Psychopathy - doubts / impeccabilty / oneness

[Pierre]

If you go through some of this forum threads, you might see some posts that display some psychopathic tendencies (The Materazzi-Zidane thread for example)

What strikes me is the power of psychopathic-like statements. This power certainly comes from different factors. From the little experience I could gather, one of this factor is certainty / apparent consistency.

When reading some psychopathologic contributions you can feel this strength. You can notice that sometimes one "psychopathic like" contribution requires the cooperation of several members in order to dissecate the post, find the twists and unconsistencies.

Thanks to Mouravieff writings, we might find an explanation to this phenomenon. When a "normal" human" being contribute or speaks or does anything, there is a lot of things at work : one or several of the 987 faces of his mind, what he can tap from his consciousness, the discripancy between his emotional side and his intellectual side,...

A consequence of this "chaos" is doubt. It's difficult to consider yourself as being really right since you know you were different before and you will be different later. So were can be the truth ?

An efficient method not to be the slave of our doubts (without falling into excessiver certainty either) is promoted and described in this website. It is a kind of scientific approach. Since our mind is so versatile, let's base our statement on a stronger ground : facts, objective analysis, consistently deducted conclusions.

Finally, this picture fits quite well with Don Juan teaching. One of the key he give is "impeccability" : behaving with the perfect balance of our fullness (emotions, intellec, body,...). That's a kind of oneness.

While we swim amongst doubts, psychopaths are free from those troubles. They can use a kind of oneness and that's a strength. But it is a limited oneness because it involves a limited number of centers. A sort of fusion of wish and self.

In his book, Mouravieff described a "non limited" oneness : activation and fusion (onenessing) of all the inferior and superior centers.

This is another story.

 

[Laura]

What strikes me is the power of psychopathic-like statements. This power certainly comes from different factors. From the little experience I could gather, one of this factor is certainty / apparent consistency.

When reading some psychopathologic contributions you can feel this strength. You can notice that sometimes one "psychopathic like" contribution requires the cooperation of several members in order to dissecate the post, find the twists and unconsistencies.

Yes, this "certainty" of the psychopath has been discussed a time or two. It seems that "certainty" is the thing that so many human beings long for and so, when they encounter someone who is so "certain" they are immediately attracted to that certainty and influenced by it. What is so astonishing is to observe how psychopaths can express such complete nonsense with so much certainty that it actually takes a few moments for a reasonable person to realize that they have been "had." Unfortunately, a LOT of people never come to that realization.

In the thread on Organic Portals I referred to some of the descriptions given by Mouravieff and speculated on them:

If we use "psychopath" for "failed OPs" - as in only having soul pool connections and "ghost" higher centers, then what shall we use for a psychopath-like individual who clearly has the higher centers, but all "black" as Mouravieff would say?

Actually, Mouravieff has a word for this type of being: the Chimera which he says is "an impossible being possessing a motor centre and an intellectual centre, but lacking an emotional centre."

The original esoteric significance of this monster has been lost, although its symbolic meaning is known and its name has passed into current language: by chimera we mean a false idea or a vain imagining. A chimeric mind sustains itself on illusions, and a chimeric project collapses when tested against facts, being groundless or unrealizable.

Let us try to rediscover the esoteric significance of the Chimera, hidden in Myth by initiatory tradition. We know that all beings in Nature are divided into three categories depending on the number of centres in their psyche. The first category is of beings having a psyche of only one centre: obviously the motor centre. Beings belonging to the second category have two centres: motor and emotional. Lastly, as beings possessing three centres, humans alone have a motor centre, an emotional centre, and an intellectual centre.

The fabulous Chimera is an animal of a higher type; with its lion's head and the body of a goat, it incontestably ranks in the second category, that of beings possessing two centres in the psyche, If it was a living being, because of this fact it would have motor and emotional centres. It does actually have two centres in the psyche, but these are the motor and the intellectual. Thus it can only have an unreal existence, chimeric in the true meaning of that word, as no bi-centred beings exist in Nature other than those with motor and emotional centres.

For what reason was this monster introduced into the Mythology of remote Antiquity which goes back to the very sources of Initiation? ...

