What is Magic?

Time isn’t a line.  It’s more like a plane, an infinite-ring circus, an eternal NOW moment, in which everything that has ever happened and ever will happen, in all lifetimes and realities, is happening all at once.  But each individual thought form involved thinks that it is a real, separated being with individual self-existence and a personal history and future.  Each of the infinite thought forms which make up “us” – all of the things we have ever experienced or ever will experience; all of the monads of every instant of awareness in all our probable realities from this life and all our past and future lives – thinks that it is the real “us”, centered in a universe in which things make sense.  Each individual thought form (since they are indeed discrete) thinks it’s the top dog (most important).  And from any given thought form we can move to an infinite number of possible futures or remember an infinite number of possible pasts.  And once that decision is made – the decision to move from the standpoint of any given thought form now moment to any other given thought form future moment or remembered past moment – mind will stamp upon that decision the notation:  MAKES SENSE!  (is “real”).  That’s the only reason why things make sense (seem real) to us:  because we are constantly telling ourselves the lie that things make sense.  We tell ourselves the same lie when we are dreaming (that what we are experiencing makes sense, is “real”). 

Admittedly, some probable futures or pasts are more likely than others; it’s more likely that your next thought form will be moving a bit further along reading this sentence rather than suddenly appearing on a Caribbean beach sipping a piňa colada.  That’s the sort of thing that happens in dream consciousness – the jump from thought form to thought form tends to be a lot more haphazard than in waking consciousness.  But it’s nonetheless a random process, shaped by tendencies from human and individual memory, whose only claim to fame is that it makes sense – there’s no doubt about it!   

            Mind is what makes sense out of this selection.  This is easier to see in dream consciousness where even the most bizarre and improbable (from the point of view of wakefulness) thought forms can pop up and yet make perfect sense at the time we are dreaming them.  Similarly, our waking consciousness (experience of everyday life) also only makes sense because we have decided to let it make sense.  That assumption is what traps us in our furrows. 

To lose our sense of linear time implies living moment-to-moment with all of our memories – at least the feeling of them if not the actual thought forms.  Only by recapitulating all of our memories are we in possession of all the memories (feelings) of all our past and probable lives, as well as this one.   At that point we’re not really centered in any given one of them anymore.  The waking state is controllable only as long as it seems familiar and important – i.e., centered in a past and future.  The trick, then, is to be quite comfortable with everything out of control, as it were.  When things are out of control then we are dreaming.  The more out of control we let our daily lives be, the more we are actually dreaming rather than being awake, and the closer we are to our intent – to being able to act on our true feelings rather than our social conditioning.  This is what the practice of magic is all about. 

(adapted from Thought Forms, Copyright © 2000 by Bob Makransky.  All rights reserved).

More of Bob Makransky’s articles are posted at:  www.dearbrutus.com

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            Feeling is spatial;  that is, what we call space is merely the sense of having feelings and what we call time is the sense of having thoughts – hence everyone’s need for their own personal space or right to their own feelings, and their own time to make up their minds.  Physical, three-dimensional space is a symbol for feelings, just as time is a symbol for thoughts; hence space still exists in the dream state, but time doesn’t – at least not in the same sense in which it exists in the waking state.  Our sense of personal continuity in the dream state is not based upon a linear, sequential, unfolding of events, as it is in waking.  Things jump around too much in dreams for us to be able to operate on the assumption of personal continuity such as we make in waking consciousness.  Rather, our sense of selfhood in dreaming is based upon an awareness of self as experiencer (i.e., of death). 

That vibrant, alive quality which characterizes dreaming is actually awareness of death.  In dreams we are aware of death every second, willy-nilly, because there’s nothing solid in dreams to cling to:  there’s no way of toning down the intensity of what we are experiencing.  We’re face-to-face with death every second.  That’s why we feel more alive in dreams than we do in wakefulness – because we are seeing with the eyes of death. 

