Guidance

['Amir Alzzalam]

Is there speculation on their origin?

If a belief in 'objective reality' is irrational or illogical, what affirms 'subjective reality' and preserves it from delusion?

Just trying to understand ...

Thank you for this opportunity to explain more of the LHP.
In my statement I implied that many belief systems already do allude to a Higher (Greater) Self. I'm not sure how far back this idea goes, and I should look into that, but it is part of both Right 'and' Left Hand Paths throughout history and philosophy.

Most pertinent of these systems is Eastern Hinduism and the Shaivite Jivatman, the Islamic Sufi Iblīs or Melek Taus, the Christian Holy Ghost, and obviously many LHP philosophies to name off the top of my head.

Reality is what we perceive to be real, there is no underlying true reality that exists independently of perception. The only way we are capable of knowing reality is through the mediation of our consciousness - that is, subjectively. We experience our own consciousness directly, but we cannot directly experience the consciousness of someone else. We can only infer their consciousness from their behaviors. Conceptual thought begins from the pure, unsupported apprehension of one’s conscious self as an existential reality: the ba of ancient Egypt, the psyche of the Greeks, the Golden Flower of the Tao.

Plato developed a two-layer view of reality, the World of Becoming and the World of Being. The World of Becoming is the physical world we perceive through our senses. This world is always in movement, always changing. The World of Being is the world of forms, or ideas, the Platonic First Forms, and the Egyptian Neteru. It is absolute, independent, and transcendent. The World of Being never changes and yet causes the essential nature of things we perceive in the world of Becoming.

Perception of objective reality is different for each individual and the true reality is not what we see with naked eyes. Standing in front of a tree, you and I can see different things. And we don’t even know what is real and what is not — our conscious and unconscious mind present a version of reality to us. Neuroscientist Anil Seth said that reality is a controlled hallucination (our mind puts the information that we receive from outside in the frame of our inner knowledge to form a picture of reality.)

"The imagination is not a State: it is the Human existence itself."
"Everything that is possible to be believed is an image of the truth"
- William Blake
​

Nowhere is this philosophy more important than in the Sinister Path of the Iblīs Šayṭānism, my personal Path. In pre-Islamic Arabia
Iblīs is synonymous with one’s Imagination, Iblīs Šayṭān represents the Path of the Heretic, rebelling against the objective universe (natural order) in order to discover our independence from it. Iblīs Šayṭān offers us to eat of the fruit from any tree free from persecution. We say "La Alih Ana Al Lah لا اله انا الله" (There is no God I Am God).

 

[Ella S.]

It's unfortunate that you think so. There have been many logical, rational people who deeply thought out their faith. I wouldn't consider Aquinas, Isaac Newton, or Kierkegaard deluded people (all of whom believed in God, albeit expressed differently). I have to say I'm surprised to hear such a low view of religious people expressed on an interfaith forum, but I don't want to derail this thread.

I highly agree with this.

I greatly dislike when somebody portrays those they disagree with as "illogical" simply because they came to different conclusions. That's not necessarily illogical.

The limitation of logic is that we need premises to plug into the formal structure. In the modern age, most of these premises come in the form direct observations, well-supported hypotheses, or previous conclusions arrived at through logical inference.

In other words, even if our logic is perfectly free of fallacy (not too hard) and bias (very difficult) then our logic is only ever as good as the information that we have available to us. Naturally, we will frequently come to incorrect conclusions if we are ignorant or misinformed, more or less through no fault of our own.

So we can have disagreements and still both arrive at our conclusions logically.

That said, I do think Isaac Newton and Kierkegaard are good counter-examples here but I'm not so sure Aquinas is a good choice. I might make some threads on Aquinas in the future to show what I mean and maybe I'll be shown to be mistaken.

ETA: Another pet peeve of mine is when people use "faith" as evidence rather than evidence leading them to their faith

 

[Thomas]

Thank you for this opportunity to explain more of the LHP.

Thanks for taking the time to answer.

It's certainly interesting, but I suppose my main point was you seem to regard RHP as delusions, and yet I see nothing in the LHP that preserves or protects against delusion, so I wondered quite how that outspoken assertion is justified.

Reality is what we perceive to be real, there is no underlying true reality that exists independently of perception.

