Antero Ali on Chapel Perilous

[Cain]

A long time ago, when I was a wee young whippernsnapper, drinking alcohol irresponsibly, chasing girls and staying up late all night (no, not last week), part of my course in Religious Philosophy (a class taken exclusively by atheists) was about varieties of religious experiences.

What struck me, even back then, was how a number of religious experiences were similar to a nervous breakdown, and how these were similar to other certain events (like PKD's VALIS episode).  Later on, when I came across Discordianism and RAW, and the occult, Chapel Perilous and certain occultists seemed to be describing a very similar thing.

I have a few ideas of what that experience may be, and why it differs in its particulars, but, not having gone through it myself, I'm hesistant to speculate too much.  However, I also suspect it is the kind of thing the Scottish psychotherapist R.D. Laing was sometimes going on about, when he talked about ontological insecurity and similar topics.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Interesting conversation so far.

CP isn't any more 'occult' than the BiP. Its a metaphor, its presented as metaphor and its discussed as a metaphor. For people that haven't read Cosmic Trigger, and instead just read some posts on PD about the subject, I'm not surprised that its seen as a simple mundane thing that everyone probably experiences.

Cram mentioned the Hero's Journey which Campbell says everyone experiences.. the process of going from the Fool (the child) to something more. Just because everyone takes that journey, it doesn't mean they all visit CP. In fact, even if they do enter CP, there's no guarantee that they will come out of it. Some people get stuck there, some people never enter. Its not a requirement for the Hero's Journey, but its a part of the Hero's journey that some people experience. In my experience, its generally when someone held a very strong belief system and that belief system collapsed... leaving them unsure of what they believe. Once the internal psychological effects begin to manifest in a physical way, it can leave them unsure of what they know, let alone what they believe.

It is 'occult' only in the sense that its metaphor and the individual experience can vary wildly because its subjective.

To me, the occult "Holy Guardian Angel" is a problem, because it entails a specific belief system and the bizarre subjective experience could throw a person from Belief System A to Belief System B... they might be changing cell blocks, but they still don't see the cell. Guys like Antero, RAW, Carroll, Hine etc. demystify quite a bit in their writings. For example, Bob equates the HGA with Alien visits, the Virgin Mary, AWISS etc etc etc... all as part of the Chapel Perilous experience. Instead of saying "I know the truth, believe this" it tears apart different experiences and says "Hey look, all these people experienced some weird things... there are some striking similarities, almost as if it was the same kind of experience wearing different masks based on the subjective beliefs of the individual".

In the occult (and I've read a lot of it), they present a map and lead you to believe that it must be the territory. If someone reads Cosmic Trigger and comes to that kind of conclusion, they should read it again.

I personally, enjoy examining the occult under a microscope, not to find the really real magical spells or anything... but to see the subjective experiences, the different reality tunnels that individuals experience. Antero's more recent book "On the Archeology of the Soul", for example, studies the historical subjective 'ecstatic experience'. He finds the commonalities across different cultures and different belief systems then strips away all of the 'occult', looking for a clear way to have the experience minus the belief system. To me, this sort of stuff is a dissection of the occult in an attempt to get rid of the bullshit.

Sure metaphors still get used, but they're obvious metaphors, they're discussed as metaphors. In the 'occult' books, you don't find that. They're more than happy to try to convince you that the "energy" you're visualizing is really real for real... or that the "out of body experience" you had REALLY WAS your spirit leaving your body. RAW's stuff, for me, was illuminating and clarifying... not only about all the BS I had been reading, but it helped me immensely to understand my own subjective experience when my reality went to hell.

As I said to start with... Its no more or less 'occult' than the BiP.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I also disagree with making that state all mystified, because it helps with impression that nobody you've met has ever experienced anything like it.



etc

This

so much this.

I KNOW WHO THE FUCK I AM!  WHO ARE ALL OF YOU ZOMBIES?

[Roly Poly Oly-Garch]

Interesting conversation so far.

CP isn't any more 'occult' than the BiP. Its a metaphor, its presented as metaphor and its discussed as a metaphor. For people that haven't read Cosmic Trigger, and instead just read some posts on PD about the subject, I'm not surprised that its seen as a simple mundane thing that everyone probably experiences.

Cram mentioned the Hero's Journey which Campbell says everyone experiences.. the process of going from the Fool (the child) to something more. Just because everyone takes that journey, it doesn't mean they all visit CP. In fact, even if they do enter CP, there's no guarantee that they will come out of it.

Sure metaphors still get used, but they're obvious metaphors, they're discussed as metaphors. In the 'occult' books, you don't find that. They're more than happy to try to convince you that the "energy" you're visualizing is really real for real... or that the "out of body experience" you had REALLY WAS your spirit leaving your body. RAW's stuff, for me, was illuminating and clarifying... not only about all the BS I had been reading, but it helped me immensely to understand my own subjective experience when my reality went to hell.

I'm with this. I also like LMNO's "Weird Shit^(tm)" take. It's kind of simple and to the point.