If we had wanted to draw this diagram in zoomorphic form, we would logically have done so by using the Chimera: the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a dragon. This is a chimerical being, vomiting vortexes of flame and fire on every occasion, in his march towards death, a man whose psyche is formed in this way can in fact, like the Chimera, lay claim to the paternity of Typhon, the principle of evil and esoteric sterility. ...

As for the motor centre, in the case that concerns us this works at full capacity. Responsible for the natural instinctive and motor functions that ensure the life of the organism and the movements of the body, it has always been the object of special training: military, sporting, artistic etc. But in addition, because of the [lack of emotional center], for good or ill the motor centre also replaces it in its functions. The motor centre replaces the positive tenderness of affection by the passionate tenderness of sensations dominated by a spirit of possession. In this domain too, the life of [such a man] is then lowered to the level of that of an animal.

All this allows us to better understand the structure of [such a] man's Personality, which is then ... reduced to bicentrism, the very characteristic of the chimera: a lion's head to represent intelligence and an animal's body with the tail of a dragon to symbolize passions deprived of all feeling. The fire and flames vomited from its mouth are the fire of discord and the flame of intellectualized passions stimulated by usurped sexual energy.

Psychologically, this means that [such a man is] governed only by intellectual and instinctive-motor considerations. This human type - the chimeric - is often found among the cultured classes of our time. It can produce people of great intellectual ability, but since intelligence is agnostic by nature and they are not oriented by the compass of the emotional centre, such people become amoral. For them everything is permissible except what is forbidden: or rather, what is not punishable.

When man of this psychological type feels the need for relaxation-which is legitimate in itself - he falls under sway of his bodily instincts. His 'I of the body then takes the place of the "I" of the unbalanced Personality. However, the 'I' of the body only has the use of the motor centre, which is equally mutilated. Since this is reduced to four sectors instead of six it too is deprived of a compass. Man then turns towards 'small pleasures' or grand passions' in which he satisfies all his senses, driven by an inventive intellectual imagination while the two centres, motor and intellectual, are fed by energy stolen from the sexual centre. ...

If we have given this whole chapter to this analysis it is because the phenomenon it reveals is much more frequent than one would believe. True, we have discussed an extreme case so that it is more clearly impressed on the reader's mind; but there exist other cases that are less extreme and more subtle.

Mouravieff goes off on his own theorizing (where I have inserted the three dots) without having a clue that he has just described a psychopath. - a failed Organic Portal.

Keep in mind that I'm not talking about the blatantly anti-social type at all though psychopaths do, regularly and repeatedly and predicatbly, commit anti-social acts. They aren't always illegal.

Now, there is another type that Mouravieff discusses ...

The case we are to study is that of a man I whose highly developed motor centre entirely dominates his emotional centre. In this type of man the latter is awake and even quite developed, but it is under the sway of the motor centre and as a result it is richly nourished by usurped sexual energy.

As in the fourth case, the intellectual centre is not entirely asleep: the negative part of this centre is paralysed but the positive part is completely under the domination of the motor centre. That is why this type of man feels no doubt. This fact provides him with extraordinary strength and endows his psyche with a suggestive, hypnotic dynamism.

This type of man includes fakirs, sorcerers, magicians: volkhvy in Slavonic. Though unbalanced in its development, this Personality has lost all its anarchistic characteristics: it is subjected to an iron discipline exercised by the motor centre in the place of the magnetic centre, with the 'I' of the body predominant. This kind of man can acquire certain powers, but their nature differs from that of the gifts of the Holy Spirit which interior men acquire.

A magician's power - that of a Cagliostro, Rasputin and their like - is based, as we said, on excessive development of the motor centre, which dominates the other two. The working of the intellectual centre is reduced to what is strictly necessary to ensure vital needs and to elaborate projects; its negative part is smothered, and this is what leads to the absence of doubt. The emotional centre is not only not smothered but is rather well developed. However, this development is unbalanced, as it is not the result of correct discernment of [creative] from [entropic] influences, but of the accumulation of those of the latter whose action, although different in quality, lies parallel to the [creative] influences.

Lastly, an overgrowth on the psyche is formed on the right side of the emotional centre of this type of man 1, which shows all the characteristics of an impure or black magnetic centre. While the magnetic centre formed of [creative] influences is a subsidiary organ enabling esoteric development, this black magnetic centre formed by [entropic] influences can clearly not be oriented towards esoteric goals.