There was a fab little documentary about Van Gogh – in one scene he and his friend Paul Gauguin are sitting side by side in the country, painting landscapes. Van Gogh is struggling to paint what is there, he glances across and Gauguin's landscape is dotted with beautiful, semi-naked ladies. There is a huge argument. Van Gogh sweeps the horizon with a furious arm. "They're not there!" Gauguin jumps to his feet, knocking everything over, "But they're in here!" he roars, stabbing his temple with a paint-stained finger.

A tree unseen in the forest is nevertheless there. The world exists outside of ourselves – what we make of it is, of course, another matter, but our fallibilities of perception do not undermine the existence of what is, just the comprehension of it.

We experience our own consciousness directly ...

OK, but that is the same in both paths, surely?

Standing in front of a tree, you and I can see different things. And we don’t even know what is real and what is not — our conscious and unconscious mind present a version of reality to us.

I'd say we see the same thing, we perceive them differently.

I could describe a tree in a forest, you could find your way to it.

Iblīs Šayṭān represents the Path of the Heretic, rebelling against the objective universe (natural order) in order to discover our independence from it.

I don't see how – or why – that renders the Path as 'heretical' – or the person who walks it 'a rebel'?

Discernment between the real and the illusory is fundamental, before 'paths'.

 

['Amir Alzzalam]

It's certainly interesting, but I suppose my main point was you seem to regard RHP as delusions, and yet I see nothing in the LHP that preserves or protects against delusion, so I wondered quite how that outspoken assertion is justified.

Perennial philosophy is the understanding that all the world's 'RHP' religions share a single, universal doctrine. This doctrine posits that the highest good that human life can achieve is through the union with a Supreme Being/Energy of the Universe/Universal Reality. The way in which this is achieved is through the deception of one's conscious awareness into believing that one has been accepted by this Supreme Being/Universal Reality.

A tree unseen in the forest is nevertheless there. The world exists outside of ourselves – what we make of it is, of course, another matter, but our fallibilities of perception do not undermine the existence of what is, just the comprehension of it.
OK, but that is the same in both paths, surely?
I'd say we see the same thing, we perceive them differently.
I could describe a tree in a forest, you could find your way to it.

We can only assume there is some sort of absolute reality, simply because we have no way of knowing if there is or isn't due to our limited perception.

I've often pondered the idea that perhaps the red you see is the blue I see, there is no way for me to know what you associate the word red with, and you have no way of knowing what I associate red with. We experience our own conscious awareness, but we can never experience someone else's. However, certain principles do seem to be absolutes, such as mathematics. It's hard to argue that 2+2 doesn't equal 4

I don't see how – or why – that renders the Path as 'heretical' – or the person who walks it 'a rebel'?
Discernment between the real and the illusory is fundamental, before 'paths'.

The Path of the Heretic involves spiritual courage to identify with the cultural norms of evil or impurity. By embracing the symbols of what conventional society loathes and fears the Heretic is set apart from the common man and becomes an 'outsider' enabling the kind of inner independence needed to do one's Great Work. The laws of the objective universe are sought to be broken and a 'higher law' of reality is discovered.

The Path of the Heretic is found in two socio-cultural practices, antinomianism and heterodoxy.
Antinomianism leads to spiritual liberation, the Path of the Heretic is that of non-union, it is separation and division. The true meaning of occult (that which is hidden) is revealed through defining the spirit through experiencing the flesh. The merging of consciousness through Oneness / Absolution with an external deity or any other objective metaphor is not the Western Left Hand Path.

Symbolically, this resistance to perennialism mentioned earlier is the basis of such occult structures as the Qliphothic Tree of Daath (Jewish Mysticism) and its ideals behind furthering the Fall of the Tree of Life because it is an imperfect Tree and in its place, a new and perfected Tree (that of your subjective universe with you as god) is nurtured. It is also found in select Eastern practices such as Vamachara, Tantra, and Shaivism.

Heterodoxy is the practice implemented by the Eastern Left Hand Path. Adherents of heterodoxy practices step back and away from any laws, rules which govern them in order to question themselves and these laws and the way they are imposed. If changes are to
take place the adherent must transcend the state of being bound by these laws. They now interact within those laws in new ways.