            The point is that what we call time is a falsehood.  To us moderns space and time are real, and feelings and thoughts are symbols for space and time; but in fact, exactly the reverse is true.  Linear time is an illusion similar to the illusion of motion produced by the series of still pictures which make up a movie.  Babies (and even young children, who sometimes talk about memories from other lifetimes) are not as centered in a one-track existence as adults are.  Babies and young children are consciously impinged upon by influences (feelings) from other lives and probable realities which most adults have learned to ignore.   The same socialization process which props up a baby’s sense of being a unitary, abiding, separated individual also imprisons that individual in a furrow of inexorable linear temporality. 

In other words, the illusion that time is linear – that there is a sensible progression from one moment to the next – is merely an agreement that human beings make.  Just as during courtship people focus entirely on the positive aspects of their relationship and ignore the negative ones; and later when the marriage falls apart all they focus on are the negatives and ignore the positives; in the same way people focus all their moment-to-moment attention on that which seems to be familiar and persistent.  But the truth is that each passing moment is an entirely new ballgame with completely different rules:  nothing persists, and everything is ineffable.  Familiarity is a lie people tell themselves and each other to keep from completely losing their marbles: “Oh no, I’m not completely disoriented here, everything’s just fine and dandy!”  It’s this lie that makes society (waking consciousness) possible.   

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Linear time is the matrix of our separated, lower self.   Self and time arise together and fall together (dissolve into selflessness and timelessness).  Our hunter-gatherer ancestors, like infants, didn’t have anywhere near as much sense of a separated self as we moderns do.  They were not as individuated as we are today.  They paid more attention to their feelings, their intuition, than to their thinking.  Ancient humans lived in a more timeless frame of mind, a sense of belonging to the universe.  Their mental processing wasn’t a matter of constant thinking, but rather of direct knowing what their ancestors, spirits, and the earth were telling them.  They felt themselves to be part of an ongoing, natural process in the same way that we feel ourselves to be part of our society.   Because they were not as separated as we are today, they felt less Angst than we do, because they had no future to worry about.   

If the future didn’t exist, would we care about it?  If we stop thinking so much about the past and future, then the past and future lose much of their meaning.   They are just not as important, so they are not as “there”, just as they aren’t as “there” for infants or ancient humans as they are for us.  Infant and ancient human consciousness isn’t a matter of the constant dissatisfaction and relentless striving which enables modern humans to focus enough attention to think.   

            When humans were still hunters, they did not draw as sharp a distinction between being awake and being asleep as we do today, since they slept in snatches when they felt like it instead of in long stretches during the night.  Similarly, they didn’t draw as sharp a distinction between past and future as we do now because they didn’t need to – they were more centered in the now moment, hence they experienced their past and future in a more immediate fashion than we do today.  They didn’t define themselves as much in terms of personal history (moods) and future aspirations (concerns).

            We say, “I am no longer who I was back then” – separating who we are now from who we were at an earlier age.  We say, “Someday I will be or do such-and-such” – separating who we are now from who we fantasize we will become.  But our hunter-gatherer ancestors didn’t have that much of a sense of separatedness – things that happened to them a long time ago, or that would happen to them some future day (what we would call prescience or sense of destiny), were more a part of who they conceived themselves to be now than they are for us.  They were in closer touch with their intent – the feeling of their past and future; they didn’t have as many thought forms interposing a linear order upon their consciousness, imposing some ponderous past and inexorable future upon their present. 

  It’s precisely us moderns’ caring and worrying about the future that conjures up its existence.  We care about the future, it’s important to us, because we believe there’s glory for us somewhere in our future – that we’re going to win the lottery, or find true love, or become famous, or go to heaven, or some other such malarky.  What impels each of us individuals forward is the mirage of instant relief from our sufferings and release from our bondage – that miraculous change of luck that we imagine is just over the next hill.   

