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contradictory against what we have been talking about.
If you concentrate your attention upon one portion of the body with the idea of investigating it, that
is, I suppose, allowing the mind to move within very small limits, the whole of your consciousness
becomes concentrated in that small part. I used to practise this a good deal in my retirement by
Lake Pasquaney. I would usually take a finger or a toe, and identify my whole consciousness with
the small movements which I allowed it to make. It would be futile to go into much detail about
this experience. I can only say that until you acquire the power you have no idea of the sheer
wonder and delight of that endlessly quivering orgasm.
If I remember rightly, this practice and its result were one of the principal factors which enabled
me afterwards to attain what is called the Trance of Wonder, which pertains to the Grade of a
Master of the Temple, and is a sort of complete understanding of the organism of the universe, and
an ecstatic adoration of its marvel.
This Trance is very much higher than the Beatific Vision, for always in the latter it is the heart --
the phren -- which is involved; in the former it is the nous, the divine intelligence of man, whereas
the heart is only the centre of the intellectual and moral faculties.
But, so long as you are occupying yourself with the physical, your results will only be on that
plane; and the principal effect of these concentrations on small parts of the body is the
understanding, or rather the appreciation, of sensuous pleasure. This, however, is infinitely
refined, exquisitely intense. It is often possible to acquire a technique by which the skilled artist
can produce this pleasure in another person. Map out, say, three square inches of skin anywhere,
and it is possible by extreme gentle touches to excite in the patient all the possible sensations of
pleasure of which that person is capable. I know that this is a very extraordinary claim, but it is a
very easy one to substantiate. The only thing I am afraid of is that experts may be carried away by
the rewards, instead of getting the real value of the lesson, which is that the gross pleasures of the
senses are absolutely worthless.
This practice, so far as it is useful to all, should be regarded as the first step towards emancipation
from the thrall of the bodily desires, of the sensations self-destructive, of the thirst for pleasure.
Page 48 of 57
Crowley, Aleister. Eight Lectures on Yoga.
London: Ordo Templi Orientis, 1939
I think this is a good opportunity to make a little digression in favour of maha-satipatthana. This
practice was recommended by the Buddha in very special terms, and it is the only one of which he
speaks so highly. He told his disciples that if they only stuck to it, sooner or later they would
reach full attainment. The practice consists of an analysis of the universe in terms of
consciousness. You begin by taking some very simple and regular bodily exercise, such a the
movement of the body in walking, or the movements of the lungs in breathing. You keep on noting
what happens: 'I am breathing out; I am breathing in; I am holding my breath'. as the case may be.
Quite without warning, one is appalled by the shock of the discovery that what you have been
thinking is not true. You have no right to say: 'I am breathing in'. All that you really know is that
there is a breathing in.
You therefore change your note, and you say: 'There is a breathing in; there is a breathing out', and
so on. And very soon, if you practise assiduously, you get another shock. You have no right to say
that there is a breathing. All you know is that there is a sensation of that kind. Again you change
your conception of your observation, and one day make the discovery that the sensation has
disappeared. All you know is that there is perception of a sensation of breathing in or breathing
out. Continue, and that is once more discovered to be an illusion. What you find is that there is a
tendency to perceive a sensation of the natural phenomena.
The former stages are easy to assimilate intellectually; one assents to them immediately that one
discovers them, but with regard to the 'tendency', this is not the case, at least it was not so for my
own part. It took me a long while before I understood what was meant by 'tendency'. To help you
to realize this I should like to find a good illustration. For instance, a clock does nothing at all but
offer indications of the time. It is so constructed that this is all we can know about it. We can
argue about whether the time is correct, and that means nothing at all, unless, for example, we
know whether the clock is controlled electrically from an astronomical station where the
astronomer happens to be sane, and in what part of the world the clock is, and so on.
I remember once when I was in Teng-Yueh, just inside the Chinese frontier in Yunnan. The hour
of noon was always telegraphed to the Consulate from Beijing. This was a splendid idea, because
electricity is practically instantaneous. The unfortunate thing was, if it was unfortunate, which I
doubt, that the messages had to be relayed at a place called Yung Chang. The operators there had
the good sense to smoke opium most of the time, so occasionally a batch of telegrams would
arrive, a dozen or so in a bunch, stating that it was noon at Beijing on various dates! So all the
gross phenomena, all these sensations and perceptions, are illusion. All that one could really say
was that there was a tendency on the part of some lunatic in Beijing to tell the people at Teng-Yueh
what o'clock it was.
But even this Fourth skandha is not final. With practice, it also appears as an illusion, and one
remains with nothing but the bare consciousness of the existence of such a tendency.
I cannot tell you very much about this, because I have not worked it out very thoroughly myself, but
I very much doubt whether 'consciousness' has any meaning at all, as a translation of the word
Page 49 of 57
Crowley, Aleister. Eight Lectures on Yoga.
London: Ordo Templi Orientis, 1939
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