Aleister Crowley Diary Entry

Tuesday, 29 November 1921

The Principle of Carnot

This is equivalent to "love under will", bringing all opposites at last to "nothing": all energy ceases. If this be so, how could the Universe have arisen, in view of Newton's 1st Law? It seems to me that the full satisfaction of any formula would necessarily destroy the matter involved, as all existence implies separateness, and therefore tendency of some sort. The fulfilled object would therefore cease to exist; and its disappearance would create an equivalent set of stresses in the rest of the cosmos. If we make a vacuum in a tube, the pressure on the glass alters; if we satisfy H plus Cl by exploding a mixture, the HCl has different tendencies. (An homogenous Universe at rest would be 0°, and therefore identical with any other stage of matter-motion. In fact, it is 0° now, if we chose to write it so.)

The degradation and dissipation of energy, so-called, is the means of new manifestations, that is all. In the hottest stars we get one set of phenomena, in the cooler another. Our own conditions permit the formation of complex molecules, capable of organic life and consciousness.. Why should not further cooling lead to structures more elaborate still? Below absolute Zero that happens to Matter? Surely molecules, no longer extended by heat, would become compact, appearing as new elements with new properties, presumably of a more "spiritual" kind than any we know. For the more highly organized cell, the less it is swayed by its environment, the more it develops will and intelligence. Even inorganic elements of great weight show powers of this type, self-restoration, diminished chemical activity, etc.: it is as if they were satisfied with themselves, and knew how to protect their interests.

No suppose elements of say 1000 or 2000 atomic weight. Their spectra need not be on our scale. They might emit rays of a new kind, just as the heavy Uranium does while the light Carbon does not. They would be chemically inert, like Gold and Platinum, but more so. They would perhaps be imperceptible to our senses altogether. Yet their existence would explain such forces as gravitation, the means of transmission of energy, and especially, the enigma proposed by our present presumption that we are ourselves at the end of the progression. Having no heat, they would not bombard other bodies; thus, they would have no weight, despite their many atoms. They would moreover occupy no space, or at least do so in a different way: their state would be the solid as that is to the liquid. Solidity may itself depend on a cubical temperature and pressure. Being more radioactive, and with rays of higher orders, their activity might furnish the entire energy of the universe that we know, and indeed construct it of their emanations. Thus we should have a perfect compensation in nature, the rays centrifugally breaking up into hydrogen etc. and the electrons, which collide and combine, their primal energies "degenerating" towards a stasis expressed by successively more complex atom-forms, which ultimately combine into new molecules of the super-solid elements from whose rays they were the dust. Each molecule thus recombined would disturb the equilibrium of the group, and produce new adjustments accompanied by fresh friction and "create" another "universe" of ray-debris.

But is not this a mere postponement of the puzzle? I don't think so. It accounts for the perpetual motion of the parts; it compensates and conserves Energy as an eternally self-subsistent system. It allows the second law of Thermo-dynamics to operate without the need of postulating a Creator to start the machine, whose work is reduced to a futile Break [?] by ending in inanity. But of course it throws no light whatever upon the Final Riddle of how existence itself came to exist, either as the homogenous unity of the monists, or as our None-Two. The monists are obviously as badly off as ever, for their One needs a Creator no less than the Many of the Pluralists; they are also compelled to taint their own One with a tendency to be Twofold; it is a pitiful evasion to insist that the Other One is only "Illusion": Our Non-Two accepts everything as real: a ten-pound note is one thing, and a bill for ten-pounds another, though they cancel out in our accounts, Our Non-Two also conforms with Newton's First and Third Laws; we do not postulate an unbalanced Matter-Motion whose existence outrages them, and gives the lie to the unanimous testimony of Nature. I might indeed confess that our None-Two is in one sense just as positive as the One; it is a thought, therefore it exists; how then did it come to exist? It is no answer to say that Naught is such that thoughts must arise except in this sense, that Naught is itself an idea related with thought. And this is Agnosticism bordering on Pyrronhism, though strangely enough, it is at the same time Idealism verging on Solipsism.

We seem forced to admit that our None-Two formula for the Universe is Truth only in this limited sense: it is the simplest statement of the conformity of the objective with the subjective. We are aware that our minds are by nature incapable of comprehensions which transcend the terms of their commission. An inhabitant of cloud-veiled Jupiter cannot detect the rotation of his planet, or suspect that there are other worlds than his. The Japanese mouse, as Monsieur de Cyon tells us, has only two pairs of semi-circular canals. It must consequently conceive the world as of 2 dimensions, though it lives and moves in 3. Our own inscrutable intuitions prove that there is a mode of apprehension inaccessible to reason; and we do not know what we really mean when we say that we are certain of something. Truth is unknowable except as that which possesses the power to arouse in us the reaction which we call "assent". This argument is the axiom on which the Mystic bases his geometry. (It is really a common-sense plea for developing the mind of man, just as Henri Poincare's was evolved from Neanderthal ancestors. The quarrel is only about how we should go to work).

