Brief Summary
Alright, so Alan Chapman shares his journey through life, magic, and awakening. He talks about his tough childhood, his first brush with Crowley, and how he met Duncan Barford. He also gets into the British class system and how it shaped him. Alan talks about his spiritual experiences, comparing different gurus like Papaji and Adi Da, and even touches on the concept of "Black Brothers" like Stephen Batchelor and Sam Harris. He also talks about the importance of facing darkness and finding your own path.
- Early life and influences
- Encounters with magic and spirituality
- Class consciousness and identity
- The path of awakening and its challenges
- Comparisons of gurus and spiritual figures
- The role of the dark goddess and facing darkness
Intro
Alan Chapman is a British writer, occultist, and spiritual teacher. He had a troubled childhood in the impoverished north of England. He reflects on the British class system and shares his first encounter with Alistister Crowley. Alan recounts his occult adventures with longtime collaborator Duncan Barford. He shares his spiritual biography of awakenings and mystical experiences and considers the power and pitfalls of spiritual transmission. Alan also compares gurus papa, Andrew Cohen, and Adida. He reveals why he considers Steven Bachelor and Sam Harris to be black brothers and discusses the role of the dark goddess on the path of awakening.
Duncan Barford and Alex W
Steve welcomes Alan Chapman to the podcast, expressing his admiration for Alan's writings and podcasts on magic and awakening. Alan is surprised by the impression that he has produced a lot of work, as he feels he is not producing enough. He mentions his collaborations with Duncan Barford on "The Baptist Head Compendium" and their podcasts "Warp FM" and "Passport Through Hades," where they discuss editing Alistister Crowley's magical works. Alan also talks about Alex W, his first student, who inspired him to start teaching and whom he considers a brilliant man.
Impoverished upbringing in the North of England
Alan talks about his early life growing up in the impoverished north of England. He grew up on a council estate with a single parent. He believes that the circumstances of one's birth can reveal something deeper and that incarnation provides the material needed to create unique value from experience. Alan felt held in place by his circumstances, which forced him to be self-reliant.
Early reaction to Christ
Alan recalls attending a Church of England school and hearing about Jesus Christ at around age six. He had a peculiar reaction, wanting to experience reality from Christ's perspective. However, he learned that there was only one Christ and that saints, who could know God, no longer existed. By age nine, he encountered a fantasy novel with magicians and wizards, which resonated with him.
First encounter with Aleister Crowley
In the playground, Alan saw Alistister Crowley in a book of ghost stories. The image was a tabloid version, portraying Crowley in a repulsive manner with stories of torturing animals and sacrificing children. Despite being repulsed, Alan was thrilled that magic might be real and that adults believed in it. He associated Crowley with an evil wizard from a fantasy story who was trying to take over the hero's body. This marked the beginning of his interest in Crowley and magic, even though it was initially dissuasive.
Chaos magic and meeting Duncan Barford
Alan went through the socialization process in secondary school and became conscious of his position in society. He found the consumerist, materialist perspective depressing. At 15, he discovered Alistister Crowley's "Magic in Theory and Practice" in a publishing outlet. Despite not understanding it, he knew he had found what he was looking for, even though society considered it evil and insane. He saved money from a job filling bags with soil to buy Crowley's works from a magic shop in Manchester. Alan practiced magic privately until he was 25, when he moved to London, joined the Illuminates of Thanetos, and met Duncan Barford.
What kind of boy was Alan?
Alan describes himself as good at drawing and academically successful in school. He recalls an incident where he defended himself against a bully and was punished for it. He likes to think he was a compassionate, kind kid who couldn't understand why someone would want to hurt another person or kill a tree. He describes himself as open-minded and friendly.
Class consciousness
During the socialization process, Alan became aware of economic and class status. He realized he didn't wear the right clothes, lived in a deprived area, and didn't have the same opportunities as his middle-class friends. This contrast was painful. However, he sees that his circumstances held him in place and forced him in one direction.