The other side of that coin is our past, the things that we are ashamed of and are trying to forget about (as well as hide from other people).  That striving towards a future and slinking away from a past is what creates the illusion that there is such a thing as a future and a past.  When striving ends, so too does linear time.  This is what we experience in altered states of awareness.  In altered states we just don’t give a damn about the past or future – we’re too centered and joyous in the present.     

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If we’re going to understand this point of view we have to get over our prejudice, which is all it is, about time being linear.  The fact is that time is not linear.  Here’s a way of looking at it:  survivors of near-death experiences often report having seen every single event that ever happened to them during their lives flash by them in no time at all.  Sometimes they report seeing everything that ever happened to them zip by, but still being able to see each scene discretely, in a few seconds’ time.  Others report seeing each individual event of their entire lives in one, complete take.  In any case, it would seem that we experience the thought forms of our lives twice:  once in linear fashion over a lifetime, and then in a timeless fashion at the moment of death.  

This idea that time can be non-linear is easiest to see in dreams.  Dream time is sequential, but not linear in the same sense in which waking time is linear.  Dream time doesn’t have the same cause-and-effect inexorability that waking time has.  This is because there is less focus in dreams, so everything is more here-and-now.  Unlike waking consciousness, in dreaming we are rarely influenced by past or future events.  We don’t define ourselves in terms of personal history and future so much as we do when we’re awake.   Things happen too fast and too intensely in dreams to dwell upon:   everything is just too vivid and too now.   

When we are awake and confronted by a life-threatening situation, e.g. while we are having an automobile accident or during a big earthquake, time slows way down.  We can see everything that is happening with great clarity, in great detail, as if it were unfolding in slow-motion.  This slow-motion perception of time is closer to the truth.  It is more like dream-time perception and less like our normal, everyday, gloss-over-things-quickly-and-superficially-in-a-hurry perception of time.  However, we are incapable of acting in the normal way in this slow-motion perception of time because we can’t think.  If we are going to act or react in this frame of mind, we can only do so on intent, on our gut-level instinct, not on thought.  Therefore the slow-motion perception is not as useful in performing all the humdrum tasks of everyday life as is normal time perception; but it is the more useful form of perception in the practice of magic, where decisions have to be made faster than normal thinking allows.   

When time slows down enough we lose our sense of separated selfhood altogether and move into altered states of consciousness.  Indeed, we can define “altered state” as the feeling of timelessness.   This can happen due to shock, psychedelic drugs, or even spirits.  Some spirits have the power to temporarily erase our importance (self-pity) so that we experience a state of selfless grace.  Enlightenment is such a state – people who are enlightened can move into and out of timelessness and selflessness at will, by focusing their attention one way or the other.  But even enlightened people don’t exist in a state of nirvana all day long.  They have normal lives to lead too, and altered states are not particularly functional in everyday society.  That’s why our normal time sense evolved:  it is more functional for agriculturalists than the NOW time sense of hunting-gathering.   

Altered states can be inspiring, can give us a glimpse of the goal we are shooting for, but they are always temporary. Normal, everyday life is the battleground, the place where the real work has to be done, the place where it all begins and ends.  The goal of magical training is to bring an awareness of timelessness and selflessness (which are the same thing) into the routines of our everyday lives.  We do this by detaching from the hurried me-me-me with its endless fluster of self-pitying moods from the past and concerns for the future.  

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The actual situation is one of complete randomness – of all likely outcomes occurring simultaneously in different probable realities.  And in each probable reality mind clicks out a thought form to justify / explain why this or that particular reality occurred. E.g. there is no “competition for scarce resources” going on; this is just the presenting problem, the superficial appearance of an energy dynamic in which sentient beings appear to be in turmoil, preying upon and devouring one another’s energy.  This is what W.B. Yeats’ termed Deception – the appearance that the acts of creation and destruction are not exactly identical, flip sides of the same coin, like the snake devouring its own tail.  Elephants don’t have long proboscises because this confers an evolutionary advantage.  Rather, they just have them, period.  Any evolutionary advantage this bestows is a post hoc, materialistic interpretation: things are the way they are because that’s how they are, and this explains why they are that way. 

