Know The Ledge: The Limitations of Mind in Occult Study
“The intellect is a beautiful servant, but a terrible master.”
When one is identified with one’s ego and the mental narrative that has been constructed around one's experience of life – like pretty much all of us are most of the time – it can be a major challenge to approach one’s esoteric studies from an objective standpoint. Why is that? In this mode of operation, our knowledge becomes a defining part of our self-image, which we are compelled to protect when it becomes threatened. When we are in this space, our enquiries are powered by the Thinker and the Prover, as they were termed by Robert Anton Wilson*:
“I identify with this piece of knowledge, so I must prove its validity – or disprove any other piece of information that challenges its validity."
This should be familiar to anyone who has witnessed a heated political argument – or a disagreement between modern occultists on a touchy subject like the Holy Guardian Angel, for that matter. The back-and-forth interaction between these two aspects of mind can lead us through an endless loop of thinking, proving, and disproving, often in a semi-conscious attempt to bolster our ego rather than gain true knowledge. But what instead, if we could account for an "unknown" factor in our quest for knowledge? The very notion of unknown is perceived as a threat to the ego, for whom knowing is a form of control.
This is why Socrates took such pains to point out the limitations of knowledge in the Platonic dialogues. He began by triggering a defensive response in the other party through debate, deftly leading them through a series of twists, turns, and logical fallacies until their mind ceased to operate in the typical problem-solving fashion, and they were forced to acknowledge – and accept – their relative ignorance. The effect was much like that of a Zen Buddhist ko’an, which seeks to break through thought and language to allow for a window of illumination, known as satori, to overwhelm and thereby transcend the thinking function. He did this not because he was trying to insult or provoke them, but because true knowledge cannot be acquired when we are identified with what we think we know. He was essentially breaking them out of the problem-solving mode of consciousness so they could begin afresh with a clean mental slate – a tabula rasa, if you will.
When one's sense of self is tied in with what one thinks one knows, any quest for knowledge eventually devolves into a quest for personal validation – or, ultimately, a quest to remind oneself that one is safe and in control. If, however, we can let go of our identification with our knowledge and begin to recognize its limitations, we are led instead by our curiosity, which opens the doorway to new and novel information. The quest for knowledge then becomes a fun adventure that leads us down many different pathways – it is seldom a linear progression. It becomes a true quest rather than a grasp for personal validation, or control. This hearkens back to another Zen concept known as shoshin, or beginner’s mind.
At the end of the day, we must remember that all intellectual understanding is limited, because it is, by its nature, rooted in language. A tree is not defined by the word we use to describe it – after all, a word is just a collection of letters and sounds that we have all agreed upon to describe the object we are observing. Words are little more than symbols used to describe abstract concepts so that we humans can plan, reason, and communicate with one another. Going back to the works of Plato, the word "tree" is just a shadow on the wall of a cave, while the tree itself, free from description, is the ideal form the escaped prisoner finds in the world above.* And we have, in a way, become prisoners to language, chained down in the cave of the modern world, where we perceive reality through the filters of thought, emotion, and symbol rather than raw experience itself.
When one's quest for knowledge is but a thinly-disguised search for validation, one can merely scratch the surface, but if one can sacrifice this need in exchange for a genuine desire to learn and grow, the occult dimension of the information is revealed – or in other words, Isis is unveiled, and we are invited to experience reality from beyond the shackles of mind.
Bonus Tarot Exercises
Pick a card you have a deep personal attachment towards — a card you know like the back of your hand — and do your best to willfully ignore everything you know about it — the symbols... the correspondences... any personal associations... Imagine it's the first time you've ever looked at it. What do you see?
Conversely, once you've chosen your card, go into your closet, under your bed, up in your grandma's attic, etc. and dig out the most neglected deck you own, find the card in question, and examine it closely. Do any new insights pop out to you? Does the unfamiliar imagery evoke different thoughts or emotions than the versions in your go-to decks? Now compare and contrast it with those more familiar renditions and try to see what this fresh perspective can add to your understanding of the card.
*see Robert Anton Wilson’s Prometheus Rising
**see Plato’s Allegory of the Cave from his Republic
-Tim