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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Wednesday, 12 May 1920
I have just made adoration to Kephra,[1] the Beetle, that bringeth the Sun through midnight. It has been a long delightful evening, the first that I have spent really alone for a long, long time. And poetry—not my damned play—comes raving out of me. Three poems, two of them fairly long, tumbling over each other to get out. Of course, I find my thought terribly profound. The Riddle of the Universe seems to have got me by the short hair. I have gone the whole way round, Being and Not-Being and Becoming, and Naught, and All, and One, and identified every thing with every thing else, wiping out Stars and Gods with the wet Sponge of Meditation, and all the solutions turn out to be no solution. It is cold comfort to have proved X = Y = Z = Zero, when 0 is such an elusive value. All is illusion, and all is Reality. Even a phantom thought containing a contradiction in terms is as real and eternal as the Sun, or the Pleroma.[2] A is not-A, and B, and not-B, to infinity; and it all cancels out; good! But what next? Each step in my Path has been a progress, an illumination—neglecting the constraint and darkness of the Pylo[3] I am come to a complete simplicity, an absolute peace, a freedom born of the dissolution of my bonds by non-attachment, a contentment in doing my Will without lust of result, 'unassuaged of' (i.e. not limited by or to be satisfied by) 'purpose' and so it seems that my Will is 'every way perfect'. My shaving-stick, my ink, my watch, my kohl, my book of poems, the telegram from my beloved Alostrael [Leah Hirsig], a pencil, the mirror of this dressing-table where I am writing, knife, matches, pipe and pouch, all these trifles that chance to, and that must, be in front of the body through which I am looking, are just as important to themselves and to the Universe as all the Stars in this Sicilian heaven. I acquiesce in this unexplained perfection. I accept things as they are, or seem to be, no matter which.
The Mystery of Sorrow[4] was consoled long ago when it went out for a drink with the Universal Joke. The Mystery of Change amounted to Nothing, exactly as in a chemical equation. And the Mystery of Selflessness? Here I am not yet clear. There is Self everywhere, in each part as in the Whole; but it is not Separate Self. (I had glimpses of all this years ago, parrot-memories may be, from past incarnations); but now it is all clearly conceived and proven and experienced.) Clearly this Self is also not-Self, for Self, as a word, implies 'spacemarks'. The conception of a Self which is not equally not-Self causes all the illusion of duality. The Upanishads hint something of this, if I recall the passage aright: Brahman, becoming conscious of Self, creates of necessity a not-Self which is Maya. It is always possible to write Unity as 1/2 plus 1/2, or as any similar equation. But Unity is impossible anyhow without a 'Minus Unity' to balance it. We need not bother to write 0°, as in Berashith I once did. Zero is itself always expressible as One minus One, which is really Two, as it involves two dimensions or two ideas, one positive, the other negative. We then come back to a better comprehension of the Chinese plan of the Universe. The Tao has (somehow) the Virtue or Property, Teh (Matter including Motion, and neither possible without the other). Teh, manifested, formulates itself as Yang and Yin; whence the eight Trigrams and so on. It is necessary for us to realize that the Tao has not in any way been affected by this process, and that any element (or complex) in the Great Equation is equal to the Sum of all the rest. We learn to 'love' the not-Self as a whole-and each part of it, as being equal and one with the whole—and when we consummate this marriage, the equation vanishes, and—Tao! We need not even be anxious, or will, to do this, for 'not-Love' is the necessary complement of 'Love', as much a part of the Equation as anything else. To emphasize positive and negative by labelling things 'good' and 'bad' is of course to depart further from the Tao; but such an act is neither good nor' bad, for its opposite had arisen with it, and the Tao is not affected at all. In fact, one cannot 'depart further' from a thing which is everywhere. Nothing then matters, as indeed we knew before; but it is obviously right, natural, and easy for the blind being that does not comprehend all this to follow the line of least resistance, which is to do its Will. A Star astray from its orbit interferes with other Stars; and its return to its true Will smoothes matters for them. In fact, one cancels out some of the jaggedness of the Equation. Yet as the sum of Jaggedness is constant, this smoothing-out creates an opposite somewhere. My appreciation of Tao causes some other part of Teh to bud as Yang and Yin. Nothing of all this matters, or can be otherwise than it is.
