An Exerpt from Confessions of Aleister Crowley on Evocation and Observation of Spiritual Events

I had begun to train Neuburg seriously in Magick and mysticism. The first point was, of course, to get rid of any prejudices and superstitions. This was not too difficult, he being a professed agnostic. But the second point was to train him in the technique. This was well enough as far as Magick was concerned, for he naturally possessed the poetic and dramatic instincts, the sense of the fitness of gesture, and so on: and, more important than all, it came natural to him to arouse in himself the right kind of enthusiastic energy in the right way.

In addition, he possessed a peculiar faculty which I have only found in anything like the same degree in one other man in my life. He was a materializing medium in the strictest sense; that is, he could condense ideas into sensible forms. He could not do it at all by himself, because he lacked the power to collect at one point all the available material of the required kind, as may be done by concentrated will, and thereby to create such a state of strain in the atmosphere that the evoked forces must relieve it, if they possibly can, by a change of state. Just so carbon dioxide, if forced into a closed cylinder below the critical temperature, relieves the intolerable pressure by liquefying. Here the carbon dioxide corresponds to the invisible forces in the magical atmosphere, separated from its other components, collected in one place, confined and directed by the Magician. The critical temperature corresponds to such magical conditions as quiet and inviolability; the cylinder to the constraint imposed by the Magician to prevent the dissipation of his invoked ideas.

Such indeed is an outline of the theory of calling forth spirits to visible appearance (by "visible" we always intend audible --- too dangerously often tangible, and too unpleasantly often capable of producing impressions of the olfactory nerves). In practice, however, there is something lacking to success.

Neuburg supplied the missing link, as I might have expedited from his personal resemblance to that Darwinian desideratum. There was some substance in him which was on the borderland between the manifest world of matter and the astral world of sensation. In his presence I found it quite easy to produce phenomenal phantasms of almost any idea, from gods to demons, which I happened to need at the moment. I had of course a very wide experience of so-called material manifestations; but for the most part these had been independent of my will and often contrary to it. I have already mentioned a number of such phenomena in connection with the Abramelin Operation. I had succeeded in suppressing them by preventing my magical force from leaking away. A miracle annoyed me as it annoys an electrician to find that his current is escaping, perhaps giving shocks to people who have strayed in its path. His first thought is to detect and correct the imperfection of his insulation. Years had passed without my magical energy breaking loose: I had persuaded it to work through the proper channels.

Carelessness showed itself once more in Shanghai. I was invoking certain forces with Soror F. in her circle. After I had constrained them to come, I proceeded to make a circumambulation with the object of giving them the desired direction, and when I came to the west of the circle, I noticed that Soror F. had profanely left her slippers inside it. These, not being consecrated objects, had no business there; so I pushed them gently over the frontier with my foot. They were seized and flung furiously to the ceiling with such force that they broke off some of the plaster. There was no possibility that my foot had supplied the motive power, even had I kicked them away in a rage instead of pushing them as quietly as I could --- which I naturally did, to diminish the disturbance. There had been several other minor incidents of the same sort on subsequent occasions; but I took measures, as before, to suppress them.

The manifestations which Neuburg helped to produce were of an entirely different character; they occurred in conformity with my will. I was able to work more by sight and less by faith than I had ever done before. Even the use of the proper material bases for manifestation, such as the incense of Abra-Melin, Dittany of Crete, and blood, had rarely resulted in more than "half formed faces", partial and hesitating presentations of the desired phantom whose substance seemed to hover on the frontier of the worlds (rather like the Cheshire cat!). The clouds of incense used to grow denser in such wise as rather to suggest a shape than to show one. I could never be sure, even when my physical eyes told me that a form was present, whether my imagination and my desire were not playing tricks with my optical apparatus. Such shapes almost always vanished when I fixed my gaze upon them, and there was no means of saying whether this act, by releasing them from the constraint of my will, had enabled them to escape, or whether intelligent inspection had not simply dissipated an illusion.

