'Waving our hands and declaring the self to be an illusion', writes Julian Vayne in Magick Works, 'does not help us understand the self' (p.45). So I'd better defend my hand-waving and declarations, unless I come to be regarded as a 'Bloodless Adept'! (Julian's term for his interesting take on what constitutes a 'Black Brother'.)

Suppose just for a moment the Buddha got it right and there's no self. Imagine it doesn't exist. It is nothing. An illusion. Does this mean we have to stop taking drugs and all find jobs as accountants? Course not! If there is no self then it's true already, regardless of how things seem. So the net impact on reality of our realising the truth of the proposition that there is no self would be – zero.

However, Julian prefers to insist: 'in all cases there does seem to be a self' (p.45). Personally, that's not my experience. The closer I've looked the less likely it seems – which is a relief, because if I thought there was a self then I'd be obliged to define it. Not that Julian doesn't shirk this task. He makes a decent stab at it, but his view relies in part on that interesting yet flaky book The Quantum Self, and an insistence upon the supposed 'peculiar quantum properties of neural tissue' (p.51).

If Julian asserts there is a self presumably it's because his experience suggests so. Yet there's a problem with defining something at the heart of experience in terms of something that cannot be experienced directly at all – i.e. quantum reality. This reminds me of when I was on retreat and our teacher, Mr. Goenka, assured us that the tingling sensations we experienced whilst practising vipassana meditation were a manifestation of a quantum-level phenomenon. I was skeptical that my physical sense organs, which are organised at the atomic level, could be capable of representing changes in the subatomic realm. My skepticism was confirmed when I made an experiment: I discovered that the tingling stopped if I held my breath. So either the tingling was an effect of oxygenation, or I was owed a big fat Nobel Prize for discovering my breath was the bridge between the atomic and subatomic realms.

Even good practising Buddhists like Mr Goenka are not immune from using quantum physics for talking bollocks. To be fair, Julian's model of the self rests on more than pop physics:

[W]hat are we left with? With a self that comes into being through interaction, that is rooted in the body but also exists as the context of interactions in a non-local field of consciousness... The self is an apparent property of this non-local consciousness when it is 'contained' within a specific identifiable body. It has an individual history but is predicated on its relationship with others. (p.53)

In short: the sense of self arises only in the context of an other that gives it shape. Without 'the other', there is no self. Personally, here's where I'd call off the search altogether, but Julian seems to believe there is something salvageable from this 'self', despite the way he has exposed it to be completely dependent on 'the other'.

His definition, above, is an interesting idea, but – again – is something we could never experience. Sure, you can have an idea of the self coming into being through interactions, but I could never experience myself as that, because the interactions of which my self would consist depend upon an other whose experience is not available to me. This model cannot therefore account for my sense of 'I am me'.

The self is not defined by an idea, because we have lots of ideas, but we don't mistake all our ideas for the self. By the same token the self cannot be a feeling either: examining the feelings that constitute our sense of self we discover nothing special about them. What makes a particular feeling 'me' or 'mine'? The answer seems to be that it is this very process itself by which we are constantly mistaking the other for 'me'.

In other words, the self is a mistake. The mental equivalent of an optical illusion. (The Buddhists call it ignorance.)

Magick Works is a wonderful collection of lectures, rituals and personal experiences, with a particular emphasis on the importance of entheogens in magical exploration. Julian's knowledge of entheogens and their uses is everywhere in evidence, and so too his eloquent sensitivity to the states of consciousness to which they provide access. Here, I think, lies the reason for his insistence on the notion of a self as a valid tool in magickal work.

Magick, for Julian, is 'the path of pleasure, freedom and power'. The Black Brother, on the other hand, is someone who resists the process of enlightenment, which entails a widening and dissolving of the ego into 'the other'. There are many who would agree with this, but Julian puts his own spin on the model:

Many 'Xepherites' [i.e. Black Brothers] don't smoke dope because drugs destabilize the boundaries of the ego. Ironically the most 'satanic' of modern occultists may also be some of the most sober! (p.48)

The Black Brother, then, resists ecstasy and pumps effort into maintaining a rigid ego boundary. Julian's view exposes excellently the futile efforts of the Black Brother. Imagine, spending your days shoring up the everyday sense of self. Wow. Those guys must lucid-dream all night of brilliant white light and radiant angels!

They are probably also part of the killjoy establishment, set on denying the rest of us the freedom to use drugs. The reason for this denial – argues Julian – is simple: 'they fear ecstasy' (p.146).

But – hang on. Alcohol produces ecstasy, yet the establishment sanctions it, despite the casualties piling up each weekend. And what about television? Doesn't that produce a trance-like ecstasy too? And so too computer games and other consumer gadgetry. Plus shopping. Plus advertising. And let's not forget everyone's favourite: mindless repetitive work. In fact, it soon becomes apparent that the establishment depends and thrives upon our elective use of ecstatic trance-states to facilitate its processes of production and consumption.

The establishment doesn't fear ecstasy; it depends upon us being dependent upon ecstasy. Although it's possible to mount an argument that these trances are not freely chosen or in our interest, if the meaning of ecstasy is to 'get out of ourselves' then that's obviously why we go shopping and watch The X Factor.

Now, if there were no self would ecstasy be possible? How could we 'get out of it' if there were no 'it' to get out of in the first place? This is the reason, I think, why Julian insists on a notion of self, because self is the other of ecstasy, and the absence of one appears to threaten the existence of both.

Julian describes the attainment of the grade of Ipsissimus as 'the peak experience of magick... we might imagine it as a series of ecstatic moments' (p.53). Enlightenment, however, is not a state – ecstatic or otherwise – but a form of understanding. So please don't mistake me for a Black Brother or killjoy Bloodless Adept! Entheogens are sweet; so is booze, The X Factor and barbecue-flavoured Pringles. But the states they evoke lead to something sweeter still, when apprehended as experiences in the service of understanding.

If we want to get up the nose of the establishment, I'm not sure how we should proceed. The establishment is formed of mindless dependencies. It's like a drug-pusher or a junkie: what it can't use it most likely doesn't even perceive. But if we can see through the illusion of self then we are foreclosing on our dependency on socially-sanctioned ecstasies. Provided we don't merely substitute these for non-sanctioned types, this means the-powers-that-be simply can't use us any more. Yet most likely we simply drop out of sight, rather than attaining some kind of Che Guevara moment.

The assumption of a self can lead to the view that there are types of experience that bolster that self, in opposition to other experiences offering ecstasy. From this position it may seem 'the path of pleasure, freedom and power' lies in swapping the one set of experiences for the other.

An alternative, however, lies in abandoning the notion of self. The Ipsissimus then takes on the significance not of someone who has found a way to 'get out of it' permanently, but has instead reached the full understanding that there's nothing to overthrow.

References

Julian Vayne, Magick Works: Stories of Occultism in Theory and Practice (Oxford: Mandrake, 2008).

Dana Zohar, The Quantum Self (New York: Quill/William Morrow, 1990).