Anyone who discerns any purpose in the outworkings of the universe – whether this purpose is conceived of as the will of God, or survival of the fittest and most prolific reproducers, or the selfishness of genes – is looking at things backwards.  Both Christianity and rationalistic materialism (science) are projecting images which aren’t there.  Like the cabalistic Gematria which finds hidden connections in every biblical name and phrase, or like a paranoid who detects sinister plots against him in every chance occurrence, Christianity and materialism project meaning and purpose onto complete chaos.  There is no purpose to anything except as in retrospect it can be argued that things are the way they are because that is how they were meant to be.   But this is an illusion, the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, which in turn is predicated on the fallacy of linear time. 

This is not to say that there is no causality in the universe:  effects do not arise without a cause.  However that causality is not embedded in linear time, and indeed it is too complex to analyze rationally (though here and there its results can be anticipated or predicted by intuition / feeling, as we do in astrology).   What most of us take to be causality is merely an illusion – mistaking how humans in our society make agreements amongst themselves for laws of the universe; as if golf or the latest Paris fashions were somehow universal principles with application outside of human society.   What we take to be causality is merely post hoc sophistry:  “See, I told you so!”  But it doesn’t prove anything whatsoever. 

For example, we mistakenly believe that first things happen to us, and then we react to them.  E.g., first we get laid off from our job, and then we feel depressed and helpless.  However from the magical point of view, the decision to feel depressed and helpless is primary – is made “first” (on the level of dreamless sleep).  The “getting laid off” thought form is conjured up “later” to justify feelings of importance – that it’s important to feel depressed and helpless.   In astrology we can often see bad times coming up in the future, in the progressions or transits, although it’s not always possible to predict the exact thought form situation which the bad times will take.  The point is that either causality has nothing to do with linear time, or else astrology is a false doctrine.  Q.E.D. 

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The argument in favor of linear time really boils down to the old post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy – that things make sense because they make sense; that there’s a reason why this and not that; that everyday life, our experience of waking reality, is not just a dream – a mere flood of random hypnagogic hallucinations to which we quite arbitrarily (and unskillfully) attribute sequence and causality: “First this happened, then that happened, then the other thing happened; and that’s who I am.  That’s how I define my self as an individual – my sense of being centered in a body, in a world, in a reality.”

In hypnagogic hallucination – the flood of images which pass through our minds as we are dropping off to sleep – we can view the process by which we create our own dream reality; our waking reality is created analogously.   In waking life, as in hypnagogic hallucination, there is no reason why this image or situation is chosen and not that one.  Reasons why things are have to be cobbled together in retrospect, to provide a post hoc justification for why things are the way they are.  Although causes do give rise to effects, and these effects are even predictable at times, there is in truth no reason why this and not that.  In other probable realities it came out that and not this. 

While brain research being carried out in neuroscience will undoubtedly lead to many useful discoveries, it has nothing to do with the study of consciousness.  The so-called physical brain, like the physical body it inhabits, is merely a projection of the mind, exactly in the same fashion that the dreaming body is a projection of the mind.   The only difference is that the waking body and brain are persistent enough for us to dissect.  If we could make dreaming hold still long enough to examine minutely we would find that our dream bodies and brain were made out of molecules and cells and neurons and whatnot too.  Or whatever.  None of this actually exists, it’s all just an arbitrary hypnagogic hallucination.   

In the magical model moment-to-moment decisions are not made by mind, much less by a physical brain; they are merely reflected in mind.  Mind conjures up reasons after the fact to justify the decisions that have already been made on a level of feeling (dreamless sleep).  In the magical view decisions are made “first”, and then circumstances arise “later” which reflect those decisions.   