A Chinese poet reproaches Laotze for saying that those who know Tao speak not thereof, seeing that he proved his own ignorance by writing his five thousand characters about it. But Laotze could not have done otherwise, no more than could his critic; and the reactions were instantly equilibrated, and the Tao goes on smiling-and none of it all matters.
Here we arrive once more at the balance of Fate and Free Will; for one's limits may be infinitely distant, and yet nothing is moved.
Motion in, or as the virtue of, infinite Matter can only be internal; and now we have understood Motion as of the essence of Matter. Rest implies Annihilation (the old thesis in a new, and I trust, more transparent, dress). But the sum total is infinite, indestructible? Yes, but that is Naught; that is Tao. Bring one end of the see-saw to earth, the other rises? Certainly, I have done nothing by appreciating Tao! That is where my Action is perfectly non-Action. Is any one perfect in non-Action? He has appreciated Tao; he has performed my Action. Have I been turned to dung and dust? In them is also Tao, as much Tao there as in its Simplicity. Is Tao less simple, divided against itself, in that state than in this? Nothing has happened in all these happenings; nothing can happen. Nothing is All, however we may strive to start a Something; and Everything is Something, however we reduce its sum to complexities of Nothing.
Such is the Riddle of the Sphinx, whose smiling silence answered her own self-questioning, that died at birth. Am I, by the tone of that allusion, still praising Silence, hushing Word? Am I still in love with a smile? Must I phrase the Universe as a symphony of joy? In all my equilibrations and cancellations, am I still left with a surplus of Beatitude? Then, if so, that surplus must be balanced by Sorrow without me, in the non-Self; and therefore do I utter my Word, Thelema, which is also Agape, in my love for that non-Self whom I wed, that all may come to naught. Why do I thus, seeing that all is in vain, that no result is possible? But I do my Will without lust of result, because (if I unchain for a moment the damned dog 'Because') it is my Will, my path of least resistance. But are not all paths the same, since every motion is equilibrated elsewhere? Certainly; nothing matters. But why go? Or why stay? Such questions will drive me back into my smiling silence. It must be that as they are asked, there is a balance, and I am thou that askest, and there also is Tao.
And I love my little Poupée, and I'm glad I wired to Naples to get Allenbury[5] for her, and half-past two, even a Daylight Saving half-past two, is near my bedtime, and I've done a good day's work, and nothing matters.
(Later, after writing a 'Cradle Song' to my soul.)
The Absolute is 'not without quantity or quality' since it must needs contain Virtue (Energy, Teh). Shiva is so defined-but where does Bhavani arise? She is his Virtue. I think we may say: There is Matter-Motion, which we call the Absolute or Tao when we consider it as a whole. For it is then unmanifested, its sum being Zero. Matter may be considered as a complex of positive and negative charges of electricity (to name the force crudely) and these charges can never be cancelled for they never truly began. At least, we must assume that the Absolute creates them afresh if they do cancel. One might consider the phenomenon as occurring in successive phases, the Hindu Manvantara and Pralaya; but it is surely simpler to conceive of a single uniform state, beyond the ideas of Space and Time, and Absolute or Relative according to one's point of view. In fact, the antithesis Absolute-Relative becomes meaningless; anything soever simple is the Absolute. This is rather like the Hindu idea of Atman-if they could only have stayed there, and not discriminated with Buddhi. Buddhi is the falsehood which separates Atman and Manas. This argument seems to expose this fallacy, and make me Paramahansa, with Moksha in my pocket! But, on the other hand, Buddhi is the Truth, as soon as one perceives that its discrimination is false; for it asserts the dual phase which is the necessary property or virtue of Zero.
Morning. A dying man reminds me of a clown jumping through a hoop.
Evening. It has been a soulless day after yest're'ens revel of work. I'm in a mood to be mildly (very mildly) drunk, and wallow in candied fruit and a detective story.
2—[In Gnosticism, the totality of the divine powers and emanations.] 3—[His first initiation was into the Golden Dawn in 1898 when he took the motto Perdurabo; his 'first birth' was his physical birth at Leamington, Warwickshire, in 1875.] 4—[Crowley is using these expressions in a double sense. Firstly, the Mysteries of Sorrow, Change and Selflessness, the ground of Buddhist philosophy, are experienced by every man; secondly, these terms refer to the initiations of the three Grades above the Abyss, viz. the Master of the Temple, Magus, Ipsissimus, respectively.]
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