Fire from Within

The key goal, the ultimate goal that sets the general direction of the Way of the Magus, as we have said more than once, is freedom, understood precisely as the absence of any restrictions on the manifestation (or non-manifestation) of the mind. The state of mind that lies along this vector is described in the Myth as “Power,” and the Way itself is regarded as a succession of realizations. From this point of view, freedom can be defined as a state of absolute realization, and Power as the ability to effect those realizations. At the same time, from the perspective of limited manifested existence, the state of complete realization, freedom, appears as an abstract, infinitely distant goal, since the number of potencies to be realized is infinite, and therefore the Way is infinite as well. And the Magical myth by no means turns a blind eye to this contradiction, admitting that, if viewed from an evolutionary perspective, the Way indeed has no end, and its existence consists precisely in endless extension.

At the same time, the Magi, of course, are not people who would find an understanding of that order of things to serve as a reason to cease striving to change what seems unchangeable.

Throughout their history the Magi sought a way out, and, of course, they found one.

It turned out that the evolutionary Way of developing consciousness is not the only possible Way of its realization.

Besides the “progressive” actualization that brings one potency into reality after another, there is also a “revolutionary” realization that can cause the mind’s omnipotence to manifest into manifestation all at once.

Such a revolutionary Way of realizing the mind, which carries it from a singular/limited state into the state of Great Perfection, the Pleroma, is based on the Power’s crucial concept of induction. It was discovered that stable and integrated flows of Power are capable of generating and inducing other flows that merge together and thus, in turn, induce the birth of new, larger flows; integrating with them, they then give rise to still more significant currents, and so on, until the whole mind avalanches, or more precisely — explodes — into a single radiant current. The main question was how to create the methods of establishing such stable integrated inductive systems.

Theoretically, two such methods were found.

The first Way boils down to an internal self-induction, a kind of thermonuclear reaction within consciousness itself, which, by continually heating itself through its longings, reaches such high values of existential intensity that they exceed a “critical mass” and shift consciousness from the evolutionary Way to the revolutionary one. Clearly, this approach, on the one hand, demands enormous resolve, tireless will, unquenchable desire, and clarity of vision, and on the other hand carries the risk of destroying consciousness, which may simply not withstand such a degree of intensity and, instead of realizing itself, disintegrate. Indeed, historically very few people have attained full realization this way. The best-known examples are the great Tibetan yogi and Magus Milarepa, and in Europe the legendary (and semi-mythical) Christian Rosenkreuz.

The second Way amounts to a closed mutual induction among a group of minds, known as the “Magical Family.” This approach implies a sort of “inductive coil” in which a constant mutually reinforcing induction of Power among the members of such a family occurs, which ultimately leads to an “explosion” and their full realization. There are fewer dangers on such a path, but its feasibility is limited by the extraordinary difficulty of creating a system in which individual members would indefinitely, “superconductively,” induce one another.

In any event, the revolutionary Way of the development of the mind has always been a very narrow path few could tread; this Way could never be a mass path, since it required enormous will and was bound up with incredible difficulties and dangers. Each Magus, guided by his desires, by his Power and inner nature, must find his own natural Way along which he can reach the highest levels of realization, looking at himself objectively, not choosing the Way that seems to him “higher” or “better,” but following his heart and nature.