then there's The Absolute.

For me, the "soul" state exists with one foot in a continuum and the other foot in timelessness (continuumlessness).

Yeah, I don't see why that can't be true. But is it?

Here is a chance to find out. Oh well. Maybe I will try something similar in 20 or 30 years. By then the technology will be even cheaper. But idealism as a philosophy will remain in the sidelines so long as we can not get some sort of clear evidence. NDE's, even reported by multiple people simulataneously, are just too weird for normal people to take seriously. Ditto UFO's.

You could have the damn radar data on your computer, and still, no one will really take it seriously. Not until there is a project that tracts them. Deep Prasad is doing that by the way or is participating in a project to do that.

I am sure Alex knows all about it.
 
Yeah, I don't see why that can't be true. But is it?

Here is a chance to find out. Oh well. Maybe I will try something similar in 20 or 30 years. By then the technology will be even cheaper. But idealism as a philosophy will remain in the sidelines so long as we can not get some sort of clear evidence. NDE's, even reported by multiple people simulataneously, are just too weird for normal people to take seriously. Ditto UFO's.

You could have the damn radar data on your computer, and still, no one will really take it seriously. Not until there is a project that tracts them. Deep Prasad is doing that by the way or is participating in a project to do that.

I am sure Alex knows all about it.

I understand your view, but I would not use the word, "we" like you did because there are more and more folks in all communities (and all scientific communities) that are opening more and more to moving past a limited physicalist world view. Deep is a great example of a one of these cutting edge type scientists who knows that the current scientific paradigms are far from explaining his actual experiences, especially the fantastic one he shared in early 2020.

Because I have formed all sorts of relationships all over the world with folks who are in all sorts of disciplines, what I have found quite incredible is how many of them have had anomalous experiences which cannot be explain within the current "popular, mainstream" science communities' currently accepted "theories" and one by one, they are having private conversations with each other and this is how huge paradigm shifts begin... and in this case, it would involve a consciousness shift as well.

IMO, when humanity of Earth is ready (within each of the various timelines in each their own time), the next leap will occur.

I noticed you used the term "idealism" and so I would like you to look at this (even Wikipedia can sometimes avoid skewing) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutral_monism

and then give this one a listen (when they are done with the maintenance) - https://www.thehighersidechats.com/phoenix-aurelius-personal-mastery-the-unseen-realms-fungi/
 
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