Shaped by [entropic] influences whose action runs parallel to the [creative] influences, the orientation of this black magnetic centre is automatically directed towards objectives limited to within the perimeter of exterior life. These objectives are well known; money, women, and power in all their forms.

Evidently the black magnetic centre, instead of sending man forward towards the second Birth and so towards the union of his Personality with his [higher centers], emphasizes and crystallizes the 'I' of the Personality and inspires it with the strength it needs to impose itself on other Personalities who are in an unstable inner state.

It is important to know that this human type exists, especially for those who have an inclination for esoteric research and who begin by looking for the 'marvellous.' While awaiting an encounter with a guide, their Personality is wide open to the influences emanating from this type of man, and they may easily fall under his sway.

Besides giving birth to magicians, this type of man gives rise to false prophets, false Christs, and even the Antichrist.

It is curious to see how much these false prophets, magicians and "christs", impressed themselves on the imagination of the men - and even more of the women of the past. It is the same today.

For there is a type of human being who declines all moral responsibility for himself or for those to whom he is in duty bound. One comes across this type quite often, always trying to find someone else to shoulder his responsibilities as long as this someone else possesses some kind of authority, earned or otherwise. These people are open to any form of hypnotic suggestion and practically ask to be hypnotized. They are of good faith, but they search for the 'marvellous' because they are too weak or too lazy to undertake esoteric work successfully.

And the Wolves devour them finding justification in the fact that they are only the 'scourings of humanity.'

But this is not true; for 'scourings' who are converted can become key figures on the esoteric chess-board.

Mental apathy and emotional inertia are responsible for tipping man down the slope of least resistance even when armed with the best intentions, especially if he justifies himself for his human frailties by finding them normal, particularly on the sexual plane.

The error of conception committed in this case lies in the fact that an important esoteric rule has been overlooked: that it is imperative for the seeker to be constantly active. He must always keep the initiative, beginning with the search for and choice of a guide and later in the work he accomplishes under the latter's guidance.

In a word, when participating in this work, he must be a subject, and not an object.

This is a necessary condition for this kind of work. If it is not sufficient to provide the whole effort the neophyte must accomplish in his search on the Way, it is always enough to allow him to escape from the claws of the Wolves. Initiative, vigilance, a critical mind, observation and discernment ... these different aspects of the seeker's active state, are diametrically opposed to the passive drowsiness of one who plunges head down into the jaws of the 'wolf' full of condescending compassion towards sceptics because: thus spake Zarathustra.

Now, the distinction Mouravieff has made is that this second type DOES have the emotional center which the psychopath - as a failed OP - does not have. And that means that such a type is quite different - and maybe even scarier - than the garden variety psychopath.

I also think that such individuals need to constantly "feed" on creative people so as to fuel their activities.

Lobaczewski talks about this problem also - that people lack accurate psychological knowledge because, during "good times" their laziness takes over and they do not, as Mouravieff suggests above, develop initiative, vigilance and a critical mind. This leads to what Lobaczewski calls the "First Criterion" for Ponerogenesis:

One phenomenon all ponerogenic groups and associations have in common is the fact that their members lose (or have already lost) the capacity to perceive pathological individuals as such, interpreting their behavior in a fascinated, heroic, or melodramatic ways. The opinions, ideas, and judgments of people carrying various psychological deficits are endowed with an importance at least equal to that of outstanding individuals among normal people.

The atrophy of natural critical faculties with respect to pathological individuals becomes an opening to their activities, and, at the same time, a criterion for recognizing the association in concern as ponerogenic. Let us call this the first criterion of ponerogenesis.

Another phenomenon all ponerogenic associations have in common is their statistically high concentration of individuals with various psychological anomalies. Their qualitative composition is crucially important in the formation of the entire union's character, activities, development, or extinction. [...]

Observation of the ponerization processes of various human unions throughout history easily leads to the conclusion that the initial step is a moral warping of the group's ideational contents. In analyzing the contamination of a group's ideology, we note first of all an infiltration of foreign, simplistic, and doctrinaire contents, thereby depriving it of any healthy support for, and trust in, the necessity of understanding of human nature. This opens the way for invasion by pathological factors and the ponerogenic role of their carriers. [...]

