Transmigration
imagine at the point of death downloading you're consciousness into your new body, think it's far fetched, belongs in sci fi movies, well you are mistaken, it's possible and it happens, admittedly not to everyone but various individuals prepare for this their whole lives. Certainly Doaist would avoid death totally and remain ageless, incarnate in one body, look after if, it's a smart option, various Tibetan Buddhists would use the technique of Po-Wa, Magickians would use certain rituals and science would take a different path, possibly why wait till death to transfer when i have a cyborg body that is better and more riesiliant than any other flesh one. After all when you think about it In five years, every cell in your body will have been replaced with a different one. Are you, therefore, the same person? If so, how? How is it that you can change a persons brain cells completely and claim that they are the same person?
Subjectively a person can say that he is not the same person, can we say that that person is wrong? The answer is not known - the persons complete brain contents has been replaced gradually yet the essence of what it contains and the content of its matter records the same information and the same memories simply transferred onto new materials, molecules and cells. This person is still a conscious alive entity after transferring all the material that contains his essence into a new medium that serves him in the same way as the old one.
In five years time it will be accepted that you are the same person as you are now. The actual molecules and matter of which you are built is not important as long as your thought-patterns, functions and memories are preserved.
How would I react if I had a different nervous system? A person can lose organs, physical organs, without losing any sense of self. How much of my body do I really need? There are layers of skin that are dead, hair is already dead and most of a persons fluids are free-flowing and uncontrollable but for other chemicals. Our muscles can be replaced with anything from a keyboard interface to a new mechanical body part and we can learn to use it just like learning to ride a new bike. A persons leg, or arm, or legs, or arms, can be lost in war and these people suffer mental pain, but do not have their conscious self diminished. I can replace most of my chemical systems with mechanical ones that replicate the function of my body. What do I need to preserve of my body and soul (conscious perception) to remain me?
Our brain systems, our thought patterns, are not dependent on any molecules or parts of the brain in particular but merely in the preservation of patterns. The preservation of the patterns can be transferred from one set of molecules to another, as happens in nature, without debasing the beings mind. The nature of the body and the exact cells do not matter as long as the patterns are preserved. Instead of allowing the natural cell-replacement cycle to commence why can we not step in and direct it ourselves? Or duplicate it?
The important concept which must not be overlooked is the word "preserved" which implies that the material that holds the thought-patterns does just that and that it does not inhibit or change the patterns as they existed in the original material.
I am controlled by the chemical reactions in my brain, I am aware of my decisions not because I make them but because I have made them already. I am aware of my thoughts not before they are thought but as they chemicals in my brain conspire to make them. It makes no difference to me, as a conscious entity, how these chemical reactions occur but only that they have certain affects. Likewise, any system that produces the same results using any system can call itself sentient without needing to compare the specifics of the physics involved.
To what extent then, can we determine where life can occur? If we constructed a brain, exactly the same as a working human brain, and slowly allowed over (say) five years a person to unknowingly "move in" or copy his thought patterns to this new medium it is conceivable that the original thought patterns would not be corrupted. Such a gradual transfer of brain power to a new medium over five years could go consciously unnoticed. However the one factor missing in all of the memory at a cellular level, body and mind are connected, consciousness has to leave the body at death, that's death, sometimes in older people it's left well before the body even dies. Unfortunately most people won't miss their consciousness. The magcikian has to be aware, conscious of being conscious of being conscious x 12. Yeah well certainly a lot to even consider being beyond conscious, then that consciousness has to be able to be directed, maneuvered and travel by thought. A super-concious human knows what's happening across the planet, there are many documented reports of these events, from memory this occurs frequently in 'Autobiography of a Yogi'
Strangely i have a story myself about that particular book. It first appeared to me when my cousin came to visit, i was about 12 and she brought the book for my family. I was always drawn towards it but never actually read it. Then 30 years later a very good friend of mine read it and told me about it suggesting i read it, but i always had something else to read, and the more my friend told me to read it the more resistance i felt towards reading it. Then a few years later i was working in Balmain markets one afternoon, buisness was slow and i was getting bored as i had finished the book i was reading, so i went over to the 2nd hand stall where a range of books was sprawled out on a table, and searching through them the guy turns to me and says, 'You should read this, I think you'll enjoy it. And lo and behold he offerred me a copy of the book. I made my escuses and left, wandered up the road to the new bookshop and went inside, i automatically walked towards the back of the shop, started looking at the bookshelves and a book quite literally fell onto my head, yeah, it was Autobiography of a Yogi. So i went back to the stall and bought it.
