Aleister Crowley-Amrita ...

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Liber CCCXLIII: AMRITASome Comments on the Elixir of LifeExtracted from the Magical Record of the Beast 666for the year 1920 e.v.By Aloster Kerval (Aleister Crowley)7 June 1:55 a.m.I feel inspired to jot down a few notes upon the Elixir ofLife.The Elixir of Life by the Master TherionThe conditions of life are that the organism should be able to adjust itselfcontinually to its environment. Any individual, to do this for long, needseither very great intelligence or very great luck. His chief physical assetis elasticity, the power of compensation and recuperation. Our bodies aresome 75% pure water; we are a mere sponge, our strength arises from the greatmechanical ingenuity of our structure. But we are not `solid bodies' likemost inanimate beings. This water, by kidneys, lungs, and skin, constantlycleanses us, and carries off most of our waste and noxious matter. Block oneof these conduits; death follows very rapidly. However, this drainage systemis not quite perfect; our pipes `fur' like a kettle. Disease and accidentapart, we die of arterio-sclerosis caused by the gradual deposits of insolublesalts which harden the arteries and destroy the elasticity which enables themto adjust themselves to new conditions. In fact, we `perish' like indiarubber. Old age is simply a solidification of the tissues, all of whichbecome hard, dry and brittle.As in philosophy, change is life, stagnation death; we should not fear a briskmetabolism. Why should the process which we call growth only a few years agobecome degeneration? For the same reason that a well-kept well-oiled machineworks more easily with age while a rusty one wrecks itself. Exercise helps usto sluice our sewers, but we must flush them well with water to dissolvemineral waste. We must avoid the ingestion of foods likely to leave insolubledeposits.But there is another cause of decay, cause also in part of this poisoning. Ourorgans would repair themselves perfectly, if they were given sufficient rest.In their haste they absorb the first material to hand, be it good or bad. Also,we call on them to work before they are fully rested and so wear themgradually out. Exercise is necessary to keep us clean; but our rest must beperfect restoration also. We can give the muscles this benefit by Asana, andalso reduce to a minimum the work of heart and lungs. We can give our diges-tions rest by eating only at noon and sunset, thus allowing them a cleartwelve hours of the twenty-four. Pranayama is the ideal exercise as itpromotes metabolism to the utmost with the minimum of fatigue, and can becombined with Asana.The Hindus, to whom we owe these practices, realize also (as I, above) thatthe solidity of the food is an objection. They try to live on the Prana(subtle energy) contained in it. For instance, they teach people to rejecttheir food before it has passed out of the stomach. In the West, we havesought rather to discover concentrations of good, and pre-digested prepara-tions with a minimum of substance liable to form waste insoluble or poisonousproducts. We thus endeavor to diminish the work necessary to assimilation, aswell as to avoid dirt and disorder in our Temple. We even eliminate onoccasion the whole alimentary canal, and feed our patients by direct injectioninto the blood, or by absorbtion of nutriment in some convenient mucousmembrane.But mankind--in temperate climes--does not ask merely to exist; it demandsjoy; and joy, physiologically speaking, consists in the expenditure of surplusenergy. Men living in the tropics need very little food since all we requirebeyond the repair of tissues and supply of mechanical force, is the heatrequired to keep our bodies at 37o Centigrade, as above the temperature of theair. If that be already 27o or so, we need but half of that necessary if itbe 17o, or one third if it be 7o. Yet men in the tropics are not moreenergetic than our Scots and Norsemen. Those like dolce far niente, repose,as these take pleasure in activity. Even their phantasies attest to it, theone inventing Nirvana as the other Valhalla.We admire the frolics of the young horse turned out to grass; we cultivaterough games, wild sports, and athletics. The Struldbruggs of Swift areperhaps, to us, of all his creations the most horrible. The immortality weask is neither idleness nor stagnation. We want infinite Youth to squander,just as we wish a bottomless purse not to hoard but to spend. We cannot rest,just as the tropical peoples cannot work properly and efficiently. By ourtheory they should live longer than we do; but the same high temperature thatfavours them befriends their