Sensitive boy in a cruel environment
Alan describes a rough environment with cruel authority figures. He says he was a sensitive boy who could spot danger from a distance. He learned to stay away from trouble and defend himself. He reflects on the idea of being realistic about the world's nature and whether that poisons something that shouldn't be poisoned. He questions whether circumstances force one to do things against their conscience and whether leaning into that direction is encouraged.
Regret about violence
Alan shares that he was physically assaulted for four years until he lost it and defended himself. He deeply regretted his actions. He uncovered a deep sadness and sorrow for what he had done, feeling it was an unforgivable sin. Acquiring these shadows as we mature always costs us something personally meaningful. The appropriate thing is not to avoid those circumstances, but to travel back into that darkness to recover what was lost.
One’s own nature
Alan says that one's own nature is unconsciously expressed. If one is self-aware or overconscious of it, there might be a pathological development. One's nature is how it is and effortlessly expressed. The regret he felt is part of that nature. He doesn't see it as a conscious betrayal but a sad fact that he had done something he was deeply sorry for, regardless of what the other person had done.
Alan questions Steve’s questions
Alan finds the questions interesting, as no one has ever asked him these before. He wonders if the audience is interested in this kind of thing. Steve says he is following his interest and not playing to what the audience will find interesting. He notes that Alan is exploring details that might not be obvious when discussing awakening, as the mundane stuff is often overlooked.
British class system
Steve asks Alan to describe the British class system and its structure, including the mantras and phrases that define each level's self-identity. Alan says he might do a disservice as a survey of the system, but he can talk about how it mattered to him. Opportunities are tied to economic possibility, and in British society, identity is bound up with economic class and cultural expression. People are expected to adjust their expectations based on their economic class.
Liminal identity
Alan says that as someone British, you can't leave the class you came from, as your accent, mannerisms, and attitudes betray your upbringing. He always finds himself neither one thing nor another. He grew up poor, but his father was middle class. His mother was Welsh, and his father was English. He was always considered Welsh in England and English in Wales. Children on the council estate said he talked posh.
Working vs middle vs upper class
Alan says he couldn't fall into the secular materialist thing because it wasn't available to him. He grew up surrounded by honest, open, but also thugs and ignorant people. When he moved into the middle class, he found that those people would profess to care about poorer people but really shared the same view. The middle classes have their own problem of being provided with everything and achieving nothing, which breeds resentment. The upper class has their own thing going on.
Anti-aspiration
Alan says there's a lot of nonsense in society, such as the expectation to be happily married with children and create something to hand down to them. British culture also has a culture of continually tearing people down. He doesn't want his children to grow up the way he did but also worries they'll grow up middle class and not know how to navigate the dangers of the world.
Growing out of musical aspirations
Alan says his frustration at being held in place was expressed in various ways. At one point, he thought art was the road out, but he became disillusioned with the academic route. He started playing guitar at 16 and thought music might be the road out. He moved to London and played gigs, but he was mainly playing to other people trying to do the same thing. Meanwhile, he secretly practiced magic and meditation and joined the IoT.
Shedding Feathers and fulfilment on the path
Alan says he later came back round to music, but in a different way. One way of understanding the path is to keep your eyes on what you long for, which exists over the horizon of your experience. Everything that you might consider personally fulfilling will come along and be fully realized, precisely because you don't care about it. He found old demos, spent 1% of his time on music, and had a student produce an album with him. He did nothing with it, but someone offered to do a remix, and it got released as a trance record, reaching the top 10 on Beatport.
Crowley book and facing challenges
Alan was invited by his publisher to work on a Crowley book and proposed a 10-volume collected magical works set. He spent a year researching Crowley's life, which involved a lot of work and suffering. The information came along frictionlessly, but the effort was also frictionless. The picture that emerged was a radically different picture of Crowley. He roped Duncan into helping him edit the letters. However, the OTO stopped the book from appearing by claiming copyright.
Path myth in The Book of the Law
Alan says that the events of the path demonstrate the content of the teaching. Crowley's "Book of the Law" describes an underworld journey where the sun god Ra wakes up the dead, presenting them with a choice: follow the light of consciousness or attempt to extinguish it. The light also attracts the forces of darkness that want to extinguish it. Each individual is presented with a choice. The esoteric understanding is that we are already in the underworld and that the second death is something we have to contend with here.
