OK, but this conversation is coming out of the context of how to deal with multiple magical/divine/psychic beings with conflicting intent in your realm. Instead of any specific limitation that generally applied to all, you proposed that you would simply never see anyone do anything you don’t like with their magical abilities. i.e. they would simply never manifest in your realm. In order to maintain such a principle, you must strip yourself of the idea that individual beings are in any sense free or independent. They are not even ostensibly other in a significant degree if they don’t have the ability to think and want and act in ways contrary to your desires. That implies a dramatic removal of power from apparent others, all apparent others – either they can only use magic when it pleases you (so, interestingly, it would put everyone else in a position of having to pray/placate to you or your subconscious in order to perform magic, much like the Christian/Hermetic/Jewish ceremonial magic that calls upon the angels of god to request magical service), or they can use magic to do whatever they please, but what they please is always pre-structured to match the way you want them to think and feel and intend.

That’s one way to think about it. Another way is like this:

Each intent produces a corresponding result.

If I hold an intent that I have a pleasant experience then that’s what happens. Then what about an intent that I don’t have a pleasant experience? Such an intent is also possible. But they’re not both possible at the same time, since they are in conflict. So if we grant true otherness to others, then axiomatically they can never be suppressed or ended, because they are true existences. Instead what would happen is that because of their divergent intents, they wouldn’t be resolved into the same world as me. From their perspectives all their intents succeed. From my own, the same is true. If all of us are true existences, then the meaning of this is that we each exist in separate universes which have the option of overlapping or interpenetrating and each can control the degree and the quality of this overlap as well.

So you described the possibility where others never had any independent existence to begin with. In your scenario they were subconsciously mine to control all along, and it’s just that I can control them consciously now. So in this scenario others don’t lose anything at all, because they never had anything to begin with. They never had independence or even something called “life” or “will” to begin with, and if they never had it to begin with, how can they lose it?

On the other hand, if they have wills, their wills should follow the principle of willing, and thus their wills should be as complete and as mysterious as my own, because even if a little bit of this mysteriousness and power were missing, my will wouldn’t be called “will.” In that case, they along with their universes diverge if their shenanigans go outside the level I agree to resolve into my experience.

We see small instances of this with dreaming. People who are dreaming leave their bodies “here” but their minds experience a world that isn’t compatible with this world. However, since they retain the memory and the impulse of this world, they can return back, and that’s when they wake up.

There is no middle ground here, because if others are not truly other, then at most I can play-pretend that they are, but this would be me engaging in what is essentially a lie and the one I am lying to is myself. I would have to deceive myself.

Part of the problem as I see it, is that you don’t allow arbitrary creation of different spaces, and I do. So since you are thinking only in terms of a single space, then the conflicts have to be resolved. But since I allow arbitrary creation of different spaces, conflicts never have to be resolved. They can be, but never have to be. Every conceived possibility exists in potential. There is a situation where conflicts have to be resolved and a situation where they do not have to be resolved, because I can conceive of both scenarios. There is a situation where many different experiential spaces exist in a non-intersecting manner and for all intents and purposes those other spaces are possibly not even myths from all points of view outside those spaces.

By becoming more conscious of that aspect of my will, it’s going to be adjusted a lot more and much more flexible.

I don’t agree. You’ll be doing all the same things then and now, but the difference is that you’ll become conscious of them and begin taking responsibility.

And yes, stability is a feature of your own will, not the world. You’re projecting what is really your feature onto the world. Regardless of how you manipulate anything, you are always stable because that is your nature. However, when stability is not owned, it doesn’t seem that way. When stability is disowned the possibility of gaining and losing stability appears real.

Basically stability is your ability to always succeed. It has nothing to do with the rate of change. Stability simply means your plans cannot be shaken. Of course when you project so much onto the world, almost all your plans are involved with the world at that time. In that case you may be unable to distinguish between the world as a specific optional vision and your will in general.

I mean, if you eliminate the potential for people or the environment to be set up in ways that you don’t like you eliminate the ‘aliveness’ or ‘contrariness’, as well as I expect disrupting some of the continuity (like there are situations where what I want to have happen most right now cannot be continuous with the past without completely abandoning all sense of there being a world that follows consistent, stable rules).

This isn’t an all or nothing. Explain why is it that I don’t lack a sense of aliveness in my lucid dream while at the same time always having an amenable experience without fail?

There are interesting disagreements and boring disagreements. There are stupid challenges and fascinating challenges.

Why do you think convention should be tolerant scientific physicalism?

I don’t have any sentimental attachment to it, but simply, it’s because in the past I was a physicalist, so this convention seems like a friendly platform from which to jump off, in a sense. Once my powers develop sufficiently enough I may no longer want such a convention anymore.

Why not have a convention with some degree of magic (or potentially a lot of magic?)?

I don’t lack things to do or think about, so why should I think about this? If I avoid something it is not necessarily me rejecting that thing. I may have a certain order in mind. For example I have potatoes and strawberries and I first eat potatoes and then strawberries. When I am eating potatoes I don’t have it in my mind that I am rejecting strawberries, but at the same time, I am also not yet eating them.

When for me it is the right time to think about magickal conventions, I will of course naturally know that. Until then, I also know what to think about and do.

I mean, do you not want to encourage/help other people to become gods themselves? To spread this idea?

I don’t want to spread this idea at all. At the same time, I believe some people are destined to encounter this idea not because of anything I am doing, but due to their own volitional states. In that case, I and what I do can be an accessory from their POV on their path.

Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2017-09-23 09:34:55 (dndmdvn)