“It's not the same because the West approaches self-deification differently than in the East. The East works through heterodoxy means and is reliant on cultural norms to go against / the West seeks subjective norms of Antinomy, the East is reliant on the idea of deity / the West scoffs at the idea of deity and places one's isolate consciousness at the throne.”
_____________________________
'Lords of the Left Hand Path'
by Dr. Stephen Flowers

 

[Cino]

The Path of the Heretic is found in two socio-cultural practices, antinomianism and heterodoxy.
Antinomianism leads to spiritual liberation, the Path of the Heretic is that of non-union, it is separation and division. The true meaning of occult (that which is hidden) is revealed through defining the spirit through experiencing the flesh. The merging of consciousness through Oneness / Absolution with an external deity or any other objective metaphor is not the Western Left Hand Path.

Symbolically, this resistance to perennialism mentioned earlier is the basis of such occult structures as the Qliphothic Tree of Daath (Jewish Mysticism) and its ideals behind furthering the Fall of the Tree of Life because it is an imperfect Tree and in its place, a new and perfected Tree (that of your subjective universe with you as god) is nurtured. It is also found in select Eastern practices such as Vamachara, Tantra, and Shaivism.

Heterodoxy is the practice implemented by the Eastern Left Hand Path. Adherents of heterodoxy practices step back and away from any laws, rules which govern them in order to question themselves and these laws and the way they are imposed. If changes are to
take place the adherent must transcend the state of being bound by these laws. They now interact within those laws in new ways.

Where would you place someone like Al-Hallaj (Mansour Hallaj)? By proclaiming "I am the Truth", did go left or right? If left, was he antinomian or heterodox? He was a political trouble-maker - antinomian? -, and that got him executed, I believe, but his beliefs were also way out there wrt the norm of his time.

Edited to add: come to think of it, what about the Jesus of the Gospels? Or the Buddha? The latter also dropped out of his society and associated with people way below his class, transgressing all kinds of social norms in the act.

Is there some kind of conveyor belt transporting such possibly Left-Hand figures right back into the Right-Hand path, by making them founding figures of RHP faiths?

 

[Thomas]

Perennial philosophy is the understanding that all the world's 'RHP' religions share a single, universal doctrine.

We-e-e-ll, yes and no. There is a single source, but not a single doctrine. There are numerous doctrines, the Traditions, but one cannot state the 'single, universal doctrine' other than statements such as 'discernment between the real and the unreal' which is common to all Traditional doctrines.

This doctrine posits that the highest good that human life can achieve is through the union with a Supreme Being/Energy of the Universe/Universal Reality.

Again, a generalism which can lead to erroneous assumptions.

The way in which this is achieved is through the deception of one's conscious awareness into believing that one has been accepted by this Supreme Being/Universal Reality.

Well that's open to discussion. I happen to disagree.

We can only assume there is some sort of absolute reality, simply because we have no way of knowing if there is or isn't due to our limited perception.

A critique of the LHP as much as the RHP.

I've often pondered the idea that perhaps the red you see is the blue I see, there is no way for me to know what you associate the word red with, and you have no way of knowing what I associate red with.

And yet everyone says blood is red, sky is blue, trees are green, etc.?

We experience our own conscious awareness, but we can never experience someone else's. However, certain principles do seem to be absolutes, such as mathematics. It's hard to argue that 2+2 doesn't equal 4

Quite. We can share.

The Path of the Heretic involves spiritual courage to identify with the cultural norms of evil or impurity. By embracing the symbols of what conventional society loathes and fears the Heretic is set apart from the common man and becomes an 'outsider' enabling the kind of inner independence needed to do one's Great Work.

I don't see why. To me it's all about discernment and detachment, not attachment to this or that.

The laws of the objective universe are sought to be broken and a 'higher law' of reality is discovered.

But you're not breaking objective laws, you're engaging in cultural taboos.

 

['Amir Alzzalam]

Where would you place someone like Al-Hallaj (Mansour Hallaj)? By proclaiming "I am the Truth", did go left or right? If left, was he antinomian or heterodox? He was a political trouble-maker - antinomian? -, and that got him executed, I believe, but his beliefs were also way out there wrt the norm of his time.

The Tawasin of Mansur Al-Hallaj certainly makes Al-Hallaj a heretic in that he explains that Iblis could not prostrate himself before the created man because he (Iblis) would only worship the Beloved (Allah).