Hit me with some special snowflake horse-shit, but CP is definitely not a trip everyone takes. It's not an identity crisis, it's not a mundane reality crisis, it's something else entirely. Unfortunately it truly does defy a simple explanation, at least insofar as I am able to offer one.

I'd personally take LMNO's and add a mania aspect. I call it "Evil Emperor Fractal Fuck". Weird Shit^(tm) happens, bat-shit connections ensue, with the kicker that, of course, these bat-shit connections don't really form a cohesive reality so Evil Emperor Fractal Fuck recursive's the bat-shit through some means I don't want to ever know, and then you find yourself with more and more Weird Shit^(tm) for the Emperor to write "reality" around.

Finding your way out of CP is not a simple process of trading one map for another, because no map is ever adequate. Instead, without some kind of outside nudge, or HGA or whatever the fuck you want to call it, you just get stuck in a process of trading map for map for map, each one progressively more and more bat-shit, more and more lost. The rapidity of blowing and re-blowing your mind becomes pretty difficult to take. The paranoia, at least for me, was completely overwhelming. There was no, as suggested, observing other people and just imitating their "normal", simply because "other people" was a construct that could easily change 5 times in a day, countless times over the years it took me to find my way out.

None of this "feels better". None of this is dressing shit up, indulging in fantasy or screwing around with sigils and shit. Although all of that may play a part, the trip through CP is not a step by step walk where at any given point one can just say "okay, that was neat...think I'll go play Nintendo." Beyond a certain point it's just a fucking ride that simply doesn't stop until it's over. Letting EEFF re-write your whole reality isn't a habit, it's a mania. And yeah, I would imagine one of the worst case scenarios would be a full nervous breakdown.

The HGA part, I have to stand behind. Not because it gives it some hokey occult significance, but because it kind of "is" the way out. Okay, so maybe my precognition is off the hook, but that can be explained in terms of the following bat-shit map. And maybe that thing that just happened looked an awful lot like telekinesis, but again, there's a perfectly reasonable bat-shit map to account for that. And maybe, maybe, in an effort to find something recognizably real you had some dude swing a bar-stool at you, but when he reeled back to take a swing all of a sudden you both realized he wasn't holding a bar-stool, and both of you distinctly remember there being a bar stool, but neither of you can be sure that memory wasn't false...again...Evil Emperor Fractal Fuck can cover that shit.

But the HGA is so very undeniably there that either the completely fucking over the top thing that it is is "real"--in which case welcome to the Matrix, inhabitants-YOU, or you can't believe anything at all about it. It's not the guidance of the HGA that leads you out of CP, it's the uncertainty of it's nature that offers exit. It simply cannot be patched into the picture by EEFF, no matter how bat-shit a map you're willing to embrace, so it's either a raw fucking sensory overloading map=reality (stone paranoia) or the map is a thought and reality is the territory (agnosticism).

I think that's about as clear as I can explain how I see it.

(Me, I chose agnosticism, and have been nodding in agreement with anyone who calls all of the above "bullshit shoveled into bullshit" ever since)

[navkat]

^^^mittens to you.
Also, I've had my mind blown and reblown so many times by so many fine bitches, I can't get it up anymore when people start screaming their porno in my fayce.

[Roly Poly Oly-Garch]

^^^mittens to you.
Also, I've had my mind blown and reblown so many times by so many fine bitches, I can't get it up anymore when people start screaming their porno in my fayce.

Can't relate. I can have my mind blow and re-blown by fine bitches, alright, but not without the 45 second reload period in between.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

NoLeDeMiel, that was an excellent summation!

[LMNO]

NoLeDeMiel also touches on an interesting aspect, and one not to be taken lightly.  When this shit starts happening, you start losing all sense of objectivity.  You can't see it from the outside and compare what's happening to your headmeats with the outside world.  it is the world.  It's Total Reality.

I know a lot of us here are fairly proficeint with "meta" mindstates (mind thinking about mind (thinking about mind)), and a lot of this thread is "how it looks from the outside", with an assumption that if it ever happened to me, well, I'd just snap out of it and use my Rationality-Fu to get over myself, already. 

But it's not like that.  There is no meta.  If you try to self-analyze, you come to the same conclusions, because to you it really is happening.  That's one reason some people are so quick to equate it with a kind of insanity (although I should point out, I've seen true insanity in person, and this ain't nothing like that).

[The Good Reverend Roger]

NoLeDeMiel also touches on an interesting aspect, and one not to be taken lightly.  When this shit starts happening, you start losing all sense of objectivity.  You can't see it from the outside and compare what's happening to your headmeats with the outside world.  it is the world.  It's Total Reality.

Me, in early 2005.   

[LMNO]

Hey, you had some help on that one.  Namely, a nest of brain flukes partying in your skull.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Hey, you had some help on that one.  Namely, a nest of brain flukes partying in your skull.

That was 2010.

[LMNO]

It's a multiple of five, so it's the same damn thing.


Bitches don't know about my numerology.

[Kai]

I agree that I never really understood Chapel Perilous, only thought I did. It's actually rather ordinary, and the language used to describe it makes it out to be extraordinary.

