Crowley exercise.

[Bu🤠ns]

At some point i either read or listened to an interview where Robert Anton Wilson said he read a biography of Aleister Crowley that talked about an exercise where you would write down every single event that lead up to you sitting here doing this exercise.  (was it cosmic trigger maybe?)

Has anyone here ever try that exercise?  what were your results like?

[Jasper]

It's a good way to get some perspective. 


Mind-blasting, horrifying perspective that makes you stupid with awe.

Not advisable.

[Bu🤠ns]

 

i'd imagine it's something akin to looking back through your reality tunnel or scoping out your BIP or......

[Jasper]

Check it out. 

Doctor Manhattan: Thermodynamic miracles... events with odds against so astronomical they're effectively impossible, like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold. I long to observe such a thing.
And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter... Until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold... that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermodynamic miracle.

Laurie Juspeczyk: But...if me, my birth, if that's a thermodynamic miracle... I mean, you could say that about anybody in the world!.

Dr. Manhattan: Yes. Anybody in the world. ..But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget... I forget. We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from the another's vantage point. As if new, it may still take our breath away. Come...dry your eyes. For you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly.

That's sort of what I'm talking about.

[Akara]

does one have to start from the event and go back, og start from earlier and lead up to the event?

[Bu🤠ns]

Check it out. 

Doctor Manhattan: Thermodynamic miracles... events with odds against so astronomical they're effectively impossible, like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold. I long to observe such a thing.
And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter... Until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold... that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermodynamic miracle.

Laurie Juspeczyk: But...if me, my birth, if that's a thermodynamic miracle... I mean, you could say that about anybody in the world!.

Dr. Manhattan: Yes. Anybody in the world. ..But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget... I forget. We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from the another's vantage point. As if new, it may still take our breath away. Come...dry your eyes. For you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly.

That's sort of what I'm talking about.

damn.

edit:
that just knocked me on my ass.

[Jasper]

You might like The Watchmen.  It's a much-beloved comic book series.

[Bu🤠ns]

i'm going to have to re-read that: i borrowed the first time and i felt the need to rush through it...because i OBVIOUSLY missed this.

[hooplala]

I don't remember it being written down.  I seem to recall it as a mind exercise.

[rong]

seems like you'd have to start with "now" and work backwards, otherwise you'd never be able to start writing - or it would look something like this:

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

RAW talked about it in several lectures... don't recall if its written anywhere. Basically you ask yourself "Why am I sitting  here, right now?" and then go from there. It may go back along a personal history, or it may veer into something else entirely (the history of the chair that you're sitting on maybe...).

It's a nice meditation/sleight of mind trick.

[Akara]

it definitely sounds interesting. sound like a good way to remember details of things too. i might try it sometime...

[hooplala]

It's in Prometheus Rising somewhere.  I could look it up, but I'm too lazy.

[Mangrove]

I don't remember it being written down.  I seem to recall it as a mind exercise.

2nded.

Though, I guess there's no harm in writing it down. In fact, you could submit it as your entry to the 'write a novel in a month' spaggotry.

You might want to look into Crowley's Liber Thisarb which is about training the mind to think backwards.

[Bu🤠ns]

RAW talked about it in several lectures... don't recall if its written anywhere. Basically you ask yourself "Why am I sitting  here, right now?" and then go from there. It may go back along a personal history, or it may veer into something else entirely (the history of the chair that you're sitting on maybe...).

It's a nice meditation/sleight of mind trick.

it seems like each point of reference could offer different perspectives on things.  kind of like viewing different telescopes within your reality tunnel.  i can imagine that it also forces the participant into being objective about his/her subjectivity.  i'll try this when i'm feeling more clarity.