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To: thelema93-l@hollyfeld.org (Thelema93-Listserv)
From: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (nigris (333))
Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 06:53:39 -0700 (PDT)

alt.magick IPSISSIMUS REF

49970529 AA1  Hail Satan!  (what a glorious way to spend a morning;  have at it)

	E6

333:
	cf. _Magick_ wherein it is written of the Ipsissimus Grade:

	-------------------------------------------------------------
	_Ipsissimus._ Is beyond all this and beyond all comprehension
	 of those of lower degrees.

	But of these last three Grades, see some further account in
	'The Temple of Solomon the King,' *The Equinox*, number I to
	X and elsewhere.

	It should be stated that these Grades are not necessarily
	attained fully, and in strict consecution, or manifested
	wholly on all planes.  The subject is very difficult, and
	entirely beyond the limits of this small treatise....

	4. The Grade of Ipsissimus is not to be described fully; but
	its opening is indicated in Liber I [B] vel Magi.

	There is also an account in a certain secret document to be
	published when propriety permits. {NOTE: Crowley is referring
	to his diary or _The Magical Record of the Beast 666_, the
	first volume of which has been edited, annotated and introduced
	by John Symonds and Kenneth Grant (Duckworth, 1972).}  Here it
	is only said this: The Ipsissimus is wholly free from all
	limitations soever, existing in the nature of all things
	without discriminations of quantity or quality between them.
	He has identified Being and not-Being and Becoming, action
	and non-action and tendency to action, with all other such
	triplicities, not distinguishing between any one thing and
	any other thing as to whether it is with or without conditions.
	
	He is sworn to accept this Grade in the presence of a witness,
	and to express its nature in word and deed, but to withdraw
	Himself at once within the veils of his natural manifestation
	as a man, and to keep silence during his human life as to the
	fact of his attainment, even to the other members of the Order.

	The Ipsissimus is pre-eminently the Master of all modes of
	existence; that is, his being is entirely free from internal
	and external necessity.  His work is to destroy all tendencies
	to construct or to cancel such necessities.  He is the Master
	of the Law of Unsubstantiality (Anatta).

	The Ipsissimus has no relation as such with any Being: He has
	no will in any direction, and no Consciousness of any kind
	involving duality, for in Him all is accomplished; as it is
	written 'beyond the Word and the Fool, yea, beyond the Word
	and the Fool.'
	-----------------------------------------------------------
	_Magick_, by Aleister Crowley, ed. Symonds/Grant, Arkana,
	 1973; pp. 328-330. [333 comments]
	_________________________________________________________

	and also
	---------------------------------------------------------

	15. Now the grade of a Magister teacheth the Mystery of
	Sorrow, and the grade of a Magus the Mystery of Change,
	and the gread of Ipsissimus the Mystery of Selflessness,
	which is called the Mystery of Pan.

	16. Let the Magus then contemplate each in turn, raising
	it to the ultimate power of Infinity.  Wherein Sorrow is
	Joy, and Change is Stability, and Selflessness is Self.
	For the interplay of the parts hath no action upon the
	whole.  And this contemplation shall be performed not by
	simple meditation -- how much less then by reason! -- but
	by the method which shall have been given unto Him in
	His initiation to the Grade.

	17. Following which method, it shall be easy for Him to
	combine that trinity from its elements, and further to
	combine Sat-Chit-Ananda, and Light, Love, Life, three
	by three into nine that are one, in which meditation
	success shall be That which was first adumbrated to Him
	in the grade of Practicus (which reflecteth Mercury into
	the lowest world) in Liber XXVII, 'Here is Nothering
	under its three Forms.'

	18. And this is the Opening of the Grade of Ipsissimus,
	and by the Buddhists it is called the trance of Nerodha-
	Samapatti. {NOTE: One of the highest Buddhist trances.
	It is the equivalent of the Hindu Shivadarshana in which
	the objective universe of name and form is totally
	dissolved.}

	19. And woe, woe, woe, yea woe, and again woe, woe, woe,
	unto seven times be His that preacheth not His law unto men!

	20. And woe also be unto Him that refuseth the curese of
	the grade of a Magus, and the burden of the Attainment
	thereof.

