Images, representation, and Self

All we know of the world or the self are the things represented to the consciousness. In other words, only representations or images can be known and therefore consciousness consists of these representations. This perceptual field of representations, or 'consciousness,' is our world.

The faculties of representing cannot be known in themselves, only through their own representations. We say that our consciousness arises from the nervous system, that the nervous system is the system of 'faculties of representing.' But we only know anything about the nervous system through its own representations.

"[All forms are] determined by the structure of the nervous system & thus really a phantasm of it... One may begin again from that standpoint to enquire why the nervous system itself should be conceived as it is, from anatomical indications which themselves depend on the same sensory perceptions which in turn determine the form of the original vision. i.e. Having got "the Universe as I see it is an Image of my nervous system" ask; "Why do I see the nervous system as I do? What is the ultimate meaning of this conception? What does it imply, my imprisonment in this "circular argument'"?'" -Aleister Crowley, "Etyhl Oxide"

Our awareness of 'the world' and ourselves is the interaction and overlapping of several systems of representation; our 'world' is the apparently unified combination of representational maps.

What most people think of the 'self' is a partitioned 'entity' derived from this phenomenal field. An identification with any partial component of this perceptual field results in a world of multiplicity founded on the essential dichotomy of 'self' and 'other' or 'self' and 'environment.' This is 'illusion' - the Hindu 'maya' born of 'avidya,' the Judeo-Christian-Islamic 'sin,' etc. The 'self' and 'other' are both partial facets of the perceptual field, their distinction being a perspective or interpretation of the information of the perceptual field. That is, even the appearance of multiplicity is a device of the Unified Field.

Yoga, the art & science of Union, consists of relinquishing attachment to and identification with any partial image. 'The world,' as we know it, being full of 'things,' 'creatures,' 'entities,' 'substances,' - that is, full of multiplicity - must be shattered.

THAT which gives rise to all images (and consequently consumes them), THAT which cannot be fully defined by any one representation but is known in part through each of its infinite expressions, is the Soul, the True Self, God, Brahman, Tao. One who perceives this truth is the Sage, the Perfect Man, the Buddha, the yogi, the Thelemite. Such a one can proclaim, "I am the Magician and the Exorcist," being both the creator of forms & the destroyer of forms.