For centuries, individuals exhibiting various psychological anomalies have had the tendency to participate in the activities of human unions. This is made possible on the one hand by such group's weaknesses, i.e. failure in adequate psychological knowledge; on the other hand, it deepens the moral failings and stifles the possibilities of utilizing healthy common sense and understanding matters objectively. ... by detecting and describing these aspects of the ponerization process of human groups, which could not be understood until recently, we shall be able to counteract such processes earlier and more effectively. Again, depth and breadth of knowledge of human psychological variations is crucial.

Any human group affected by the process described herein is characterized by its increasing regression from natural common sense and the ability to perceive psychological reality. Someone considering this in terms of traditional categories might consider it an instance of "turning into half-wits" or the development of intellectual deficiencies and moral failings.

A ponerological analysis of this process, however, indicates that pressure is being applied to the more normal part of the association by pathological factors present in certain individuals who have been allowed to participate in the group because the lack of good psychological knowledge has not madated their exclusion.

Thus, whenever we observe some group member being treated with no critical distance, although he betrays one of the psychological anomalies familiar to us, and his opinions being treated as at least equal to those of normal people, although they are based on a characteristically different view of human matters, we must derive the conclusion that this human group is affected by a ponerogenic process and if measures are not taken the process shall continue to its logical conclusion.

We shall treat this in accordance with the above described first criterion of ponerology, which retains its validity regardless of the qualitative and quantitative features of such a union: the atrophy of natural critical faculties with respect to pathological individuals becomes an opening to their activities, and, at the same time, a criterion for recognizing the association in concern as ponerogenic.

... Once a group has inhaled a sufficient dose of pathological material to give birth to the conviction that these not-quite-normal people are unique geniuses, it starts subjecting its more normal members to pressure characterized by corresponding paralogical and paramoral elements.

For many people, such pressure of collective opinion takes on attributes of a moral criterion; for others, it represents a kind of psychological terror ever more difficult to endure. The phenomenon of counter-selection thus occurs in this phase of ponerization: individuals with a more normal sense of psychological reality leave after entering into conflict with the newly modified group; simultaneously, individuals with various psychological anomalies join the group and easily find a way of life there. The former feel "pushed into counter-revolutionary positions", and the latter can afford to remove their masks of sanity ever more often.

People who have been thus thrown out of a ponerogenic association because they were too normal suffer bitterly; they are unable to understand their specific state. Their ideal, the reason they joined the group, which constituted a part of the meaning of life for them, has now been degraded, although they cannot find a rational basis for this fact. They feel wronged; they "fight against demons" they are not in a position to identify. The fact is their personalities have already been modified to a certain extent due to saturation by abnormal psychological material, especially psychopathic material. They easily fall into the opposite extreme in such cases, because unhealthy emotions rule their decisions. What they need is good psychological information in order to find the path of reason and measure. Based on a ponerologic understanding of their condition, psychotherapy could provide rapid positive results.

However, if the union they left is succumbing to deep ponerization, a threat looms over them: they may become the objects of revenge, since they have "betrayed" a magnificent ideology.

This is the stormy period of a group's ponerization, followed by a certain stabilization in terms of contents, structure, and customs. Rigorous selective measures of a clearly psychological kind are applied to new members. So as to exclude the possibility of becoming sidetracked by defectors, people are observed and tested to eliminate those characterized by excessive mental independence or psychological normality. The new internal function created is something like a "psychologist", and it doubtless takes advantage of the above-described psychological knowledge collected by psychopaths.

It should be noted that certain of these exclusionary steps taken by a group in the process of ponerization, should have been taken against deviants by the ideological group in the beginning. So rigorous selective measures of a psychological kind taken by a group is not necessarily an indicator that the group is ponerogenic. Rather one should carefully examine what the psychological selection is based on.

If any group seeks to avoid ponerization, it will want to exclude individuals with any psychological dependence on subjective beliefs, rites, rituals, drugs, and certainly those individuals that are incapable of objectively analyzing their own inner psychological content or who reject the process of Positive disintegration.

 

[highmystica]

Thanks you two - I have been struggling with concepts regarding psychopathy since just before I discovered this site ... and I just got a bunch of thoughts that well at least for now seem insightfull ...