That is to say, mind – and the so-called physical brain – are like the scoreboard at an athletic contest.  The scoreboard reflects what is happening on the field, but it doesn’t create it.  Similarly, mind and the brain reflect decisions that are being made on a feeling level, but they certainly don’t create anything.  They don’t even apprehend anything.  They just keep count, keep score, keep tabs on what is really going on.  A body – whether in dreaming or waking – is merely a counter:  first this happens to it, then that happens to it, then the other happens to it, then it dies.   

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Space and time are merely tools – techniques for organizing cognition – which evolved as sentient beings evolved.  Just as the sense of vision is a cognitive tool which evolved as animals evolved; and visual acuity is more pronounced in predatory animals such as eagles than it is in e.g. blind cave fish; so too are the sense of space and time cognitive tools which are sharper (more highly evolved) for humans than for “lower” animals.  The belief that they are centered in space and time enables beings to focus attention upon one thing at a time instead of everything at once.   What time really is, is not how we perceive it to be in our normal, everyday consciousness.  Although human perception and cognition make sense to humans, the universe itself doesn’t make sense in the way that humans believe.  There is no space or time out there. 

        Where materialistic science sees time as linear, magic sees time as rhythmic.  Materialistic science measures points and intervals along a well-ordered continuum, whereas magical science measures cycles upon cycles.  This is what astrology is all about:  the moment of birth can be viewed as a point along a linear continuum, as it is in materialistic science; or, conversely, it can be viewed as a stage in the unfoldment of potentialities on various levels – i.e. as the intersection of many different interpenetrating cycles, as it is in astrology.    It is more accurate to describe time as an emanation of birth – death – rebirth.  The so-called real number system has no model in nature:  the universe is not continuous, but rather explodes into being and dissolves into nothingness with every passing instant of “time”.    What we take to be linear time is but a fragmentary way of apprehending and dealing with this phenomenon, which has evolved in tandem with human consciousness.    

            While animals are vaguely aware of the passage of time – i.e. while animals also organize their cognition temporally – animal consciousness is far less focused than human consciousness.  Animals have far less sense of being separated individuals than humans have – they have less awareness of a separated self, are less “there” than humans feel themselves to be; and as a result their experience of time is less “there” as well.   We humans – especially we modern humans, are in a big hurry.  Being in a big hurry is how we define ourselves.  “We” are something that is in a big hurry; being in a big hurry is what “we” are made out of.   Linear time is a completely human invention, like golf or the latest Paris fashions – a set of rules which have no reference to anything outside of human experience.   Linear time is predicated on linear thinking.  When linear thinking stops – when the constant internal dialogue which most people engage in from the minute they awaken to the minute they go to sleep ceases – then so too does linear time. 

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             “At one time I waded through the river and at one time crossed the mountain.  You may think that that mountain and that river are things of the past, that I have left them behind and am now living in this palatial building – they are as separate from me as heaven is from earth.           

“However, the truth has another side.  When I climbed the mountain and crossed the river, I was time.  ….  I have always been; time cannot leave me.  When time is not regarded as a phenomenon which ebbs and flows, the time I climbed the mountain is the present moment of being-time.  When time is not thought of as coming and going, this moment is absolute time for me.  …

            “Do not regard time as merely flying away; do not think that flying away is its sole function.  For time to fly away there would have to be a separation between it and things.  Because you imagine that time only passes, you do not learn the truth of being-time.  In a word, every being in the entire world is a separate time in one continuum.  And since being is time, I am my being-time.  Time has the quality of passing, so to speak, from today to tomorrow, from today to yesterday, from yesterday to today, from today to today, from tomorrow to tomorrow.  Because this passing is a characteristic of time, present time and past time do not overlap or impinge upon one another.”                             

