Psybermagick: Advanced Ideas in Chaos Magic - Peter J. Carroll 2000

Ourselfs Multimind

Some philosophers and psychologists bemoan the disintegration or fragmentation of the self in the contemporary world.

We celebrate this development.

The belief in a single self stems from religious monotheisms having only a single god. Let us throw out the baby with the bath water.

If you consider yourself an ’individual’, in the sense of ’indivisible’, you have not lived.

If you merely consider yourself as a single being capable of playing various roles, then you have yet to play them in extremis.

The selfs must allow each self a shot at its goals in life, if you wish to achieve any sense of fulfillment and remain sane.

So many people seem to spend their lives trying to appear normal predictable and consistent to themselves and those that surround them. They just end up bored with themselves, bereft of any depth of inner resources, suffocated by the inhibitions that defend their own monolithic identities.

If you can only live once at a time you may as well have several parallel identities on the go at that time.

Commentary 3

The authors apologize in advance for any irritation and confusion caused by the use of standard Chaotic grammar which avoids all concepts of ’being’, and uses ’we’ instead of ’I’, in recognition of the legionary nature of the personal multimind.

If you still do not accept the principle of multiple selfs then consider why humans spend so much time at the temples of Venus, Luna, Bacchus and Mars, trying to escape from their workaday Solar 1 selfs, in pursuit of love, sex, intoxication and violent entertainments.

We wouldn’t change a word of that. Verily we conjure the convenient illusion of singular self to simplify our dealings with others and ourself(s).

In reality we have the name ’Legion’, we have worlds and gods and demons partying within.

Loosen the bonds of Ego, and relax that tired old post-monotheist theory of mind to open the treasure house within.