“reality”]. Evolution through further OU investigation is
slowed, and occasionally “outlawed” by this consensus-
SU, which in this community serves much the same
function as religion elsewhere.
Also as in religion, scientific/academic-community
“heresies” - individual or group SU concepts inconsistent
with the orthodoxy of the moment - are ignored, and if
necessary actively suppressed and denounced [the
condescending term is “debunked”]. Centuries ago
religious heretics were tortured and executed. Modern
academic/scientific heretics will merely find themselves
Orwell’s “unpersons”: unpublished, unemployed, and
professionally exiled. The more frightening heretics, from
Galileo to Wilhelm Reich, have been denounced as
“insane” and imprisoned or killed.
In the more mundane, proletarian culture of religion,
the approved/collective SU is called “God” and the
inconvenient, annoying ones “Satan”. [The names for
each vary across cultures, but the underlying tension is
the same.] Where religion is taken literally and seriously,
as in medieval Europe and present-day fundamentalist
Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, this can result in
individual murder and/or collective war.
- 19 -
Even when one manages to recognize and appreciate
the individual CSU, this is still not the end of the Quest,
not yet the core of conscious existence. The CSU remains
a mechanism, a lens, a means of interpretation used by
the ultimate self - commonly alluded to as the psyche or
“soul”, which is the actual locus of conscious being. Since
this soul is an absolutely unique singularity, it can only be
identified and realized - not defined in terms of anything
external or component. It is ethereal, and it is this
ethereality which has disconcerted many of those
attempting to examine it. As it is sensed to be something
distinct and apart from not just the OU, but even its own/
utility SUs, it has been both revered and feared because
of its mysterious but conspicuous existence.
Most humans who are either voluntary or involuntary
slaves to collective SUs, either secular or religious, shun
confrontation of the soul, which is clearly not a product of
nor controllable by such collective SUs. Materialists who
profess the OU as the only reality customarily deny that
the soul exists at all; they say it is merely an illusion
generated by the individual CSU mechanism to give that
device an artificial sense of consciousness, e.g. of
deliberate direction or purpose.
Conventional religion adherents, also sensing that the
soul is distinct from and beyond the control of “God” (the
OU and religion-dictated common SU), demonize it: It is
either the Devil or an extension of the Devil, by whatever
name(s) he is known. As such, the soul must be forced
into obedience and compliance, so that it is a non-threat
to the common SU. It must be rejected, denied, punished,
and if all of these fail, destroyed by killing the human
body which it is thought to inhabit and depend upon for
its existence. Hence history’s religious wars, pogroms,
persecutions, exterminations, from the social to the
individual level.
- 20 -
A somewhat different approach is that of collective
SUs such as Buddhism, which grapple with the soul by
trying to redefine it as a multiplicity of SU images, either
individual or collective, each of which can then be forced
into harmony with or absorption into those external
images, thus eliminating any sense of separateness. In
actuality this is nothing more than the monotheistic
demonization recast into artificial fragments to make
them seem more tangible and malleable.
Finally, though less prevalent and conspicuous, are
esoteric initiatory efforts to deliberately and intentionally
merge or blend the individual soul with the presumed
“universal soul”, which is vaguely thought to be a
somewhat similar entity for the OU [and collective SUs of
choice] “beyond and behind everything”. This approach
does not require the individual soul to be rejected,
punished, or destroyed, but instead to be “purified” by
any number of disciplines and exercises. When it has
been completely so cleansed, it will [re]join the universal
soul in ecstatic dissolution of its separateness. While a
comforting proposition for those who prefer soothing to
suffering, there is simply nothing to support or
substantiate the existence of a universal soul. Each
individual soul senses itself and can be sensed by other
beings with souls, but on a universal scale there is no
evidence whatever of any consciousness or volition such
as would be necessary to identify such. [In conventional
religions such acts of deliberation and purpose beyond
the static are referred to as “miracles”. But except for the
imaginatively credulous and faithful, no “miracle” has
ever actually occurred.]
As the soul is unique and completely singular, it is
inherently impossible to define or describe it - only to
apprehend and identify it. As noted above, this is
frustrating and even alarming to humans who are
accustomed to be able to regard everything as a “building
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block” or combination of such blocks. Thus they can
make everything mechanical and so definable and
practical: the realms of physical and other sciences. The
consequence is to simply ignore or deny the soul.