It is also the chloroform of the "Faith" gang of foot-pads. Nowmin Samadhic states, these problems are not fully solved in a sense which the mind feels satisfactory, though certainly, in the best cases, there comes either a clue, a clarification, or an increase of intellectual power which testifies to the value of trance as a method of mental evolution. But the intuitive impressions themselves are rarely coherent with the riddles which obsess the Reason; they sweep the pieces from the board, as it were, instead of analyzing the position. True, the Samadhic state disdains the dilemmas of the logician, and frees him from his worries by assuring him that they are only the delusions of a disease, that his problems perplex him simply because he has stated them incorrectly. But the flapper in the Follies Bergeres declines to be distressed by Doubts about Determinism when the curtain rises on the Six Siddhi Sisters in their Stunning Success. "You naughty nice Nibbana, it's our night out." (Words by Miss Ivy Mara, music by Max Mantra, dances arranged by Krishnowsky, frocks by Monsieur Kama, scenery specially painted by Maya.)

Yet suppose that our consciousness is due to the presence of an Element—I name it provisionally Therium, valency Eleven, atomic weight 666—whose rays make a screen of living protoplasm fluoresce in various ways depending on qualities such as shape and structure. Suppose that these rays favour our spiritual growth as electric currents foster vegetable culture, and that our experiences in their turn enrich the molecules of Therium, nourish it by supplying memories and so on, much as living cells make use of simpler forms which lack heir higher properties. We can then conceive the Ego (with its psychological family) as physically independent of any particular organism, and refusing to identify itself with the objects which its radiance energized, and which serve it for food. I am not the wheel which I turn, or the sounds which I hear, but what more natural than that the screen, incapable of perceiving the source of its fluorescence, should attribute that property to itself, despite the utter unreasonableness of any such hypothesis? (We can trace no connection between mind and body, beyond coincidence in certain conditions.) And the screen would assuredly imagine that the mysterious light by which it beheld itself was not only part of itself, but wholly dependent upon it for its existence. It would notice that even small changes in its structure affected the quality of the fluorescence, sometimes destroying it altogether. It would trace the connection between sickness, malnutrition, education, death and various states of consciousness. But it would be ridiculously wrong, the error of consciousness. But it would be ridiculously wrong, the error of concluding from the relations between a series of photographs and the conditions of their production that the object in front of the camera was affected by bad focusing, over-exposure, defective plates and so on. Thus it becomes clear why the sense of personal immortality acquires strength as it learns to dissociate the conscious Ego from its instrument; it is rationally right to do so. The hypothesis is furthermore necessary to supply a motive for existence; without it the contradiction between the undeniable fact that will and intelligence exist and the equally inexorable evidence that the universe is purposeless cannot be reconciled. There must be an element capable of self-determination and self-interpretation; and there is no reason for surprise that the phenomena produced in the course of its activities do not share all its qualities. We think it quite natural that the bread we make and eat fails to appreciate our motives. Here then is a materialistic counterpart of Berkeley's theory of a God in whose mind all things are thoughts. But it escapes the difficulties which spring from his moral implications. Also, it is a logical continuation of Carnot.

But how can we discover this Therium which we suspect? It is something to have predicated some of its qualities. We must ask history to tell us: it cries "Solve et coagula". We compressed and chilled hydrogen until is suddenly discarded its gaseous qualities for those of a liquid. Similarly, we must arrange conditions for our most complex molecules—uranium and protoplasm—such that they cannot manifest in physical and physiological ways, but become psychological. Therium will prove to be independent of space and time, because its properties do not refer to those ideas. The most highly developed, most complex, brains have already ceased to react to such forms of pressure: e.g. simultaneity has lost its meaning for all advanced thinkers, and space is now defined as a mode of interpreting muscular experience.

We distinguish clearly between "eternal" states of mind independent of physical law, and "temporal" thoughts; we are acquiring the power of identifying ourselves with the former. This seems to be the result of building up stable structures in the brain from the simpler and more mobile tabernacles of our ancestors. We refuse to act on impulse; we unite our thoughts by "love under will", compelling them to organize more and more elaborately, to centralized control and coordinated function. It is a synthesis in physiology parallel with that in ethnology from the emotional, isolated nomad without foresight, social economy, or prudence to the civilized man who finds himself more fully in the state-self, whose qualities are not human at all for the most part. It is to be noted that this process does actually construct cerebral convolutions of increased complexity, and that by diminishing the activity of each element of thought in its own sphere, not only is it preserved from its own weakness, not only is its power extended, but it develops a totally new character of a higher type. Thus the ferocity of the cannibal may cost him his life from lack of prudence; alliance with statesmen and students enables him to murder people much more efficiently; it also changes its quality when it is applied to mental and moral obstacles to his welfare.

