The Widow’s Son has tagged me, over at The Burning Taper, to do a meme revolving around books. This idea takes me back some. It has been so long since I have read one, I had almost forgotten they exist. The tag is to list three books that have had an influence on your life, particularly books that most other people may not have read. After giving it some thought-here goes:
THE MYSTIC PATH TO COSMIC POWER, by Vernon Howard
No, this book will not turn you into a poor man’s Silver Surfer. However, it does give invaluable advice on how to live your life, as what the book refers to as “your true self”. Not the self you have formulated over the years of societal influences, but the real you that sleeps unawares, or at best is desperately yearning to break out.
What the book teaches is this: you are not your drives, your desires, your needs, your lusts, your ambitions, your possessions, your job, your career goals, your likes or dislikes, etc. These things have their place, and have a degree of importance, but way too many people identify themselves as dependent on these things, as actually being these things. Taken all together, these things become a “false self”. Even positive attributes when allowed to take control of a person’s identity are not actually good. In fact, this type of self-identification with these outer attributes lead to a form of dependence, even slavery, to them.
For example, suppose you want to sleep with your neighbor’s wife. Howard teaches us that, the correct way to look at this situation is not that “I want to fuck my neighbor’s wife”, but that “IT wants to fuck my neighbor’s wife”. By looking at such base desires (and even more positive ones) in this light, it gives you power over them, power to control, change, and maybe even discard them, as opposed to them ruling over your life, and even becoming your life.
It’s good stuff and draws on a variety of examples from various different philosophies and spiritual disciplines, from the New Testament, Buddhism, The Tao, to Master Eickhert. All these philosophies, past teachers and masters, have many things in common, and all advise to take charge of your life, live it fully and joyfully, but without care and worry, by simply living life as it comes, more or less, and being yourself.
You can sum it up perhaps with two words-WAKE UP!
THE SATANIC BIBLE, by Anton Szandor LaVey
These two books taken together are not as contradictory to each other as they might appear to be at first glance. In fact, in ways they are actually complimentary. LaVey felt that all organized religion amounted to what he called “hoodwinking”, and he spared no criticism towards Wicca, or other so-called “white path” religions. To LaVey, life was too complicate to view in terms of black and white. To his way of thinking, the whole universe is one vast grey area.
Yet, he actually did not believe in Satan as an actual controlling entity, but as more of an archetype of the human experience. God he saw not as an omnipotent, caring, wise creator, but as actually little more than an impersonal cosmic force.
He felt that human drives, desires, impulses, needs, and even lusts were natural, and therefore to be indulged, albeit within reason, and in moderation, and with all due appropriate respect for others, as well as yourself. Anyone who denied this or sought to overly restrain or control, or even deny these base human needs, was either a fool, or in the case of some religious leaders, manipulators and frauds. He also had a lot to say about “psychic vampires” (a term I think LaVey might have invented), who fed off guilt or gratitude to the extent they drained a person’s energies.
In his world view, the fulfillment of the needs of human ego and desire was of the utmost priority, but at the same time, he was an advocate of self-discipline and responsibility, and adamantly insisted on community and social responsibility, and on the need for law and order.
His religion is actually a very hedonistic one, and though in some cases it might seem harsh and cruel in terms of, for example, his views on charity to the dispossessed and poor, etc., it is hard to fault his overall positions. Moreover, a great deal of the ritual and magickal parts of the book is very compelling, poetic, and entertaining. For example, the section of invocations and spells written in the Enochian Keys is powerful stuff. According to him, a recitation of a spell in this language is, due to the vibrations inherent in its tonal qualities, very powerful and effective if done properly.
Like most magickal/occult books, there is the obligatory version of an invocation to the elements. His invocation to what would ordinarily be called The Elemental Power Of Air is, “Howl, Ye Winds”. I have always liked that, and in fact, I sometimes use it.
More importantly, however, is that LaVey helped me to understand that there is no “sin” in being a normal, natural human being. In fact, it is good if done properly, with no guilt, no shame, but at the same time, with self-discipline and regard for the rights and well-being of society as a whole and the rights of others to also live their lives to the fullest.
“Do what thou wilt so long as you harm none”, in other words, might be a perfect summation of LaVey’s philosophy, albeit in his own particular style of circus-like showmanship.
THE NAKED APE, by Desmond Morris
If you ever find yourself in a debate with somebody that falls back on that old chestnut of fundamentalist anti-evolutionary argument “if man descended from apes why are there still apes?” this is the book you will want to have read. The answer of course, is not that man descended from apes-mankind is himself a specific species of ape. Just as gorillas are one branch of the ape family, and chimpanzees are another, as well as baboons, orangutans, etc. - humans are themselves a specific type of ape.
This book not only points this out-which I already had figured out, incidentally, before I had ever heard of it-but it goes into some detail as to the set of circumstances that might have led to mankind’s gradual evolutionary climb from tree-dwelling, to land based, to water dependent species of ape. Once as hairy as our relatives, our loss of body hair-or fur if you will-was merely another evolutionary adaptation.
The book is largely theoretical, yet even in its obvious suppositions, it is based on solid ground, developed from years of scientific and anthropological findings. It even offers a remarkably lucid theory about the possible origins of religion, specifically to belief in a supreme deity, which is something, by the way, which is a standard feature even of most polytheistic faiths.
According to this theory, one dominant male ape at one time controlled humans, much as you see in several other ape species and other kinds of mammals as well. This dominant male controlled every aspect of group life, including which male ape he permitted to have sex with which female ape.
Somewhere along the evolutionary climb, the dominant ape in most if not all tribal divisions of ape families were killed off. The reasons are unclear. It may have been due to some cataclysmic disaster, or to some kind of rebellion, or an illness or plaque. Possibly, it may have been a simple aspect itself of evolutionary adaptation, a need to harness greater inter-tribal cooperation. Whatever the reason may have been, no one ape was ever able to maintain that degree of total control over their group, or respective groups, ever again.
This led to rivalries, and to alliances, and ultimately to battles and to, in some cases, compromises. It was the beginning of human law, as we know it, and to the further establishment of what was to become a code of morals, which became necessary in order for the tribe to not only survive, but to function as a cohesive unit.
Unfortunately, there was also a void, a vacuum that needed to be filled, in the form of dependence on an “all-powerful” entity that made the important decisions, someone who was needed to be looked upon as infallible, without peer; all-wise. Belief in “God” not only filled this void-met this need-it also solidified the law as propagated and enforced by those rulers who came to be viewed as the bridge between man and “god”. This was the newly emerging priest class.
Dreams, awe of natural phenomenon, and the insatiable human attribute of the need to know, also helped the process along (along with possibly the incidental ingestion from time to time of psychedelic substances, in my own personal view).
Yet, it is important to understand that Morris himself does not in this book question the existence of God, nor does he seek to affirm it. He simply explains how the belief might have come about, while allowing the readers to make their own interpretation as to its validity, or lack thereof. Well, if there is a God, who is to say he did not prepare his eventual introduction to humankind by precisely this means.
Whatever your view or where you come down on the evolutionary/creationist debate, this is a worthwhile book, actually an invaluable one, in my opinion. It could not only make evolution believable, but even comprehensible, actually, to folks that might not previously have given it a lot of thought, or might be basing their judgments on false premises.
I could list a few others, but the meme called for three, so I will stick to that. It also called to tag five others. Well, if you are one of the five other bloggers who read this blog on a regular basis, consider yourselves tagged. You are on your honor.