transmigration of souls or metempsychosis (mtm´´sk´ss) (KEY) [Gr.,=change of soul], a belief common to many cultures, in which the soul passes from one body to another, either human, animal, or inanimate. The Australian aborigines believe that an infant is a reincarnation of deceased ancestors and that the soul is continually reborn. Some Indonesian peoples hold that ancestral souls reside in sacred animals, sometimes in preparation for a new incarnation. Similarly, several tribes in western Amazonia avoid eating certain animals, such as deer, because they believe ancestral souls have entered the animals’ bodies.
5 comments:
At some point the magician or the yogi must become irrelevant?
A.C. at the end of his life was quoted to have retorted a statement about magic being ‘A way of life’ by restating magic is “THE way of life”. I’m curious what you think about the statement with your knowledge of A.C. and his practices. I feel the statement is suggesting that magic is not something you can place ahead of life, because after all, life is and always will be the first cab off the rank. It’s that horse before the cart analogy to make something “a way of life” if it is “life” we are seeking. A.C. naturally sort to produce a framework around his own experience but it would seem with this statement he is telling us something important about the sequence of events as they occurred within him; that is to say, anyone and everyone can choose “a way of life”, it being the way of the ego to project such things before us, but to allow life to occur as “life wills” without projection or presumption is the true essence of magic and love. What do you thing?
interesting point, I hope I can provide an equally interesting response although it certainly won’t be definitive. Basically I believe that there is a distinction between magickian and mystic and the type of process that the magickian follows (especially the chaos magickian), is quite different from the transcendental ones.
The transcendental paradigm (i really hate that word sometimes but i can't think of another one at the moment) seems to really be part of a religious 'root belief' that implies through surrender one can attain union with something more powerful than him/herself. The mystic will submit to a sense of something greater than themselves and remain in contemplation or service towards it. The Magickian on the other- hand, will not, although they may use their Will to the greater benefit of humanity/ life, generally they assume the position that they ARE the force. This can be seen as egoism out of whack, but the Magickian has already undergone the deconstruction of the ego, and certainly in the Choas framework identifies that all beliefs drive ones life. If one believes in a Islamic framework, then that's the experience one will have, if one believes in a Hindu framework the same applies. The magcikian invests belief in whatever framework he needs to to get the result he or she wants. Chaos Magick is all about results. Although the chaos school has been established long after Crowley, and is more akin to quantum science than the traditional views of magick.
Towards the end of his life AC had tested his will by using the ultimate test, heroin and quite clearly his ego had been contaminated by his addiction, as is evidenced in his autohaigoraphy, ‘Confessions.’
I think that as Crowley neared his death he understood that life has it’s own will, it’s own purpose and patterns, and he was its pawn as well as its knight. I think although he was a man who craved power and personal ambition, he was also subjected to a greater plan that he may have had no concious idea about until the point you mention.
This is where it starts to get interesting, free will over destiny?
In my own life i have come to the conclusion that these things are actually the same, but one needs to undergo a process where one is no longer enslaved by the ego, it is seen as a tool. Paradoxically this is a mystical process, but where the mystic stops the Magickian continues.
So yeah. The horse and the cart is a good analogy, I say put the horse and the cart together and create the best vehicle to get you from where you are to where you want to be. If it means you have to become a god to do that well, I guess the first question is.
DO I REALLY WANT THAT KIND OF RESPONSIBILITY?
The mystic generally does not want to sit in the drivers seat, therefore it’s a lot easier to ponder existence than actually act within it.
