Understanding the Void

[brilliantlydim]

It seems that paradox is at the heart of IT. The impossible yet inevitable dancing together in perfect chaotic harmony.

I agree that it must be experienced. Words will never suffice, or any other expression of experience. Even someone with the gift of gab on the unspeakable like Terence Mckenna, can only really describe it in a way that has any real value to people that have had their own experience with IT.

Lecture 1

The two distinguishing factors that stand out, at least for me, that I think you need to incorporate into your thinking about hermeticism...

... It's a real question, are we here to be the caretakers of the earth or are we strangers in the universe and is our task to return to a forgotten and hidden home no trace of which can be found in the Saturnine world of matter. It's very hard to have it both ways. You're going to have to take a position on that and these people were forced into the same dilemma. There's no middle ground between those two positions and so that dichotomy, that conundrum, haunted a lot of hermetic thinking. -terence McKenna

-eg

When I listened to this talk it felt like my brain was going to melt. The words pulled form and imagery from the soup of concepts that churned within me for many years.

I love how we still contemplate the same things the great minds of history have for thousands of years. Theres no getting away from it, and there is no getting to it.

 

[friken]

Whenever I think of the Void, the always completely just melts my mind. How does one conceptualise something that exists outside space and time. How does one wrap one's brain around the idea of something that has no beginning and no end?

And if the Void really is the singular Source of everything the infinite nothingness from which the whole universe was created, which I believe it is, then how can possibly even begin to fathom the idea of something out of nothing?

As tatt said..... you have to just jump in... to become it. That was my first aya (and first altered state) experience. I melted and all that was for eternity was the void... outside of duality, identity, or thought. The experience has stayed with me ever since and in many ways has been the first stone -- foundation if you will -- for my numerous journeys w DMT and other altered states since. The void experience was mind blowing and reality shattering for sure. I was a silly newbie who through a series of mistakes ended up making his first dmt experience a 10g mimosa/rue tea. (wrote about it here if anyone cares for a read: trip report)

Heh... I remember that first taste of DMT well. On returning, I wasn't (still not) sure I came back to the right human -- as if it was a choice from all humans who ever existed or will exist.... and even stranger yet, I wasn't sure I returned to the right point within this human's linear existence from birth to death.

 

[entheogenic-gnosis]

tatt said: The only way that i've felt was possible to understand it - is to experience it. That's it. To understand It, you got to become it

To me this statement made above is the basis of all shamanism...

Yeah, honestly that's what it comes down to for me - having to experience/become it.

As powerful as DMT is to plunge us deep into the other side, it's also incredibly powerful at staying divorced from the rational/analytical/compartmentalized primate brain, masterful at keeping it's hands clean from our attempts in pinning it down.

Gotta jump in.

Unfortunately, in my case, writing with intellectual depth is a transient phenomena, bound to the wims of inspiration...

For me, the Entheogenic experience, the DMT experience, is the the mysteruim tremendum, the lapis philosophorum

It's that "hands clean from our attempts in pinning it down" that is the signature feature of authentic mystery...

Mystery does exist, however you must have your intellectual razors in place, again, I will let terence McKenna further articulate:

"My method, my style, has always been to be open-minded, to be critical, to be rational, but to seek the weird. And to seek it seriously. Now, if you seek the weird without a critical intelligence, it will find you faster than you can lock your apartment behind you! The number of squirrelly ideas on the market these days is truly alarming. I coined a phrase (I hope), "the balkanization of epistemology". This is what we're dealing with now. You understand what I mean? It means people can't tell shit from Shinola, but they wanna talk about it, a lot! This is a place where you have to bring to bear what are called razors, logical razors. One is: hypotheses should not be multiplied without necessity. Another is: equations should not be multiplied without necessity. Razors always seek what is called the principle of parsimony. In other words, keep it simple, stupid. The simplest explanation is always to be preferred first."
- Terence McKenna

It is no great accomplishment to hear a voice in the head. The accomplishment is to make sure it is telling the truth, because the demons are of many kinds: "Some are made of ions, some of mind; the ones of ketamine, you'll find, stutter often and are blind." The reaction to these voices is not to kneel in genuflection before a god, because then one will be like Dorothy in her first encounter with Oz. There is no dignity in the universe unless we meet these things on our feet, and that means having an I/Thou relationship. One say to the Other: "You say you are omniscient, omnipresent, or you say you are from Zeta Reticuli. You're long on talk, but what can you show me?" Magicians, people who invoke these things, have always understood that one must go into such encounters with one's wits about oneself. -terence McKenna

In the above link you can view Alchemical Dream: Rebirth of the Great Work featuring terence McKenna. What starts out as a historical venture through alchemical 15-16th century Prague, ends up touching on a wide variety of topics and concepts. the story of john Dee and Edward Kelley is outlined, McKenna then continues outlining the reign of Rudolph the 2nd, and his plans for Frederick the V the Elector Palatine, which ultimately would not come to pass as Prague was besieged by a Habsburg army deployed from southern Spain, terence details that as this empire fell, a member of that hapsburg army, René Descartes, has a dream while sleeping in ulm, Germany, and is told by an angel "The conquest of nature is to be achieved through measure and number", he then found a modern science based on this revalation, McKenna outlines alchemical and hermetic philosophy while taking us on a bizzare historical venture through nearly forgotten episodes in time...and in the end, he ties this all together with shamanism...

If you enjoyed the hermeticism and alchemy lecture, this film would be considered a must see. It's creepy and strange in all the bast ways, it's historically based with psychedelic overtones, and is philosophically deep and intellectually rich, all with a twist of the bizarre. Exploring alchemy, hermeticism, shamanism, and the wholly other.

Again, I share McKenna's sentiments in this following quote, all this review of philosophical and historical processes and events, all has deep connection to our modern situation and personal existences:

I wouldn't hold a weekend like this simply to go over a body of ancient literature if I didn't think it had some efficacy or import for the modern dilemma and some of you may know the song by the Grateful Dead in which the refrain is "I need a miracle every day." I think any reasonable person can conclude that the redemption of the world, if it's to be achieved, can only be achieved through magic. It's too late for science. It's too late for hortatory politics.http://www.mysterium.com/tmalchemy1.html

Again, I've been fairly disorganized and uninspired the last few days, and I'm sure the quality of my posts reflects this, regardless, it's not something I get to discuss often, so even if my writing is not top-notch, I felt I still had to reply...

-eg