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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Thursday, 14 June 1917
I note after Butler that tanha is a longing for continued separation, and so a form of hate. So desire for fame is desire for a fixity in separation; yet all fixity is death. So “personal life” is hate, and perfection, which is “death,” is hate too. Another proof of the duality of all intellectual concepts. Forgetting is death, but so is remembering; for the one implies the other. So with all opposites; but beyond the opposites is not, as we hastily syllogize, a “transcendant unity” but a Something quite beyond definition or conception. The Universe is an organic whole; to be conscious of every detail of it, any more than a cat is conscious of every hair on her body. The realization must be “impressionistic”; and the mental image of it intensely biased. Therefore we must enlarge the mind as well as quell it.
I am getting quite to the point of habitual recognition of myself as SAWYA and it does much good. But I have seen lately the danger of having a mental machine which functions so independently of the Self, and even of the human will. E.g., all my sympathies are most profoundly with the Allies; but my brain refuses to think as sympathizers seem to do; so in argument I often seem “pro-German.” Similarly, I have a Socialistic or Anarchistic brain, but an Aristocrat’s heart; hence constant muddle not in myself, but in others who observe me.
The Illusion is always attacking Conscious Crowley in curious subconscious ways. One catches oneself assuming that C.C. has some importance to something, that this bundle of sticks is worth keeping tied, for example. It is hard to express how deep and subtle this has become; as a matter of fact, my brain constantly baulks at the analysis. “Change” is the special subject of a Magus; and all terms seem to have become entirely fluid.
I must confess to moral paralysis, by the way; hope has been practically extinguished, and I now realize how hard it is to work without that insidious drug. One doesn’t want to take a chance any more; the thought of wasting energy has become insuperable; I can only do a thing when I am sure of the result, or very nearly so. My life-work seems to have gone to utter smash at the exact moment when it was to have flowered. And this also pertaineth unto the Grade of a Magus, and I give Salutation to the Prophet of Allah, for like unto his case is mine also.
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