Verses
9. Allah said to him: ‘Prostrate yourself!!’ He said: ‘Not before another than You.’ He said to him: ‘Even if my curse falls on you?’ He said: ‘It will not punish me.’
10.‘My denial is to affirm your purity and my reason remains disordered in You. And what is Adam compared to You and who am I, Iblis, to differentiate from You!’

Edited to add: come to think of it, what about the Jesus of the Gospels? Or the Buddha? The latter also dropped out of his society and associated with people way below his class, transgressing all kinds of social norms in the act.

By the first century A.D., the Jews were looking for strong, magnetic leaders who could deliver them from the wrath of the Roman Empire. The Essenes developed the idea of a messiah figure that would provide this. Several Jewish leaders were set to take over after the death of the Jewish King Herod, who primarily worked for the Romans.

Several before Yeshua attempted to be the messiah and failed, Yeshua too failed and because of this he too qualifies as a heretic and Morning Star.

Is there some kind of conveyor belt transporting such possibly Left-Hand figures right back into the Right-Hand path, by making them founding figures of RHP faiths?

I'm not sure I know what you're asking but, the completion of a LHP adherent would be to separate from the Universal Reality, create their own subjective universe, and help bring others into this realization.

Perhaps one of the more infamous heretics was Aleister Crowley who used LHP practices to achieve a certain amount of initiation but in the end instead of entering the Abyss and separating from the Universal Reality, his religion (Thelema) has the adherent unified with the Univeral Reality, much like the LHP of the East.

Is that what you are getting at?

 

['Amir Alzzalam]

We-e-e-ll, yes and no. There is a single source, but not a single doctrine. There are numerous doctrines, the Traditions, but one cannot state the 'single, universal doctrine' other than statements such as 'discernment between the real and the unreal' which is common to all Traditional doctrines.

They all have the same end goal, more or less.

And yet everyone says blood is red, sky is blue, trees are green, etc.

You missed my point, Person A is shown an apple and told it is red, Person B is also shown an apple and told it is red. The word red is associated with the color both persons see the apple as, but this does not mean they are seeing the same color, only that they are associating the word red with what color they see an apple. You can't describe a color, it is subjective.

But you're not breaking objective laws, you're engaging in cultural taboos.

Again missing my point. There is a difference between antinomianism and heterodoxy. Heterodoxy is the practice implemented by the Eastern Left Hand Path whereby
adherents step back and away from any laws, rules which govern them in order to question themselves and these laws and the way they are imposed. If changes are to take place the adherent must transcend the state of being bound by these laws. They now interact within those laws in new ways.

Antinomianism is a praxis of spiritual dissent manifesting into spiritual freedom, it is internal alchemy, defiance of ideas and experiences that are not your own, a path to individualism. Western Left Hand Path ideas can be found in Jahiliyya (the condition of the people before Islam), as well as the heretical sects practicing antinomianism toward the attainment of an independently immortal and awakened state of consciousness. In the ultimate sense of the word, antinomianism violates moral and secular prohibitions through procuring occult wisdom in order to create the inner independence necessary to do one’s Great Work. The Adversary within
is confronted and defeated through dissent from established religious, cultural, social, and most importantly from personal norms

 

[Ella S.]

Antinomianism is a praxis of spiritual dissent manifesting into spiritual freedom, it is internal alchemy, defiance of ideas and experiences that are not your own, a path to individualism. Western Left Hand Path ideas can be found in Jahiliyya (the condition of the people before Islam), as well as the heretical sects practicing antinomianism toward the attainment of an independently immortal and awakened state of consciousness. In the ultimate sense of the word, antinomianism violates moral and secular prohibitions through procuring occult wisdom in order to create the inner independence necessary to do one’s Great Work. The Adversary within
is confronted and defeated through dissent from established religious, cultural, social, and most importantly from personal norms

Normally we just call the intentional violation of moral prohibitions "evil"

 

['Amir Alzzalam]

Normally we just call the intentional violation of moral prohibitions "evil"

"We"? Who is 'we'? And where am I mentioning morality? Good & Evil are purely subjective, one man's good will always be another man's evil.

 

[Ella S.]

"We"? Who is 'we'?

Several dictionaries.

Merriam Webster:
1a: morally reprehensible : SINFUL, WICKEDan evil impulse
b: arising from actual or imputed bad character or conducta person of evil reputation

Wiktionary:
2. Morally corrupt

Dictionary.com:
1. morally wrong or bad

Collins Dictionary:
5. If you describe something as evil, you mean that you think it causes a great deal of harm to people and is morally bad.