With Neuburg, on the contrary, there would be no doubt whatever as to the physical character of the beings which we evoked. On one occasion the god came to us in human form (we were working in a locked temple) and remained with us, perfectly perceptible to all our senses, for the best part of an hour, only vanishing when we were physically exhausted by the ecstasy of intimate contact with his divine person. We sank into a sort of sublime stupor; when we came to ourselves, he was gone.

Again, at Victoria Street, a number of us were dancing round the altar with linked hands and faces turned outwards. The temple was dimly lighted and thick with incense. Somehow the circle broke and we kept on dancing, each for himself. Then we became aware of the presence of a stranger. Some of us counted the men present and found there was one too many. One of the weaker brethren got scared, or one of the stronger brethren remembered his duty to science --- I don't know which --- and switched on the light. No stranger was to be seen. We asked Brother Lucifer --- as I may call him! --- why he had broken the spell and each of us independently confirmed his story. We all agreed about the appearance of the visitor. We had all been impressed with the same feeling that he did not belong to the human species.

I have mentioned two only of a very many experiences of the same kind, choosing those which seem the most convincing and complete. More often we kept the manifestation at a decorous distance. There is, of course, extreme danger in coming into contact with a demon of a malignant or unintelligent nature. It should, however, be said that such demons only exist for imperfectly initiated Magicians. The adept ought to be able to identify himself absolutely with all beings alike. Invocations should always insist on identification. If this be dully done no harm can ensue, just as lightning cannot hurt lightning.

I must confess to pride and pleasure in these performances. I had practically abandoned the attempt to obtain material manifestations. It was difficult to do, dangerous in the doing, and dubious when done. I had learnt to compel a spirit to carry out my commands or instruct me on any matter of which I was ignorant, without being at the pains to demonstrate his presence to my senses, just as I telegraph instructions to my solicitor or write to some scholar for information, in full faith that the results will be as reliable as if I had taken the trouble to arrange a personal interview. I am inclined to think that my work with Neuburg was rather a retrogression. It made me hanker after phenomena, tempted me to distrust the subtler modes of realization.

After he had left me, I felt myself rather lost for a little while, and I had to learn the lesson all over again that the finer forms of manifestation are not less but more actual than the grosser; that the intangible ideas and ineffable intelligences of the most ethereal empires of the empyrean are stronger and more solid the less palpable they are to the lower modes of apprehension. It is hard to explain, and harder to learn, that truth abides in the inmost sanctuary of the soul and may not be told, either by speech or by silence; yet all attempts to interpret it distort it progressively as they adapt themselves to the perceptions of the mind, and become sheer caricatures by the time they are translated into terms of bodily sensation. Now the reality of things depends on their truth, and thus it is that it is not a philosophical paradox but a matter of experience that the search for truth teaches us to distrust appearances exactly in proportion as they are positive. Physical facts betray their hallucinatory nature by their consistent refusal to comply with the requirements of reason, and thought admits its transparent falsity by violating its own laws at every turn.

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 judgment 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 that 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 what 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 then 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 analysed many of these characteristics of super-consciousness and even arranged them in an order corresponding with spiritual development.

I may say that I have toiled for many years to express ideas of this order in terms intelligible to the normal consciousness and susceptible of apprehension by the normal intellect. Success has scarcely been complete; only on rare occasions has the flash fixed itself on the film when the lens was in focus and the exposure correct. I am acutely aware that many of my most arduous and ardent attempts to interpret mystical experience have resulted in blurred images, sometimes perhaps grandiose and suggestive --- but that is no compensation for obscurity and vagueness. May I present one effort which I myself am able to hold more or less clearly in my ordinary consciousness?

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 phenomenon 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 from the Masters.

I had awakened at dawn and meditated a while upon this four-fold formless state. I was merely trying to make out what could possibly be meant by piling contradiction on contradiction as the definition did. I did not understand 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 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 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 an 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 common.

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