Hey, for anyone still curious, here's my current way of expressing the topic of this thread. Probably fair to call it "magickal use of partial formless states," and also "conception of self as egregore."
Thanks again for the help!
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What is it Like to “See The Sky?”
When I “see the sky” it is as if all the sparks of consciousness spread apart, and the nowhere, once hidden behind perception, is now the predominant factor of experience, though experience itself only occurs within the pixels of consciousness (the smallest bits of awareness).
I don't know if this is the “ground of being” some mystical doctrines speak of, but I'd use similar words to describe it.
Both words and consciousness pixels are of course “in-formation.” This means they are “information” in the typical sense, but that they are also in particular formations, like members of a marching band performing across the field of awareness.
In-formation is inherently within the realm of forms, and thus falls away when one enters a “formless state.” If you don't know what formless states are, I recommend reading Daniel Ingram's Mastering The Core Teachings of the Buddha. Loads of useful information in that book.
Fully seeing the sky involves letting go of all categorization and symbolizing. When fully seeing the sky, I cannot recognize objects. There is no inner monologue. There is still sense perception, but none of it is identified. This is like a sky perfectly clear of clouds.
The “clouds” are what you get when your mind puts raw sensory reception into formations, when you categorize, recognize, organize. These clouds are made of tiny specks of awareness which have been understood by the mind as belonging together and forming a single concept.
The clouds are not perception. The clouds are what results from the way your awareness clusters around your perception. If you do not process your reception (beyond the nerve signals entering your brain etc.), then clouds do not form. There is still perception. You are not anesthetized, but there is no comprehension of what kinds of things you are perceiving.
If I were to see the sky now with my eyes open, my vision would blur somewhat. There are still the same patches of color I saw a moment ago, but there is no longer recognition of hands as hands, of a phone as a phone, and so on. (There may still be some clouds I don't detect. You don't know what you don't know!)
This applies to all senses, not just sight. The sensations of clothes and sitting remain, but there's no comprehension of me sitting on a chair. The tactile sensations which the chair causes in my body do not become formed into the concept of a chair.
Note that, if those sensations became in-formation, were shaped into and then obscured by the concept of a chair, the mind would tend to “sense” “the chair,” rather than the brain's raw reception of our sensory nerves.
Being shaped into a form, “the chair” (the conceptual object, not the sensuous experience) is like a cloud, floating across the sky, hiding a portion of it from our awareness.
When partially seeing the sky, only certain types of categorization cease, while others remain. This is like a sky with only a few clouds.
This is magickally useful, because those few types of categorization, those few clouds, become easier to reorganize without all of the attachments which come with the rest of your total perceptual field.
This is the main technique which the ritual text of this book engages with.
The ritual text is all about partially seeing the sky so that you can reconfigure your total perceptual field. It is clearing the sky of all but a few wisely chosen clouds, whose shapes you then manipulate into patterns who will positively influence the rest of the weather as more clouds return.
The specific organization of your clouds, your weather system, your network of in-formation, is conceptualized as being an egregore made up of all the minds who compose your hominid personhood.
These minds are weather subsystems. Your clouds, your in-formation networks, your clusters of your psyche, are in themselves composed of mind. They are made of “pixels of consciousness:” Sparks of awareness. Because of this, each of these clouds, who appear to be nested in fractal-like patterns, are in some sense, equally person as you. You are them. They are you. “You” are their egregore.
I'd broadly recommend not identifying with your egregore, but there are social and cultural circumstances in which behaving as if you are your egregore may prove beneficial.
Perhaps a wiser person would produce the greater beneficence by not having an egregore at all, but I'm not there yet! Thus far I continue to do well for myself and others by altering my instincts.
By glimpsing the sky while shifting around the organs in your egregore, you deconstruct and reconstruct your ways of perceiving, your ways of understanding your perceptions, and your instinctive reactions to both your perceptions and your ways of understanding.
You can use these techniques to alter the egregore you inhabit, that inhabits you.
Who do you will as your becoming?
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