I think there is nothing ordinary about the quest for the self

it is heroic and transformative in the most profound sense


Intense internal experiences always sound mundane when expressed in language. For example, I have no ability to accurately describe Taoism. If I wrote a smart book about, it would still be a distraction. I think matters of spirituality are better handled through metaphor and symbolism, they lose something when they're described in sterile material terms.

It's interesting to me that we have this vague term "chapel perilous", and we can't agree on a definition, therefore we have to come back to the question - how can you can find your individual free will if the self is a confused collective of networked agents?

Yes, yes; you are a unique and special snowflake, just like everyone else.

One of the things I like about Taoism as I understand it is that it doesn't rely on occultism; it points out that there is value in the mundane. Not only that, but that there is profundity in simpleness. Part of that is breaking complex concepts down to simple sentences.

If you cannot summarize something, do you really understand it?

One of the things I am starting to suspect from this conversation is that nobody here actually understands the Chapel Perilous, and that in fact it may be a rather incomplete and poorly thought-out navelgazing concept. It appears to be an attempt at making complex a simple and not-uncommon experience for the purposes of making people feel like magical unicorns.

Can anyone seriously believe that the quest for self is a rarity? That only a few brave souls seek self-knowledge? I beg to differ with you on that one. I think that almost everyone seeks self-knowledge at some point in their lives. The only difference is that most people, once they believe they have found it, stop looking unless something shakes them up real badly, like a death or a divorce or a close call. This is why almost everyone who gets a divorce has a crisis and often completely changes their lifestyle.

Attempting to reinvent it as something rare and unique that only a precious few experience seems self-indulgent. Sort of the same line of malarkey as "Native Americans used to treat mental illness as a sacred gift".

Thank you, this is what I meant by "ordinary".

[Kai]

I agree that I never really understood Chapel Perilous, only thought I did. It's actually rather ordinary, and the language used to describe it makes it out to be extraordinary.

I think there is nothing ordinary about the quest for the self

it is heroic and transformative in the most profound sense


Intense internal experiences always sound mundane when expressed in language. For example, I have no ability to accurately describe Taoism. If I wrote a smart book about, it would still be a distraction. I think matters of spirituality are better handled through metaphor and symbolism, they lose something when they're described in sterile material terms.

It's interesting to me that we have this vague term "chapel perilous", and we can't agree on a definition, therefore we have to come back to the question - how can you can find your individual free will if the self is a confused collective of networked agents?

It's /ordinary/. Don't confuse me with saying it's mundane, which has the connotation of boring, among others. This reminds me of the Yudowsky Quote "If we cannot take joy in the merely real, our lives will be empty indeed".

Those of you who have known me for more than a couple years know that I had a very intense series of Chapel Perilous internal situations. There was nothing mundane about it, it was sometimes terrifying, sometimes explosive, and always a mess, but it WAS ordinary, in terms of the majority of people have had some sort of Chapel Perilous experience. Not my specific experience, but A experience. Do we really need to always add a disclaimer that variation exists?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I agree that I never really understood Chapel Perilous, only thought I did. It's actually rather ordinary, and the language used to describe it makes it out to be extraordinary.

I think there is nothing ordinary about the quest for the self

it is heroic and transformative in the most profound sense


Intense internal experiences always sound mundane when expressed in language. For example, I have no ability to accurately describe Taoism. If I wrote a smart book about, it would still be a distraction. I think matters of spirituality are better handled through metaphor and symbolism, they lose something when they're described in sterile material terms.

It's interesting to me that we have this vague term "chapel perilous", and we can't agree on a definition, therefore we have to come back to the question - how can you can find your individual free will if the self is a confused collective of networked agents?

Yes, yes; you are a unique and special snowflake, just like everyone else.

One of the things I like about Taoism as I understand it is that it doesn't rely on occultism; it points out that there is value in the mundane. Not only that, but that there is profundity in simpleness. Part of that is breaking complex concepts down to simple sentences.

If you cannot summarize something, do you really understand it?

One of the things I am starting to suspect from this conversation is that nobody here actually understands the Chapel Perilous, and that in fact it may be a rather incomplete and poorly thought-out navelgazing concept. It appears to be an attempt at making complex a simple and not-uncommon experience for the purposes of making people feel like magical unicorns.

Can anyone seriously believe that the quest for self is a rarity? That only a few brave souls seek self-knowledge? I beg to differ with you on that one. I think that almost everyone seeks self-knowledge at some point in their lives. The only difference is that most people, once they believe they have found it, stop looking unless something shakes them up real badly, like a death or a divorce or a close call. This is why almost everyone who gets a divorce has a crisis and often completely changes their lifestyle.

Attempting to reinvent it as something rare and unique that only a precious few experience seems self-indulgent. Sort of the same line of malarkey as "Native Americans used to treat mental illness as a sacred gift".

Thank you, this is what I meant by "ordinary".

That's what I thought you meant... just because something is common, ordinary, or even mundane (in the dictionary sense of the word, which Piers Anthony ruined for everyone forever) doesn't mean it's tedious, banal, or mediocre.