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Page 1 of 11909 · PDF PAGE 19
…d returning, like the Cherubim, we may now resume our attempt to drill our hunchback friend into a pre- sentable soldier. The digression will not have been all digression, either; for it will have thrown a deal of light on the question of the limitations of scepticism. We have questioned the Malkuth point of view ; it appears absurd, be it agreed. But the Tiphereth position is unshaken ; Tiphereth needs no telling that Malkuth is absurd. When we turn our artillery against Tiphereth, that too crumbles; but Kether frowns above us. Attack Kether, …
1909 · PDF PAGE 27
… SOLDIER AND THE HUNCHBACK Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son that He receiveth.” I shall really be glad if a few of you will get it over, and come and sit on daddy’s knee! The first step is the hardest; make a start, and I will soon set the hunchback lion and the soldier unicorn fighting for your crown. And they shall lie down together at the end, equally glad, equally weary; while sole and sublime that crown of thine (brother !) shall glitter in the frosty Void of the abyss, its twelve stars filling that silence and solitude w…
1909 · PDF PAGE 25
…t so foolish as to think that my doctrine can ever gain the ear of the world. I expect that ten centuries hence the “nominal Crowleians” will be as pestilent and numerous a body as the “nominal Christians” are to-day; for (at present)I have been able to devise no mechanism for excluding them. Rather, perhaps, should I seek to find them a niche in the shrine, just as Hinduism provides alike for those capable of the Upanishads and those whose intelligence hardly reaches to the Tantras. In short, one must abandon the reality of religion for a sham…
1909 · PDF PAGE 7
…nywhere myself. II A fresh attempt. Let us look into the simplest and most certain of all possible statements. Thought exists, or if you will, Cogitatur. Descartes supposed himself to have touched bed-rock with his Cogito, ergo Sum. Huxley pointed out the complex nature of this proposition, and that it was an enthymeme with the premiss Ommes sunt, gui cogitant suppressed. He reduced it to Cogito, or, to avoid the assumption of an ego, Cogitatur. Examining more closely this statement, we may still cavil at its form. We cannot translate it into E…
1909 · PDF PAGE 8
… but upon the validity of our logic; and if by logic we mean (as we should mean) the Code of the Laws of Thought, the irritating sceptic will have many more remarks to make: for it now appears that the proof that thought exists depends upon the truth of that which is thought, to say no more. We have taken Cogitatur, to try and avoid the use of esse; but 4 is A involves that very idea, and the proof is fatally flawed. Cogitatur depends on £s¢ ; and there’s no avoiding it. Til Shall we get on any better if we investigate this Ast— Something is—Ex…
1909 · PDF PAGE 24
… spinal curvature. Let us take the first step ; let us sing: “1 do not ask to see The distant path ; one step’s enough for me.” But (you will doubtless say) I pith your ? itself with another ?: Why question life at all? Why not remain “a clean-living Irish gentleman” content with his handicap, and contemptuous of card and pencil? Is not the Buddha’s goad “ Everything is sorrow” little better than a currish whine? What do I care for old age, disease, and death? I’m a man, and a Celt at that. I spit on your snivelling Hindu prince, emasculate wit…
1909 · PDF PAGE 21
…E HUNCHBACK But McCabbage is wasted on the philosopher whose belief in a soul rests on introspection ; we must have heavier metal ; Hume will serve our turn, may be. But Hume in his turn becomes perfectly futile, pitted against the Hindu mystic, who is in constant intense enjoy- ment of his new-found Atman. It takes a Buddha-gun to knock 47s castle down. Now the ideas of McCabbage are banal and dull; those of Hume are live and virile; there is ajoy in them greater than the joy of the Man in the Street. So too the Buddha-thought, Anatta, is a mo…
1909 · PDF PAGE 23
…is admittedly good exercise. True, the question, “Why become an Arahat?” should precede, “‘ How become an Arahat ?” but an unbiassed man will easily cancel the first question with “ Why not?”—the How is not so easy to get rid of. Then, from the standpoint of the Arahat himself, perhaps this “Why did I become an Arahat ?” and “ How did I become an Arahat?” have but a single solution! In any case, we are wasting our time—we are as ridiculous with our Arahats as Herod the Tetrarch with his peacocks! We pose Life with the question Why? and the firs…