                                                                           -   Dogen-zenji 

“The shamans of ancient Mexico never regarded time and space as obscure abstracts the way we do. For them, both time and space, although incomprehensible in their formulations, were an integral part of man.“Those shamans had another cognitive unit called the wheel of time. The way they explained the wheel of time was to say that time was like a tunnel of infinite length and width, a tunnel with reflective furrows. Every furrow was infinite, and there were infinite numbers of them. Living creatures were compulsorily made, by the force of life, to gaze into one furrow. To gaze into one furrow alone meant to be trapped by it, to live that furrow.

“A warrior’s final aim is to focus, through an act of profound discipline, his unwavering attention on the wheel of time in order to make it turn. Warriors who have succeeded in turning the wheel of time can gaze into any furrow and draw from it whatever they desire. To be free from the spellbinding force of gazing into only one of those furrows means that warriors can look in either direction: as time retreats or as it advances on them.”  

                        –  Carlos Castaneda, The Wheel of Time

Contrary to popular belief, space and time have no objective existence.  Therefore, to base our science and philosophy – not to mention our everyday lives – upon the assumption of  reified space and time is about as absurd as basing them on the existence of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.  Indeed, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are considerably more real in the cosmic scheme of things than what we call “space” and “time”. 

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To enter a state of timelessness we have to make an effort to slow ourselves down on all fronts in our daily lives, to release the obsessive fixation of the concerns of everyday society.  When we activate our higher Faculties, we feel that our daily lives are more or less okay as they are and that they unfolding as they should at this particular moment.  And there’s nothing we can do about it anyway.  That’s the phony assurance which society gives us – that we have some sort of control.  When we are in-phase, we feel that we can handle the things that happen to us without pother; that life does indeed have a purpose because we can feel that purpose from moment-to-moment.   In other words, we can easily recognize when we are following our true life’s purpose by how we deal with our everyday lives and relationships.   If there’s any sort of problem, then we are 100% in the wrong (we are acting on a level of Will rather than from the point of view of the higher Faculties).   

What we call time is actually not a linear process at all, but rather an interplay between these four levels of memory.  Giving one or another level precedence, or importance, is what we call the movement of time; but it has nothing to do with sequence, as we suppose.  Rather, it has to do with seek – once.  As long as something is being sought, as long as there is striving, then there will be a movement of attention which we perceive as time.  When striving ceases, so too does time. 

Without this continual Discord through Deception there would be no conscience, no activity; Deception is a technical term of my teachers and may be substituted for “desire”.  – A Vision

By “Deception” is meant striving.  Striving is not striving after something; desire is not desire for something.  Rather they are movements, motions, for their own sake.  The putative objects of striving or desire are but thought forms tacked on “later”, as a way of remembering them.  It isn’t really the objects of desire which are sought but rather the hunger, the state of desire itself.   The objects of desire – thought forms – don’t have any objective existence.  This is what is meant by “reality is but a symbol” or “waking consciousness is but a more highly evolved form of dreaming”; and this is the Deception.

Will is the thought form material readily at hand.  Body of Fate is all the could be’s and could have beens.  Mask is all the dreams and hopes.  Creative Mind is all the ideals and spiritual possibilities available to humans.  And in any given moment all four of these levels are interacting, manifesting, driving a person forward through time.  Who “we” are is a conjunction of tendencies (memories, habits) in a moment of time; that is to say, an ongoing process.  And that’s what time is:  a conjunction of memories bearing upon a specific individual.   

However, human life is part and parcel of thought forms, and thus this distinction of four types of thought forms, which correspond to four types of memories, is a useful way of categorizing the strivings of different people.  It is striving which keeps the wheel of life and death turning; when striving ceases, human life ends (and divine life begins).  The point is that struggle is what keeps life going, and when struggle ceases, so does all distinction between e.g. this lifetime and some other, or this person and that one.  All struggle is a struggle towards separatedness: when struggle ceases, so too does separatedness – i.e. individual consciousness.  This is what the 28 phases of the moon show:  the cycle of development of the emergence, the growth, and the surrender of separatedness. 