Nevertheless it exists; it is the “ultimate You” of each
individual. It is not just important, but indeed centrally
so. Absent it, indeed, there would be no perceiver of, no
actor upon “otherness”. Everything beyond it, from the
individual SU to the OU, would be absolutely, utterly
irrelevant. All such external existence and phenomena
would be entirely meaningless. It would make no
difference whether any of it existed or not.
This truth was perhaps first realized by existentialists
such as Jean-Paul Sarte, who in Nausea sought to express
the “horror” of incidental non-self existence. That there
should be such objects and phenomena merely
haphazardly struck him as nothing short of obscene. All
non-self must have meaning and purpose assigned to it to
overcome this primal obscenity.
Such assignment of meaning was assumed by the
ancients to be the province of divine, superuniversal
intelligences: popularly gods/God. Derivative of this
authority was the directed assemblage of various such
components into the physical and phenomenological OU
as humans have come to discover it.
MindStar is a book about the “soul”, specifically
yours: what it is, where to find it, what to do with it [as
you may be so inclined]. Enjoy the adventure!
One more thing: As you p
roceed through this book,
you may get the uncanny feeling that you know
everything in it already: the text is more a reminder than
a teacher. Quite correct, as MindStar is deliberately
designed as an exercise in anamnesis, about which you
will be specifically reminded in due course.
MindStar is also not merely educational or
entertaining; it is transformative. Reading it, assuming
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you have the intelligence and attention to comprehend it,
will set your feet on the path from mortal to immortal,
from human to divinity.
Before reading further, therefore, reflect carefully
upon the consequences of doing so. This is a judgment
with which every Initiate of Set is familiar, but MindStar
does not require that formality. The choice and decision,
however, are no less metamorphic.
This realization and choice have been the subject of
various legends and illustrations throughout humanity’s
many eras and cultures. One of the most poignant was
the story of Ayesha, Priestess of Isis, as related by herself.
Guided throughout her life by the sage Noot to accept her
human discipleship of that neter of the natural order,
Ayesha was finally entrusted with the guardianship of a
Flame which possessed the power to transform anyone
who stepped within it to personal divinity. What was not
evident was the inescapability of creative definition, and
the absolute loneliness in exercising it, which authentic
godhood entails. Warned Noot:
Yonder fire will not destroy the mortal who finds
the courage to stand in its raging path; it will give him
life, and with it such strength, such beauty, and such
wisdom as have never been the lot of man born of
woman. Also it will give him such passions, such
despairs, such unending woes as hitherto no mortal
heart has known.
There is the truth. Ask me not how it comes into my
keeping and what that voice may be which is speaking
it through my lips. A minute gone this truth was mine
alone. Now it is yours also, and being yours, I pray to
that Divine from which we come and whither we return
again, that it may give you strength and the true
wisdom, knowing all, to reject all, and turning aside
from this glittering guerdon of enduring life, patiently
- 23 -
to walk your human path to the end appointed to our
human feet. 4
Ultimately Ayesha heeded the call of the Fire and in
its embrace was transformed into She-Who-Must-Be-
Obeyed, immortal and omnipotent, with a beauty such
that none could look upon her without succumbing to
madness. Veiled, she endured countless centuries among
those whose human dullness enabled them to find the
simple natural pleasures and contentments that were
now intolerable to her.
This is the danger of MindStar: that it will make you
what you envision yourself to become, and empower you
to see through and beyond all human illusions. Also that,
as Ayesha also discovered, once attained, it is not
reversible. Give careful thought to Noot’s warning,
therefore, before you too enter the Flame. Because if you
do, there is no turning back: not just for the span of a
human life, but forever.
If this terrifies you, read no further. Destroy this
book. 5
San Francisco
January 1, 2016 CE
4 Haggard, H. Rider, Wisdom’s Daughter. New York: Random House
(Ballantine), 1922, page #225.
5 “You are perfectly free to return to your school if you wish. Perhaps
it would be wiser.” - Maurice Conchis to Nicholas Urfe, in John
Fowles’ The Magus, responding to Nicholas’ objection upon realizing
his Election to Conchis’ initiatory masque.
