“Wherefore do ye toil; is it not that he may live and be happy? And if ye toil only that ye may toil more, when shall happiness find you? Ye toil to live, but is not life made of beauty and song? … Toil without song is like a weary journey without an end. Were not death more pleasing?”

-H.P.Lovecraft

93 93/93

Stu

I’ve always been a hard-headed, rationalist atheist, and would still – and probably will always – describe myself this way.

But via recent reflections upon, shall we say, experiences of direct interface (with reality? meta-reality?), I have come to recognise certain interconnections between what I previously recognised as discrete phenomena. These connections are noumenal, rather than merely phenomenal – intrinsic flows between them. Between everything.

To continue the watery theme; who is to say where rivers end and the ocean begins? It is all the same body of water, ultimately. So the recognition of these relationships makes everything, in an extremely visceral, immediate and true way, One.

Thanks. I have a lot to say in response because so much of this is right down my alley that it hurts.

But since its late (for me) and I need to sleep I’ll just say thanks right now.

H

I am not familiar with the specific concept of the ‘waters of life’ in this context, but I have encountered similar ideas in Hermetism and Buddhism, and think I may have something to add.

In my personal system I would call this process ‘harmonising with Universal (or Divine) Will’, but as you have already pointed out, it is achieved through the quality of our actions, and the quality of our thoughts. The only way I’ve found to really make progress in this process is to open the Heart. I believe the key to the ‘flow of the Waters’ is Love. And I do not mean any simple affection or lust, I mean Pure Love, free from desire, indeed free from intelect. Agape/’93′. I’ll try to explain why.

Lon Milo Duquette once asked Israel Regardie (Golden Dawn member, former personal secretary to Crowley) why there was so much corruption in modern mysticism, specifically mystical organisations. He replied,(paraphrase) ‘Because they opened their ‘third eye’ before opening their ‘heart’. In other words, they lacked the emotional Wisdom to integrate the experience of Transcendence, for Love is the force behind Dissolution and Unification. Every so called ‘mystical experience’ I have had in the past has been overshadowed by (and often followed by, for days or even weeks after) a more or less constant realisation of the startling ‘immediacy’ of the Beauty inherent in all things.

You mentioned the Quantum ‘observer/observed’ paradox, in this context I would compare it to the Zen Koan; ‘Who is the Great Master who makes the grass green?’. Of course, YOU are. It takes someone to observe the grass to make it green, the process of focused attention on something not yet understood, becomes a symbiotic process that is the cause of Love. It is the process of different parts of the universe studying eachother in order to connect somehow, to unify.. which is essentially Life. And when you add in the Buddhist idea of ‘no-self’, that all we really ‘are’ (when seperate from Godhead) is a collection of processes, then the idea of the ‘observer’ is false, there is only the ‘act of observation’, therefore there is only Love.

The Book of the Law sums this idea up quite well, as it does most things.
“For I am divided for Love’s sake, for the chance of Union. This is the creation of the world, that the pain of division is as nothing, and the joy of dissolution all.”

But of course this is a lofty idea that has little immediate relevance to modern man. Thats where Hermetism comes in.
It is not uncommon for a man (or a woman, of course) to be all his life drawn towards one field, whether it be creative, intellectual, physical, etc. in nature. Most of the time it is simply what he/she enjoys most in life, finds most interesting, and is willing to put the most amount of focussed attention into. some people could call this their ‘calling’. Those who are able to answer their calling professionally are naturally blessed to be able to perform their duties with Love, respect and care, benefiting everyone around them. To paraphrase Paul Foster Case, “No matter what your position in life, whether you be a file clerk or a successful businessman, if you perform your daily duties with Love and diligence, you are aiding the flow of the ‘life force energy’ (Levi’s ‘Great Magical Agent’, and I believe synonymous with your ‘Waters of Life’) to act throughout the world.”

So it seems the ‘everyday, trivial sort of stuff’ becomes less trivial, indeed it becomes integral to the flow of the Waters. But the main key seems to be Love, the emotional act of Love, the realisation of the immediacy of the beauty of all things. And from my own experience, I am fairly sure that this is the case.

93 93/93

Stewart