True path vs the New Age
Steve asks about the difference between what Alan is saying and the common new age idea that everything is working for my good. Alan says the choice between the two paths is essential. This world is not providential; it's detrimental and destructive. Incarnation, being a human being, is unjust by definition. However, there's something else that you can follow that isn't an appearance.
Following the Silent Knowing
Alan says that when one says yes to something else that isn't an appearance, something that comes prior, what Maji would call a silent knowing, it's that longing for the truth. Following the silent knowing often means traveling through dissuasive appearances. These key choices that come along are tests. If we say yes to that silent knowing and follow that instead, that's like following a thread that leads out of the forest, up the mountain, to the house of God.
Facing darkness
Steve asks about navigating the terrain, with its eight worldly winds. Alan says that if you allow what you encounter to disclose its own nature, you meet a darkness commensurate with the consciousness you bring to it. We've come here to find something upside down and turn it the right way up. It's always an invitation. If you've said yes to following the thread, you get the unfolding of a destiny, and this world is being changed by degrees.
Black Brothers like Stephen Batchelor and Sam Harris
Steve asks where the black brothers fit into this, naming Stephen Bachelor and Sam Harris as examples. Alan says a black brother is someone who has said yes to going along this path, had an awakening, or is approaching one, but decides not to go any further. They then speak on behalf of the tradition and turn the whole thing upside down. They're either lying about it or misleading people about it. It's a desperate self-preservation strategy that's unconscious.
Stephen Batchelor’s crisis of faith
Steve brings up Stephen Bachelor's biography, noting that he was ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist monk and initiated into various practice lineages. One day, he felt tremendous pressure and rejected the whole premise of it. Steve feels sympathy for this young guy getting in over his head. Alan says the purpose of mentioning those examples isn't to label someone but to realize that these things exist in the world and how you would navigate them.
Warning about spiritual teachers
Alan says it's worth keeping in mind if you're going to teachers looking for guidance. What if you come across someone who wants to move in the opposite direction to you? He's not making a judgment about the choice they've made, but you should at least know what's being presented to you. He has sympathy for Bachelor, who was an earnest, passionate young man doing the best he could and attempting to conform to something that is not essential.
Stereotypes of culture and awakening
Alan says it's not appreciated the extent to which we have a parody of various different eastern ideas of what awakening looks like and the extent to which there's a bizarre acting out of those stereotypes. Tibetan Buddhism doesn't exist in a vacuum; it's part of Tibetan culture. There's a mismatch between those two things. He sees the enthusiasm of early pioneers going to these traditions and a naivety about what might come out of that experiment.
Papaji and the nondual car crash
Alan says that even deeply realized human beings who are teachers still sit quietly on a chair and talk in a very slow, deliberate fashion, as if they're privy to some cosmic joke. He mentions Papaji sitting on a throne with white socks on and people kissing his feet, saying none of this has anything to do with awakening. They're cultural institutions to accommodate what is essentially an unknown element that you might even describe as dangerous.
Adi Da and guru yoga
Alan says that Adida does have something to do with awakening that somebody like Papa G doesn't. With Adida, we have someone explicitly teaching guru yoga as the means for realization. He has his description of stages of realization, with the seventh one where he claims he's the only person to have realized it. If you do guru yoga and realize you have the right relationship with the teacher, you come to recognize you have the same nature as the teacher.
Papaji vs Adi Da
Alan says that Papa G was more of a conventional teacher and not particularly sophisticated. He didn't have the same training as Ramano Mahashi. There's something amiss there that is not the same with Adida because Adida was a westerner. He sees Papa G enjoying the attention from this generation of Westerners. It would have been better if Papa G had said, "I am the only way. I'm the only one with the highest degree of realization."
Invoking the Holy Guardian Angel
Steve notes that adidam is guru yoga and that if you incline yourself in his direction, he will appear. Alan says that saved him from Andrew Cohen. Alistister Crowley's main practice was invoking the holy guardian angel. You would invoke the holy guardian angel and at some point experience union with the nature of the angel. It's like having a guru who's discarnate.