The Free Dictionary:
1. Morally bad or wrong; wicked:

And where am I mentioning morality?

antinomianism violates moral and secular prohibitions

Right there.

Good & Evil are purely subjective, one man's good will always be another man's evil.

I disagree completely but that's totally irrelevant. If you are intentionally violating what you yourself describe as "moral prohibitions" then you are, by definition, doing the morally bad thing.

 

['Amir Alzzalam]

Several dictionaries.

Merriam Webster:
1a: morally reprehensible : SINFUL, WICKEDan evil impulse
b: arising from actual or imputed bad character or conducta person of evil reputation

Wiktionary:
2. Morally corrupt

Dictionary.com:
1. morally wrong or bad

Collins Dictionary:
5. If you describe something as evil, you mean that you think it causes a great deal of harm to people and is morally bad.

The Free Dictionary:
1. Morally bad or wrong; wicked:





Right there.



I disagree completely but that's totally irrelevant. If you are intentionally violating what you yourself describe as "moral prohibitions" then you are, by definition, doing the morally bad thing.

This falls into the category of heterodoxy and RHP practices. When the moral obligations of a faith, society, culture are accepted and purposely opposed then it is acting as a heterodox. If you never accepted these obligations then you cannot be opposing them. Psuedo-Satanists fall in this category as well.

 

[Cino]

Is that what you are getting at?

Yes, but also how someone like Jesus or the Buddha, who arguably did not shrink back from the Abyss, would eventually become the figureheads of right-hand path, orthodox faiths.

 

['Amir Alzzalam]

Yes, but also how someone like Jesus or the Buddha, who arguably did not shrink back from the Abyss, would eventually become the figureheads of right-hand path, orthodox faiths.

I hear ya . . . Jesus was certainly a heretic espousing a new Judaism and I believe he became the poster child for Christianity through the actions of Paul. Siddhartha Gautama is an interesting subject matter. Buddhism originally was way more of a philosophy than a dogmatic faith. I know some interpret Buddhism as a LHP, I'm not sure if it qualifies as a RHP . . . although he was somewhat heretical in that he began his journey by abandoning his wife and children to sit under a tree.

 

[muhammad_isa]

I hear ya . . . Jesus was certainly a heretic espousing a new Judaism..

What .. because he claimed to be the Jewish Messiah?

 

[RJM]

I believe he became the poster child for Christianity through the actions of Paul.

Isn't that old trope worn out by now?

 

[seattlegal]

I hear ya . . . Jesus was certainly a heretic espousing a new Judaism and I believe he became the poster child for Christianity through the actions of Paul. Siddhartha Gautama is an interesting subject matter. Buddhism originally was way more of a philosophy than a dogmatic faith. I know some interpret Buddhism as a LHP, I'm not sure if it qualifies as a RHP . . . although he was somewhat heretical in that he began his journey by abandoning his wife and children to sit under a tree.

Buddha's recommendation of meditating over putrefying corpses doesn't count? (btw-he and his wife Yashodhara had one child--their son Rahula. Legend has it that he began his quest for the answer to suffering the night Rahula was born. Seeing his wife suffer in childbirth might very well have been the thing that prompted him to go on his quest. Yashodhara joined the sangha as a nun and Rahula started training as a monk with Buddha when Rahula was seven years old. Many of his other family members also joined him in the sangha.

 

[Thomas]

I hear ya . . . Jesus was certainly a heretic espousing a new Judaism ...

Ah, no, not really.
Jesus illuminated the Law from within, as it were, which is why his opponents were never quite able to pin him down on a point of law.

 

[RJM]

And although Paul preached and spread Christianity, he didn't invent it. If so he was a surpassing genius. It has absorbed the minds of kings and beggars and wise men and fools for two millennia. Many people have tried to invent a religion and few lasted more than a few years. There have been many 'revolutionaries' whose influence and philosophy did not become a religion that lasted two thousand years. So the phenomenon of Christianity cannot be laid on Paul imo, ubiquitous as the fallacy may be

 

[Cino]

This thread has drifted considerably. Sorry for that, @SeekingTheWay - it's just what happens. Did you get some new perspectives from what we all shared, at least?