It seems to me that it is the weight and certaintude a psychopath can put behind their words is what makes them so intoxicating to normal people - everyone wants to be whole and a psychopath seems to be such even though they are only "hole" - forgive my silly play on words. Anyway, most of us - well at leaste I can claim such - are terribly divided in our hearts and minds, so when when we hear something said in such a way we expect it to be true, and if we say something with that kind of weight we know it is true - a psychopath even though they don't know anything more than the average person can pull off a stance where they *seem* to be almost as enlightened as a prophet because they always have that kind of certaintude behind their words.

That is one of the grave danger that psychopaths create for the rest of us, they are the way they are and speak the way they do because they are PURE predators - even more than the 2d predators. The rest of us know the horrors that thing called the reptillian mind creates for us (think castenada) and we strive against it, and tragically we expect everyone to be like us ... so to find that kind of lack of doubt we EXPECT a psychopath to have gone through a similar process to what we we expect we must when that is in no way the case.

Now without a doubt I have always thought humans were all different - but psychopaths have these thought processes I can't follow - they are a different breed altogether, and therein lies another danger - if you can't fully understand a psychopath - then you inadvertantly make excusses for their behavior - In a lot of ways I see psychopathy as a greater danger than demons or lizzies - because we expect them to be human - to be like us, and they know they are not and use our foolishness to hurt us. Okay I suppose lizzies do that too, but it is of a different orientation - we when confronted by lizzies wouldn't expect them to be like us - a psychopath can get closer to us and more entwined in our hearts than a hyperdimensional being ever could.

Psychopaths *seem* to lack doubt and have a greater measure of oneness - just like how we all want to be ... however they have nothing impecable about them ... poor them, and poor us too ...

Sorry if my thoughts seem a bit incomplete here - they are ... but I felt reading through the posts that the thoughts were usefull to me, and perhaps someone else might think so too ...

 

[Laura]

Well, you have eloquently expressed some of my own thoughts on the matter, especially when you write:

In a lot of ways I see psychopathy as a greater danger than demons or lizzies - because we expect them to be human - to be like us, and they know they are not and use our foolishness to hurt us. Okay I suppose lizzies do that too, but it is of a different orientation - we when confronted by lizzies wouldn't expect them to be like us - a psychopath can get closer to us and more entwined in our hearts than a hyperdimensional being ever could.

This is a realization that actually froze me in my tracks one day. When you really contemplate it, it is so horrible - and even cruel - that the world should be this way, should have such creatures.

I mean, just imagine loving such a person and finally, inexorably, having to face the fact that they are little more than a creature, a "reaction machine," and that all the attributes of soul you ascribed to them were just projections? What if the person is your own child???

The world is not only stranger than we think it is, it is stranger than we can imagine.

 

[Pierre]

Laura,

Thank you for the Mouravieff quotation.

I ve read his books a couple of years ago. At this time, your writings were dealing with 3D, 4D, STO, STS, the Work, ... and I was focusing on those points while reading Gnosis.

I remembered the "bad magician" but had totally forgotten about Chimeras phenomenon.

The reminder was helpful.

 

[Divide by Zero]

I had a boss that used the doubt thing and how he can never be wrong on us.

We had an issue on safety practices regarding work on certain equipment. In the meeting, he leaned forward and said "I'm a great technician", as if this means he knows what he is talking about. Never mind, as a technician, he wasn't too knowledgeable- according to the senior techs who worked with him in the past. It's brazen lies like that, that try to prey on our insecurities. He was so sure of himself and it would have worked on us, but thanks to the senior techs, they shot down his babble with facts and the OSHA safety laws which contradicted his simplistic view of the issue. If it wasn't for some seaoned techs that did research with this issue, I'm sure he would have had it his way- the unsafe way. Never mind, if we got hurt, he would take the same safety laws and use it against us, saying that we did not follow safety protocol!

 

[chachazoom]

I know getting caught up in a pathological psychotics web is absolutely horrid but I wonder about the long term effects of a potentially souled person interacting with an OP unaware say within a marriage or a family is (I'm still new at these terms but I'm reading) no less devastating like a slow torturous soul sucking experience with few clues because it's so invisible.