But the point is that intellectual progress depends upon the economy of energy. The disengagement of heat accompanies the satisfaction of elemental needs in the formation of higher types of existence, with subtler and more varied properties. The "degradation" of energy is therefore the emancipation of Being from imperfection and inanity. In order to synthesize Therium from protoplasm, one must compel every thought to combine with the rest. This means 'love under will', the most intense activity, the most tireless toil, until all the free force is transformed into its final form, unified in consciousness, just as the simplicity "Ego" arises from the hotch-pot of senseless sensations. The identical process is to continue—we synthesize a higher Ego by incorporating the objective universe, little by little in it. Now just as a plant obtained and entirely new order of existence, Life, when it learnt how to construct a Cell, or as man, when he came to arrange a complex structure of cells with sufficient dexterity, transmuted the amoebic immortality of his nature into a mode of Being higher than Life, Self-consciousness; so may we absorb all the old orders of impression into our synthesis, until self-consciousness is constrained to manifest part of its nature in some sublime form, as superior to itself as it is to the soulless Life from which it was crystallized.

In each case, as we have seen, the essence of the method is (a) to bring together as many different elements as possible, (b) to arrange them so as to secure their stability with reference to environment, (c) to organize them so that they may continually incorporate other atoms without risking disruption.

The mechanical, physical, and chemical properties of matter do not disappear when Life informs it; but their importance decreases, and their tyranny is disputed. So again vitality is not destroyed by Self-Consciousness; yet we know of things superior to Life, and we can to some extent manage the forces of Life as living things can in a measure manipulate those of inanimate nature in the interests of their unconscious wills. We may then expect to be able to throw off our present obsession by Self-Consciousness, deeming it valueless in itself just as it now regards Life, its necessary vehicle. We shall also learn how to use the powers of Self-Consciousness as a means to an end. Again, though Life acquired some dexterity in adapting matter to its use, it was clumsy and unintelligent. Ages passed in all sorts of grotesque, hideous, and painful experiments; only one of countless efforts has come even to the third stage. Bur Self-Consciousness has shown Life how to become master of matter in unimaginable ways, though much is yet beyond either wit to apprehend or will to control. The suggestion springs that so soon as we reach the fourth stage we shall be able to do with Life what we now do with inanimate substance.

Now, finally, can we ask history for a hint as to our strategy? We know that it is all a question of collecting and arranging elements. First, we need a nucleus. Life found this in the element Carbon. No other possessed the property of adapting itself to inexhaustibly varied conditions. (I note in passing that, alone among the lighter elements it has sworn off gaseous and liquid form: i.e. it has definitely congealed, as we should have expected from our first condition of progress above stated.) Consciousness in its turn found only one kind of Life which it could use—it should help us to meditate on the conditions of its adaptability, and other analogies with Carbon. What kind of Self-Consciousness may we select as the most promising corner-stone for our new Temple? It must be that which is readiest to try every possible type of transmutation, which rejoices to adapt itself to all suggestions, which fulfills itself in every fresh form. It must know itself indestructible, and care nothing for its own apparent importance in any experiment. Like the brain-cell, it must perish perpetually, and meet every demand on its resources with infinitely elastic response. It must not refuse to recognize any reality, on the ground of its own supposed welfare. There will doubtless be some cases where it will fail as carbon to dally with argon, or philosophy to outwit earthquake. But its worst incapacity will be to imagine that it is an End in itself instead of a means to a mode of Being which transcends it. The nucleus will be the least static type at our disposal. As to the best plan of architecture, organic chemistry must tell us what principles were essential to the pagoda Protoplasm, and comparative anatomy what constituted the new departure in jerry-building peculiar to Man Mansions.

Apart from expert advice, however, we have at least one sound teacher in experience. We cannot have too many workers, too various lines of attack, too carefully compiled records, compared and criticized with constant ardour. In a word, we must follow the method of Science in the strictest and purest sense. Yet it may well be remembered that experience herself points steadily to the Stele of the Epoch, the Book of the Law of Thelema where all may read that every token of the state which is to transcend Self-Consciousness is manifested therein. This proof of Knowledge is also proof of Power. To accept the Law of Thelema is the condition characteristic of the Consciousness proper for the nucleus of the new form of Existence.

666

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