On Spiritual Bondage
Assume for the moment the existence of individualized noncorporeal entities - call them spirits, or demons, or stable patterns in the greater mind, or aeons, or what have you. The essence of the idea is they have identity and volition but no physical form, and they're not just a construct of a person's vivid imagination.
The odd piece of information I found sitting in my head when I woke up this morning is this: It's really, really difficult to have any effect on the material world without a physical body. It may be possible to cause the equivalent of little ripples in a still pond, but anyone with a body is tossing two ton boulders into that same pond. This is why Secret Masters haven't mysteriously morphed the world into a New Shambhalla, why the Eon Jesus needed a necromancer to start the Church of the Paraclete, and why people aren't spontaneously dying of putrified wounds from wandering goetic demons.
For similar reasons, it's also passably difficult to influence people's minds from a noncorporeal state. Again, you can get some subtle effects and generally prod people in certain mental directions, but there's a big difference between making someone a bit edgy and "Careful with that Axe, Eugene." Part of this, again, is because physical things affect the mind much more easily than nonphysical things. Disembodied entities may be whispering in your ear, but the guy next to you on the bus is screaming in your face. This is why K & C of the HGA is a lot of hard work, Abramelin takes six months, and people everywhere aren't spontaneously enlightened every other day.
Thus we find magic, religion, meditation, mysticism, the hundred paths that attempt to either (yin) minimize the influence of the physical so the subtle messages can come through more clearly, or (yang) shape the physical/mental environment to better reinforce the messenger and/or the messages that it transmits. Minimize the noise, or boost the signal. Historically, both of these approaches achieve some measure of success, particularly when used conjunctively.
A question arises, though: Why do we bother? If these disembodied entities have little to no power in shaping the world directly, and can only strongly influence those people who make a special effort to reach them, they make poor executors of our will.
We, however, make excellent executors of their will.
It would seem then that the most likely, if not the only likely, outcome of what I'll call "trafficking with the spirit world" is physical, mental, and/or spiritual change in the corporeal person such that they become more aligned with the noncorporeal entity - in effect, they become an agent of that entity's will to a greater or lesser degree. An avatar, if you think of it in the positive sense; a slave, in the negative sense; an agent in a more neutral sense.
Historically, this seems to be precisely what happens. Crowley establishes contact with Aiwass and, despite his initial negative reaction to the material received, effectively becomes the agent of Aiwass and spends the rest of his life promoting that material. Joseph Smith talks to an angel and founds a church. Jules Doinel talks to an aeon and some discarnate bishops and founds a different church. Kenneth Grant... well, read his books. Channelers from Jane Roberts to Elizabeth Claire Prophet, hundreds of contactees with messages from the Space Brothers, those who speak with the tongues of angels and those possessed by demons, the pattern continues - the incarnate being becomes the mouthpiece and primary actor of the discarnate being; often, it seems, to the exclusion of whatever the incarnate being had been doing previously.
While that sounds rather severe, it's worth pointing out that this may not necessarily be a bad thing. Great works of art have been created through the inspirational touches of muses and angels. Many channeled works contain valuable insights regarding humanity and the world in which we live. It has even been argued that many of the negative traits of "demons" are important human attributes that a controlling hierarchical society has attempted to eliminate as subversive, and that by working with these "demons" we reclaim the full scope of our human heritage.
At the same time, it's worth pointing out that many channeled works appear to be quite the opposite, nothing other than self-serving bids for personal power (the "self" in this case being the noncorporeal entity in some cases and the corporeal entity in others) which encourage the complete surrender of individual freedoms.
Identifying where on this wide spectrum any specific entity's purpose or message may fall becomes an important task if we value the liberty of the individual. How to do so is beyond the scope of this essay.
If these observations are valid, two important guidelines may be extrapolated if we wish to avoid spiritual bondage:
The odd piece of information I found sitting in my head when I woke up this morning is this: It's really, really difficult to have any effect on the material world without a physical body. It may be possible to cause the equivalent of little ripples in a still pond, but anyone with a body is tossing two ton boulders into that same pond. This is why Secret Masters haven't mysteriously morphed the world into a New Shambhalla, why the Eon Jesus needed a necromancer to start the Church of the Paraclete, and why people aren't spontaneously dying of putrified wounds from wandering goetic demons.
For similar reasons, it's also passably difficult to influence people's minds from a noncorporeal state. Again, you can get some subtle effects and generally prod people in certain mental directions, but there's a big difference between making someone a bit edgy and "Careful with that Axe, Eugene." Part of this, again, is because physical things affect the mind much more easily than nonphysical things. Disembodied entities may be whispering in your ear, but the guy next to you on the bus is screaming in your face. This is why K & C of the HGA is a lot of hard work, Abramelin takes six months, and people everywhere aren't spontaneously enlightened every other day.
Thus we find magic, religion, meditation, mysticism, the hundred paths that attempt to either (yin) minimize the influence of the physical so the subtle messages can come through more clearly, or (yang) shape the physical/mental environment to better reinforce the messenger and/or the messages that it transmits. Minimize the noise, or boost the signal. Historically, both of these approaches achieve some measure of success, particularly when used conjunctively.
A question arises, though: Why do we bother? If these disembodied entities have little to no power in shaping the world directly, and can only strongly influence those people who make a special effort to reach them, they make poor executors of our will.
We, however, make excellent executors of their will.
It would seem then that the most likely, if not the only likely, outcome of what I'll call "trafficking with the spirit world" is physical, mental, and/or spiritual change in the corporeal person such that they become more aligned with the noncorporeal entity - in effect, they become an agent of that entity's will to a greater or lesser degree. An avatar, if you think of it in the positive sense; a slave, in the negative sense; an agent in a more neutral sense.
Historically, this seems to be precisely what happens. Crowley establishes contact with Aiwass and, despite his initial negative reaction to the material received, effectively becomes the agent of Aiwass and spends the rest of his life promoting that material. Joseph Smith talks to an angel and founds a church. Jules Doinel talks to an aeon and some discarnate bishops and founds a different church. Kenneth Grant... well, read his books. Channelers from Jane Roberts to Elizabeth Claire Prophet, hundreds of contactees with messages from the Space Brothers, those who speak with the tongues of angels and those possessed by demons, the pattern continues - the incarnate being becomes the mouthpiece and primary actor of the discarnate being; often, it seems, to the exclusion of whatever the incarnate being had been doing previously.
While that sounds rather severe, it's worth pointing out that this may not necessarily be a bad thing. Great works of art have been created through the inspirational touches of muses and angels. Many channeled works contain valuable insights regarding humanity and the world in which we live. It has even been argued that many of the negative traits of "demons" are important human attributes that a controlling hierarchical society has attempted to eliminate as subversive, and that by working with these "demons" we reclaim the full scope of our human heritage.
At the same time, it's worth pointing out that many channeled works appear to be quite the opposite, nothing other than self-serving bids for personal power (the "self" in this case being the noncorporeal entity in some cases and the corporeal entity in others) which encourage the complete surrender of individual freedoms.
Identifying where on this wide spectrum any specific entity's purpose or message may fall becomes an important task if we value the liberty of the individual. How to do so is beyond the scope of this essay.
If these observations are valid, two important guidelines may be extrapolated if we wish to avoid spiritual bondage:
- Invoke only that which you wish to become.
- Banish often.