The Purpose of Life
By Shomer Michael Freedman, late Senior Guardian
One of my students recently wrote to me and asked what I thought was the purpose of life? Having read ‘Life, the Universe and Everything’ I knew the answer immediately: 42. Or perhaps 23, as I have also read the ‘Illuminatus’. Then I sat down and wrote the following:
It is said that the purpose of Life is to become fully aware of itself. That’s all very well for Life, but what about you, me and every one else? I see one’s general purpose being conditioned by one of two possible styles of being that seem to adopted by all people.
Human beings fall by and large into two styles or ways of being, the religious and the magical.
Many people are too timid to commit themselves enough to venture very far in either direction; and many hop back and forth from one to other, for they are so close to the beginning of their own path that the two ways have not diverged very far apart for them.
The Religious Way
The way of religion is the way of surrender and devotion. The ultimate aim of truly religious people is to be surrendered to whatever god, goddess, goddesses or gods, they have chosen to be devoted to. “I surrender all,” the devout Christian believer sings, while the Krishna devotee chants over and over again the Beloved’s names until there is room for nothing else in their being; while pagans stretch out naked on the earth and long to lose themselves in the goddess. The ultimate aim of the religious person is to be totally one with God.
There is a secular, non-spiritual equivalent of the way of devotion, seen most clearly in politics, where people become totally devoted to the Cause. I remember seeing Trotskyites at my University, whose lives were totally dedicated to the cause of the working classes at a level of intensity which few religious people would attain. Yet, in their philosophy, there was no place for any kind of god or religion.
The Magical Way
The way of magic is the way of control. Every one who would follow the way of magic must learn to stand on their own two feet, no longer afraid of Big Daddy or looking for hugs from Big Mummy, but free, fully conscious, human adults, which is to be godlike.
Every man and woman is a Star – Crowley
The ultimate aim of magicians to be in control of themselves and of a wide and wider sphere within the universe – until each Magician becomes a god.
There is a secular, non-spiritual equivalent of magic. It is Science. Both use prediction and control in their work. Both share the same basic axiom:
Believe nothing; test everything; discover the truth for yourself
Both say:
Do this and that will happen; do this again and that will happen again
The difference between Magic and Science is that Real Magic is always working at the very fringes of human understanding of the universe. Real Magicians push beyond the limits of known existence and seek to explore those ranges of being that have never been explored before. Is it any surprise that therefore they do not always describe the new things they have seen very accurately at first? We can only think and speak in terms of what we already know and believe. So, if their exploration discovers things never seen or thought before, the words of the greatest occultists mislead even when striving to be most accurate.
The Esoteric always becomes Exoteric
Given time, the Esoteric always becomes Exoteric and on the way loses both its superstitions and a lot of its glamour. Astrology became astronomy; alchemy became chemistry-, mesmerism ceased to be an occult art and became hypnosis. Another good example is the visualisation exercises of the magical orders of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Looked at today, we see that they were exercises for strengthening right-brain consciousness – but no-one knew of the double human brain before 1950. The hard thing for magicians to learn that often, as their occult arts become sciences, they usually become easier to do and more effective. The Real Magician accepts the streamlining and looks for new worlds to conquer. The hard thing for scientists to learn is that the occult art always contain more than the scientific principles extracted from it. Astrology contains more than astronomy; as does alchemy contains more than chemistry. The true scientist does not reject superstitious beliefs out of hand, but looks to find if possible what happened that started the superstition.
Representatives of pharmacy companies paddle up the Amazon to discover the healing herbs used by the natives; they take the herbs back to the laboratory and extract their active principle for use throughout the world. But the rarely try to find out why healing often happens when the natives use herbs that have no active principles.
Rediscovering ‘Gaia’
Some years ago, after I told a student about how magicians at the end of the 18th century were making a big occult deal out of hypnotism, and at the end of the 19th century were doing exercises to develop their right brain, which was nobody knew about before 1950, asked me, “What happened next? What is magic doing now?”
Good question. I had no immediate answer; but, later, after thinking about lot, I realised what happened next.
Around the time of the First World War, some women, Margaret Murray, Jessie Weston and others, began to write and to talk about an Old Religion of people ‘who worshipped the Earth Goddess’. Some women began to do things like take their clothes off and stand ‘with naked feet on the earth. It does not matter that, if there was an Old Religion at all, it was almost certainly nothing like they thought. They were tapping into the Earth-consciousness. Later, their practices and understandings were adopted by the witches of the 1950s.
Now, in the late 20th century, we have Lovelock’s Gaia movement, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Green political parties, few of whose members are witches or magicians. The Esoteric has become Exoteric, again.
Where now?
We might be seeing right now some of the oldest magical axioms and teachings for example, as above, so below and the doctrine of correspondences, achieving exoteric fulfilment in holographic practice and theory or in the reasoning of the newest breeds of physicists.
Where is magic going at present? Not an easy question. We are too close to it. We are in it up to the neck, and we cannot see the whole picture – yet.
But, I believe that what Real Adepts are now doing might lie in such sayings as:
“To some extent we are discovering the universe
And to some extent, we are creating it.”
In this sentence lies the core clue to both the theory and practice of Real Magic, Becoming God remaining Human, if you can apply it.
The Purpose of my Life
I believe that the purpose of Life at the universal level is to know itself and thus to become God. What began as formless energy [Light] evolved to become organic matter [Life]; then became complex enough successively to sustain consciousness, to be aware of others, to be aware of wider spheres than its own immediate demands and desires [Love]. I conclude my every letter with the following which states what I work with as my purpose in life. You are welcome to it for yourself, if you choose to accept it.
Be blessed as you walk in the Way of the Great Work of lifting all living
beings to full awareness of Light and Life and Love.
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