	21. And in the world CHAOS let the book be sealed, yea,
	let the Book be sealed.
	------------------------------------------------
	Ibid., p. 488 (APPENDIX VII; LIBER B vel MAGI).
	_______________________________________________

========================================================================= 

333:
	in his autohagiography, Crowley writes of his experience of  
	'the trance of Nerodha-Samapatti', 'Shivadarshana'.  the
	first is included in his description of his 'Abra-Melin
	Operation': 

	-----------------------------------------------------------
	On the ninth, having prepared a full invocation and ritual,
	I performed it.  I had no expectation, I think, of attaining
	any special success; but it came.  I had performed the
	Operation of the Sacred Magick of Abra-Melin the Mage.

	It is unlawful to speak of the supreme sacrament.  It was
	such, as the following entry shows, that I found it hard
	to believe that I had been permitted to partake of it.  I
	will confine myself to the description of some of the
	ancillary phenomena.

		Oct. 9 Tested new ritual and behold it was
		       very good!  Thanked gods and sacrificed
	 	       for -- In the 'thanksgiving and sacrifices
		       for...' I *did* get rid of everything but
		       the Holy Exalted One, and must have held
		       Him for a minute or two.  I did.  I am
		       sure I did.

		Such is the fragmentary account {NOTE: Captain 
		Fuller's.} of what was then the greatest event
		of Fra. P.'s career.  Yet this is an account of
		the highest trances -- of Shivadarshana {{Eds.
		NOTE: Literally the vision (*darshana*) of the
		God Shiva.  It is the highest of the Hindu
		Trances and the equivalent of Nirvikalpa-samadhi
		and Neroda-samapatti.}} itself, as we know from
		other sources.  The 'vision' (to use still the
		name become totally inadequate) appears to have
		had three main points in its Atmadarshana {{Eds.
		NOTE: A Sanskrit term meaning vision (*darshana*)
		of the Self (*Atma*).}} stage --

		1. The Universal Peacock.

		2. The Universe as Ego.  'I who am all and made
		it all, abide its separate lord,' i.e. the
		universe becomes a single and simple being,
		without quantity, quality or conditions.  In this
		the 'I' is immanent, yet the 'I' made it, and the
		'I' is entirely apart from it.

		(This is the Christian doctrine of the Trinity,
		or something very like it.)

		3. This Trinity is transcended by an impersonal
		Unity.  This is then annihilated by the Opening
		of the Eye of Shiva.  It is absolutely futile
		to discuss this; it has been tried and failed
		again and again.  Even those with experience of
		the earlier part of the 'vision' in its fullness
		must find it totally impossible to imagine
		anything so subversive of the whole base, not
		only of the ego, but of the absolute behind the
		ego.

	The very next day the enemy struck home below the belt, as
	described in the previous chapter.  The blow could not shake
	my soul.  For over three weeks I bore the stigmata of my
	Operation physically.  I visibly radiated light.  People
	used to turn in the street to look at me; they did not know
	what it was, but the impression must have been irresistable.
	----------------------------------------------------------
	_The Confessions of Aleister Crowley_, eds. Symonds/Grant,
	  Arkana, 1979; pp. 532-3.
	__________________________________________________________

	and in a period of time wherein he was engaging various 
	god-summonings with Victor Neuberg, going on at some length 
	about how he had perfected the ability not to let off the 
	odd "miracle" and the "summoning to manifestation" of a 
	variety of spirits, he begins describing this same trance 
	state:

	------------------------------------------------------------
	Materialists claim that the senses are the sole source of
	knowledge.  Good!  Then the most absurd and impossible idea
	of a madman or a metaphysician must be derived from sensory
	impressions no less than a brick.  We habitually use our
	mental faculties to criticize and correct our sensory
	impressions.  At what point, then, does our judgement cease
	to be reliable?  Which is more real; the brick, the facts
	indirectly learnt from the brick, such as its chemical and
	electrical properties, the laws of nature which I deduce
	from the sum of such facts, or the mystical moonshine which
	meditation on all these evokes?