- 24 -
- 25 -
Chapter 1: The Universes
We were not, as I have said, in any sense childishly
superstitious, but scientific study and reflection had
taught us that the known universe of three
dimensions embraces the merest fraction of the
whole cosmos of substance and energy. In this case
an overwhelming preponderance of evidence from
numerous authentic sources pointed to the tenacious
existence of certain forces of great power and, so far
as the human point of view is concerned, exceptional
malignancy.
- H.P. Lovecraft
A. Multiversality
The phenomenon of individual consciousness is not
identifiable in a vacuum. For humans to recognize this
facility, they must first become aware of an environment
outside themselves, then realize, if initially only passively,
that they are severally something distinct from it.
This would seem to be a simple and obvious
juxtaposition, and so it is on a subconscious level:
Humans go through their lives differentiating themselves
from their surroundings and other humans in any
number of habitual, stimulus/response contexts.
Nevertheless while these same humans are casually
comfortable apprehending the external environment,
they are far less certain about, and comfortable with
- 26 -
perceiving and describing themselves as conscious
individuals. Indeed it is this confusion which is at the
core of humanity’s greatest discord among its species
throughout its recorded history, as is surveyed herein.
Put simply, until you are clear as to what you are and
cannot make an intelligent decision concerning your
behavior and its rationale. While this might sound
daunting at first glance - the stuff of turgid theological
puffery or excruciating graduate philosophy courses, it is
actually quite obvious and straightforward. All you have
to do is to confront it openly and honestly, which is
exactly what MindStar seeks to facilitate.
For starters, the odds are that if the ordinary human
were asked “How many universes are there?”, the
confident answer would be “One.”. Actually there are
several, and an appreciation of this is crucial to questions
concerning human identity.
B. The Objective Universe
The Objective Universe (hereafter “OU”) is what most
humans are accustomed to regarding as “the only”
universe, e.g. the totality of matter and energy in
existence [of which these same humans would just
assume themselves to be components].
Humans are aware of the OU because they bump into
it all the time, from stubbing one’s toe to examining
galaxies through telescopes. This surrounding is so
constant and pervasive that they are physically and
physiologically “addicted” to it: Removing such constant
sensory reinforcement normally produces disorientation
followed by panic and “insanity”. For the vast majority of
humanity, ironically, it is thus the impress of the OU
upon them which provides an
d reinforces their
“individuality”.
- 27 -
Humans have gradually realized that the OU is not
chaotic and haphazard; it exists and functions according
to inflexible regularities, normally known as natural - or,
as they are discovered, “scientific” - laws. In prehistoric
and primitive cultures, before such laws were known to
exist and be thus inflexible, the OU was assumed to be a
variable at the manipulative whim of gods/God, and
considerable effort was devoted to worshipping or
appeasing such entities to prevent natural disasters or
cataclysms. Of course there were/are enough random
interactions of natural laws to lend credence to “divine
intervention” explanations, particularly when preached to
ignorant masses.
Conventional questions concerning the OU include:
(1) How did it come into being? (2) Why is it organized as
it is? (3) Who created natural law? (4) Why is natural law
so completely and permanently enforced? (5) Does the
OU have a purpose, or is it just a gigantic accident? And
of course: (6) What is/should be humanity’s relationship
to the OU?
Obviously humanity has been accustomed to
addressing, if not answering many of these questions by
religious myth. It is easier for the ordinary mind to
visualize a God impulsively snapping the OU into
existence at a chosen point in time, for example, than to
grapple with the fact that it has always existed; no
“creative act” was therefore needed.
As for natural law, human science has no idea
whatever why it is what it is, or what enforces it. Science
contents itself with discovering and codifying such law
“as it is”, period.
Concerning humanity’s relationship to the OU, this is
examined in some historical detail in this book’s
discussion of telos.
- 28 -
C. The Subjective Universe
The Subjective Universe (hereafter “SU”) is each self-
conscious being’s perception of the OU, blended with
personally-generated overlays, selective impressions, and
creative imagination as instinctive, indoctrinated,
inspired, and/or initiated.
Thus not even the most controlled physical scientist
can claim to accurately and completely see the OU. What
he sees is his filtration and distortion of it through his SU,
which he has built up both consciously and