The point is that all these different types of memory interact on each other.  Mask is a person’s individual ideals, talents, etc.  All that he or she is capable of from all possible lifetimes – all the peaks and valleys, not just exalted moments but also moments of greatest depravity, suffering, etc.  Creative Mind is what some have called Collective Unconscious – all the racial memories we share as humans, our common sense, which we can each draw upon by virtue of our being human.  Body of Fate is probable realities, and Will is this particular personal history.  All four of these types of memory bear upon the present moment and help create it.   

(adapted from The Great Wheel, Copyright © 2007 by Bob Makransky.  All rights reserved).

More of Bob Makransky’s articles are posted at:  www.dearbrutus.com  

Subscribe to Bob Makransky’s free monthly ezine at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MagicalAlmanac

Nor are there really three levels of quotidian consciousness; it can’t be divided up as neatly as we are accustomed to thinking.  We are accustomed to believing that there is a big difference between waking and dreaming, but from a light fiber point of view – i.e. seen from the point of view of the feelings involved – we are only really awake when we are thinking.  If we are not thinking, we are actually dreaming, whether our bodies are nominally awake or not.   The point is that there are no hard and fast division lines between waking, dreaming, and dreamless sleep:  they shade into one another.  It’s merely our prejudice that seems to keep them distinct – our prejudice to believe that what we experience when we are awake is real and what we experience when we are dreaming is unreal.  As we are able to activate our higher Faculties in our quotidian lives more and more – which means feeling the underlying feelings of everyday life instead of reacting to the thought form events (as society has taught us to do) – then our daily lives become more dreamlike and unreal.  The belief that there is such a thing as an outside reality is what’s unreal – it’s a distortion or obfuscation of the feelings which are actually going on (are calling up that reality).      

What separates the Four Faculties is forgetfulness or disconnectedness.  Forgetfulness (and with it, focus) increases as the descent is made down the cone from its base to its apex, from Creative Mind to Will:Will forgets everything but this immediate line of memory;Body of Fate forgets everything but this particular incarnation;Mask forgets everything but the individual self. 

Just as the division between waking, dreaming, and dreamless sleep is not as distinct as we usually imagine, neither is the division between the Faculties as hard and fast as shown above.   For example, the difference between probable realities in this lifetime (BF) and other lifetimes (Mask) is not as distinct as we think.  Master magicians lose their sense of separation between this lifetime (Will), other probable realities (BF), other lifetimes (Mask), and other people (CM).  This is because they can feel the light fibers directly (the light fibers to which these particular thought forms are attached).  They can feel those feelings directly, so they don’t get hung up in the individual thought forms by reacting to them with their lower selves – by taking personally the things that happen to them rather than just accepting them detachedly.  Grabbing onto a particular thought form is what keeps us centered in a particular moment of time. 

Mind and time arise together.  This is a symbolic view of what our waking consciousness does:  it imposes a flow of linear temporality on ineffable feeling in order to make some sort of sense out of it – to make it seem real; just as dream consciousness imposes an orientation in space on unbounded chaos in order to make it seem familiar.   But things making sense (importance) or seeming familiar are not innate parts of the universe – they’re a blip.  Things don’t make sense; and nothing is ever the same.  Things making sense or seeming familiar – reified as time and space – are a matter of Will alone.  So, if we are going to utilize our three higher Faculties, we have to come to a point in our daily lives in which we don’t care so much about whether or not things make sense – whether or not there is any rhyme or reason for anything.  We have to feel comfortable feeling disoriented – not worry so much whether things are under control or not.  We have to let go and relax.  Master magicians feel that they are totally disoriented every second; that they are in the midst of a maelstrom which is swirling them about in complete chaos.  They’ve just become accustomed to this feeling, so they don’t wet their pants about it like most of us would. 

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