	In my great initiation in the Sahara, I was told in one vision,
	'Above the Abyss' (that is, to the intelligible intuition
	between which and the intellect there is a great gulf fixed),
	'a thing is only true in so far as it contains its own
	contradiction in itself.'  The initiate must learn to use this
	faculty.  Its first advantage is to deliver one from the
	dilemma set forth above.  We need no longer doubt that white 
	is white, because that proposition implicitly asserts that
	white is black.  Our new instrument assures us that the
	whiteness of white depends on the fact of its blackness.  This
	statement sounds more than absurd; it is a meaningless 
	assertion.  But we have already seen that the axioms of the
	intellect involve absurdity.  They only impose upon us at
	first because they happen to be our personal property.  The
	intuitions of the Neschamah are guaranteed by interior
	certainty, and they cannot be criticized for the simple reason
	that they have themselves completed the work of criticism of
	the most destructive kind before presenting themselves at all.
	Buddhist psychology has analyzed many of these characteristics
	of super-consciousness and even arranged them in an order
	corresponding with spiritual development.

	...

	The Buddhists describe the closest approximation to true
	observation of anything by saying that it is seen in the
	four-fold formless state, which they define in the following
	terms: Any proposition about an object is simultaneously
	perceived as being both true and false, but also neither
	true nor false.  To perceive an object in this manner implies
	that the observer has attained the last possible degree of
	spiritual development which permits any positive point of
	view soever.  Such a man is but one step from the threshold
	of Arahatship.  He has only to destroy this conception of
	things, as is done in this four-fold formless state, to
	attain the trance Nerodha-Sammapatti, in which all being and
	form is absolutely annihilated, so much so that the trance
	is only distinguishable from Nibbana by the fact that one
	comes out of it.

	It was on October 2nd, 1919 that I first attained to this
	Pisgah-sight of the promised land, Pari-Nibbana.  I was
	spending the night in Fleischmann's Turkish Baths in New
	York.  It was my custom in all such places to practise the
	tenth clause of my vow as a Master of the Temple, 'To
	interpret every pheneomenon as a particular dealing of God
	with my Soul', by forcing advertisements and other public
	announcements to yield some spiritual significance.  I
	would either apply the Cabbala to the words and manipulate
	the numbers so as to reach a state of mind in which some
	truth might suddenly spring in the silence, or I would play
	upon the words as if they were oracles, or else force the
	filthy falsehoods of fraudulent dollar-dervishes to
	transfigure themselves at the touch of my talisman into
	mysterious messages of the Masters.

	I had awakened at dawn and meditated awhile upon this four-
	fold formless state.  I was merely trying to make out what
	could possibly be meant by piling contradictions on
	contradictions, as the definition did.  I did not under-
	stand it in the least, and I had not the slightest intention
	of trying to reach realization of it.  At that time all such
	meditation was entirely out of my line, but accidents will
	happen even in the best regulated magical circles and the
	following extraordinary experience knocked me sideways.

	I quote verbatim from my Magical Record:

		I was putting on my bath-robe after weighing, and
		turning a sleeve inside out, when my masseur, an
		holy man positively trembling on the brink of
		Arahatship, cried to me that both sides of it
		were inside, and both outside.  I replied humbly
		that I was seeking for a side that was neither
		inside nor outside -- and then like a flash I
		saw that I had it!  Oh Glory Ineffable of
		Realization!  (Oh Right Thinking!)  For either
		side is both inside and outside because I can
		use it as such, and it is neither inside nor
		outside with regard to the discrimination which
		might be made by an uninitiate between any one
		thing and any other thing.

		Now this quality is not in the robe, which has
		two sides easily distinguishable by hemmings,
		machining, etc., to say nothing of orientation
		in space, but in me, and arises from my positive
		determination not to notice whether my back reads
		'Stolen from the Fleischmann Baths' or no.  Now
		I am not indifferent to comfort.  I notice whether
		the robe is thick or thin; its observed qualities
		depend upon a weakness in me.  All qualities
		soever in the robe must therefore disappear as
		soon as I am strong enough to ignore them; and
		thus any self-sufficiency or 'attainment' destroys
		my consciousness of any separate existence.