I recall reading the autobiography of a Daoist monk who spend 40 years learning these amazing self mastery skills and as a final lesson he was sent from his mountain in China to San Francisco, where he worked as a dishwasher trying to negotiate his way within the ‘real’ world, wages, nasty bosses, governments, bad tv, arrogent and selfish people etc.
The mystic and magickian are of little consequence if they do not meet their responsibilities and harmonise their passions within the consensus reality.
Eventually the magickian and mystic will reach the point where they can influence the events that pass them, whereas the mystic may chose not to influence, the magickian will.
'to allow life to occur as “life wills” without projection or presumption is the true essence of magic and love.'
the mystic within me agrees and the magickian within me says, 'only if you believe it.'
I hope this at least answers some of your question, I often post random bytes on magick and in particular the Chaos Magick paradigm which i follow, there’s possibly some more information in previous posts somewhere and I assure you there are many to follow. In the meantime 'thank you' for your question, and welcome aboard.
dont you feel the whole 'horse-cart-horse' thing is a linear, dualistic and newtonian way of thinking?
magick as life/magick is life.
isnt the whole point of magick (or mysticism or zen/dao/vedanta) to drop out of this 1 + 1 = 2 hoax?
horse AND cart together is a step forward. i suppose. still somewhat dualistic.
what about horsecart (lifemagick)?
or any tern that defines no separation at all?
afterall, life is not light + thought + matter + thermodynamics + etc, its the idea of all these combined seamlessly. just as cart is not wheels + wood + nails + leather + etc - its unified as 'cart'.
maybe the unification of life + magick into a undifferentiated whole is ' '.
i hope this doesnt come across as the ramblings of a madman.
love the idea of downloading consciousness (whatever that is) into another structure.
personally tho im not sure ts just a matter of preserving patterns, but also of preserving the 'reading' of those patterns. surely individuality is not just what we read, but how we interpret what we read also. transducing a pattern is only half of consciousnes - the larval, linear, monkey half. animating and reanimating those patterns is the other, progressive half that separates a space monkey from its larval forebears.
anyway, i look forward to the day where electronic media becomes electro-organic and computers are grown, grafted and propigated. imagine a laptop that before it reaches RAM capacity can grow its own extra harddrive? where infomation is not stored in silicon but in living chromosome-type units made of aminos. where you can down load using chemical wetware. where instaed of storing info with on-off binary codes - its gets blown eponentially using the 4 digits of the genetic aminos.
i mean, if evolution and magick and mysticism etc all are process that lead towards the highest state of information - whether it be god, or the cosmic egg, or quantum consciousness or wuji or whatever - surely downloading your consciousness into a system as huge as a chromosome-based internet running at nuclear speeds and fed by direct sunlight rather than coal is pretty close.
well close enough to begin with.
as for the moment - im still convinced that these freaky suicide bombers are the closest we have to people seriously downloading into electronic media.
its a very strange planet youve got going here.
the daoist version of transmigration is amazingly close to the cyborg version.
both involve super-bodies, both involve refined consciousness, both involve massive amounts of energy conductivity, both view death a process of deanimation rather than loss.
seems the big difference is mostly in how much fun it all is. as yet the cyborgians dont seem to have harnessed the sex, the humour, the irony and the spritlyness of the daoists. but give them time. admittedly the daoists have a 5,000 year headstart.
personally, metamorphizing from a hokey mortal into another, more intelligent form seems to me fairly natural. we are afterall the first of the hive-monkeys (all other monkeys are free-range nomads) and one thing common to all other hive based species (mostly insects, but coral and some rodents also qualify) is the phenomenon of the super-individual.
when the hive reaches a state of max. capacity indicators trigger mutation and a super-individual arises to send out and seed new colonies.
the code for this super-ness lays hidden within everyone, but only those who expose themselves to the indicators of evolution are triggered to mutate.
think now what those triggers may be in the primate-hive.
think too what the avenue for escape might be.
think what the point of transmigration might be. and the responsibilities.
for all the freaks out there, how many really have the capacity to take on the responsibility of transmutation?
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