enemies, bacteria; and they lack our science ofhealth.Now all the means that we take to prolong life, such as I have outlined above,have so far failed to supply this superfluity of energy which we reallydesire. People with diets and breathing exercises and the like are usuallywalking sepulchres--some of them whited! The animal who thinks about hishealth is already sick. Absence of noise and friction is the witness of freemechanical function. Fear actually creates disease, for the mind begins toexplore and so interferes with, the unconscious rhythm of the body, as theEdinburgh Review killed John Keats.The man with the best chance of prolonged youth is he who eats and drinksheartily, not much caring what; who does things vigorously in the open air,with the minimum of common-sense precautions; and who keeps his mind at thesame time thoroughly active, free from worry, and his heart high. He hascome, with William Blake, to the Palace of Wisdom by the Road of Excess. Heis on friendly terms with Nature, and though he does not fear her he heedsher, and does not provoke her. It is better says he, to wear out than to rustout. True, but is there need to wear out? He tires himself improperly, and hedigs his grave with his teeth.It is this surplus of good food, this codocil to our Will to Live, that makesus, like the Englishman on the fine day, want to go out and kill something.And so Death pays in some much Uric-Acid at his human Savings-Bank.There are only two solutions possible, the invention of either a solvent moreperfect than water, or a super-Food. The first alternative is theoreticallynone too probable. As to the second, if food were merely a chemical andmechanical agent in us, the problem would be one of diet. But there is somereason to believe that food contains a substance yet unanalyzed and unweighedwhich is of the nature of pure Energy. Live foods, like oysters, stimulateinexplicable; foods long stored lose their nutrive value, though the chemistand physicist can detect no change. We need no psychical research but onlycommon sense and common experience to tell us that there is a differencebetween a live thing and a dead one beyond the detective powers of thelaboratories of Mid-Victorian arrogance and dogmatism.A copper wire changes not in colour, weight, or chemical composition when acurrent of electricity passes through it; must we deny the existence of thatforce whose nature is still perfectly mysterious despite our knowledge of itsproperties, our measurements and our control of it? Why then deny a Life-bearing force? Ostensibly because `there is no evidence of it'; but mainlybecause the hypothesis happened to be packed in with the theological parcel ofrubbish. But we have nothing to span the gap between the two well-ascertainedgroups of facts familiar to all; namely the facts of `matter' and the facts of`mind'.To our copper wire again! Electricity is matter of a subtle and tenuous sort,in a peculiar state of motion; so is my hypothetical Life-bearing force. Thecharged copper wire does not wear out; why should the human body do so, ifonly we could feed it with pure Life?Nature everywhere is prolific of live things, animal and vegetable. (Pray notethat these things, and only these avail to feed us.) What wealth of`spriritual' force in and acorn! What history, its beginning veiled beyond allsearch! What potentiality of future life, of growth, of multiplication,beyond all conjecture! Like us, it has the power of Life; it can take livethings and dead things into its own substance, bidding them, for its ownpurposes, to live again, transfigured! There's far more energy in the acornthan in radium, at which fools gape so wide in wonder. Far more, and farhigher; radium only degenerates and dissipates; the acorn lives!But all that energy is latent and potential; the acorn must be fed, like thefire that it is. (For every growth is a chemical change, a kind of combustion,element married to element with violence, with change of state, with heat,light pleasure, pain, as its by-products. Growth crowns itself with bloom orscent, with flame or colour, with wisdom conscious or unconscious.) The acorncannot hoard its wealth or experience, use its credit of possibility, exceptby taking earth, air, and water into partnership, and invoking on the Venture,the Benediction of the Sun. If we destroy the fragile walls of its hugeLibrary of Wisdom, we do not otherwise than the Saracen at Alexandria. Theages draw black hoods over their mighty foreheads; they cover theirinscrutable eyes; they breathe no more upon us; their voice is Silence,Mystery, Oblivion; an... [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]