	I sincerely believe that I have adequately described a state
	of mind, in itself utterly incompatible with ordinary
	intellectual apprehension, in the above account, and correctly
	observed and intelligibly expressed its characteristics in such
	a way as to give at least some rudimentary idea of one type of
	intuition with whose laws those of the reason have nothing
	whatever in commmon. 
	-------------------
	Ibid., pp. 590-2.
	_________________


	from Grant:

	----------------------------------------------------------
	*Ipsissimus:* Lit. "His own very self", the *Atman* of
	the Hindus.  Kether is the Sphere of the Ipsissimus (see
	the Tree of Life).  In the Hindu system, a *Paramahansa*
	is the highest grade of spiritual enlightenment and it
	corresponds to the Ipsissimus Grade, 10'=1~, in the
	Western Tradition.  Crowley describes himself as a
	*Paramahansa* in his *Eight Lectures on Yoga*, published
	by the O.T.O. in 1939....
	----------------------------------------------------------
	_Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God_, by Kenneth Grant,
	  Skoob Books, 1992; p. 211.
	_____________________________

	and

	----------------------------------------------------------
	The *Ipsissimus* alone is free of all fetters.  One who
	has attained to the 'Knowledge and Conversation of the
	Holy Guardian Angel', although having passed far beyond
	the average state of human consciousness, is yet vastly
	remote from the pinnacle of attainment reprsented by that
	of the *Ipsissimus*.  Even so, the *Adeptus Minor* has so
	far stilled the agitations of his personality-complex that
	he receives glimpses, veiled and fleeting, of the ultimate
	goal that requires the total abolition of personality and
	egoidal consciousness.

	The *Ipsissimus* is described as having 'no will in any
	direction, and no Consciousness of any kind involving
	duality.' ... Crowley hints but once only in his published
	writings at this supreme initiation which he underwent in
	the Spring of 1924.  In his Magical Record, however, he
	reveals that he took the Oath of an *Ipsissimus* on 
	May 23, 1921 and, for the following three years, the Great
	Initiation ran its course:

		The climax of the dealings of the Secret Chiefs
		with Therion came in the weeks immediately
		preceding and following the Spring Equinox of
		1924.  At this time he lay sick unto death.  He
		was entirely alone, for They would not even
		permit the presence of those few whom They had
		Themselves appointed to aid him in this final
		initiation.  In this last Ordeal the earthly
		part of him was dissolved in Water; the Water
		was rarified utterly, until he was free to make
		the last effort, and to pass into the vast
		caverns of the Threshold which guards the Realm
		of Fire.  Now, naught human may come through
		these immensities.  So in the Fire he was
		consumed wholly; as pure Spirit alone did he
		return, little by little, during the months
		that followed, into the body and mind that had
		perished in that Great Ordeal of which he can
		say no more than this: 'I died.'
	-----------------------------------------------------------
	_Cults of the Shadow_, by Kenneth Grant, Samuel Weiser,
	  1976; pp. 113-4.
	___________________________________________________________

	Crowley sums up the passing of the pylons on the Path of
	the ultimate Initiation into the Zone of the Fire Snake
	in the [previously quoted passage from page 113].  He 
	transcended the Grade of Magus and was reborn as the Son 
	of the Lion (Leo), after which he ascended to the Grade 
	of Ipsissimus through the pylons of the final Initiation.

	The Zone of the Fire Snake is illumined by the Magick
	Light, or electrical Fire, *Od* (*AVD* = 11).  Eleven is
	the number of Magick, or 'energy tending to change'.  The
	Snake or Serpent is *Ob* (*AVB* = 9).  Nine is the number
	of the lunar or Yesodic power-zone.  *Ob* is therefore the
	shadow or dark aspect of the Fire Snake and the true
	'*Couleuvre Noire*'.

	The Aeon of Isis glorified Matter, the Mother, the Body;
	the Aeon of Osiris, in denying the body, glorified Spirit.
	The balance of these extremes is effected by the realization
	of the identity of Matter and Spirit, Body and Mind, Female
	and Male.  Such realization occurs through the 'passionate
	union of opposites'.  Isis and Osiris combine to produce
	Horus, who is not a mere projection or reflection of his
	parents on the same plane but, because of his twin brother
	Set -- hidden within him -- is a projection in a further
	dimension of the powers of I and O (Isis and Osiris).  There
	is thus a movement out of the horizontal and into the 
	vertical direction.
	----------------------
	Ibid., p. 124.
	________________

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