Andrew Cohen
Alan says that in the 2000s, while working on the Baptist head with Duncan, they heard about Andrew Cohen, a teacher who people wake up in his presence. Alan says there's a degree of awakening, but you could describe it as abiding non-dual realization. He and Duncan went to see Andrew Cohen and both experienced transmission. However, it wasn't full-blown awakening.
Great White Brotherhood
Alan says that after that realization, he started teaching. However, it wasn't until 3-4 years later, when he was 33, that it really began. This is when ancestors began to turn up, including Adida. He did a working to contact the Great White Brotherhood and a being called Tempe came along.
Enlightened in India
Alan traveled the world and ended up in Tyan Amalai. He had experiences with teachers and went to Raman Mahash's ashram. He saw a poster for a guru called Aronachal Romana and went to see him. In his presence, the path resolved, and he had his awakening. He then went to the Bay of Bengal and chilled out there for about 3 weeks.
Ancestors appear
Alan says that after his awakening, he started guiding people through the same process. However, it was only until 3-4 years later, when he was 33, that it really began. This is when ancestors began to turn up. In 2019, it was even more so. One of those beings was Adida.
Practicing with Adi Da
Alan says that he did try the method to see because it dawned on him that no one had ever done the practice. He says that the thing that Adida describes as the thumbs, which is the sense of this force descending through the crown chakra into the body and experiencing transmission, is readily available if one was to do that practice.
Transmission traps
Alan says that it wasn't until after that realization in 2013 that he started teaching and transmission became a factor. As a teacher, you then have to wrestle with that phenomenon. The first thing that happens is someone comes and sits with you and they start waking up. You have this inflation and this drama. However, there's a fundamental misunderstanding happening there, which is transmission is the work of divine wisdom.
Confronted by Adi Da disciple
Alan recalls being told off by an Adidas student when he was teaching in California. The student said he was too soft and accommodating. Alan says that despite sometimes thinking he might say this in this situation, he always finds that he accommodates what the person is talking about and then points them in the right direction.
Solid, vital, peculiar
Steve asks Alan about Adida's three typologies: solids, vitals, and peculiars, and where he would place himself. Alan says he must be a peculiar by process of elimination. Adida was a vital.
Cutting truth and Adyashanti
Alan says that there can be a cutting truth that cuts to the core of things but is presented in a way where you might miss that that's what's happened. He's thinking of a teacher like Adyashanti, who appears a certain way but sometimes says things that speak to a certain sophistication under the surface.
Reflections on Adi Da’s trajectory
Alan says that with Adida and Andrew Cohen, students initially experience transmission and think this is it. Some people can sustain the proximity of a teacher for a long time, but as soon as they leave their proximity, it turns out that they're not awake at all. Adida starts off by talking about these states and these energetic changes as the point of the path, but after a while, he starts saying no, I'm giving those as gifts, but what's beyond them?
Further awakening at 33
Steve asks Alan to go back to his awakening at 33. Alan says that after the realization when he was 29, he thought he was done. However, he started to get this sense of being drawn towards something. He had an awakening. The most interesting part was directly knowing that the 33 years that he'd been alive meant nothing. Who and what he is was finally here.
Receiving the Magia teaching
Alan says that after his awakening at 33, he began to cultivate something in his teaching work. He attempted a number of times to express his best understanding of what awakening is, but he always had this sense that it wasn't quite it yet. An old friend, Tempe, turned up in a vision and revealed that he was actually the god Ion. Alan did a magical working with Duncan and spoke to the god Ion. Ion made a prophecy that Alan had a secret that he'd never told anyone, and it was a docahedron.
The Dark Goddess
Alan says that following the retreat where he delivered the book, he thought he'd do it again. However, from the get-go, it was the polar opposite. Everything about that retreat was damned. That marked the beginning of a number of years of a descent into what we might describe as hell. That aspect of the divine is best understood as the goddess or that part of the divine that stays with the damned, stays with the fallen world.
Accommodating yourself to the Damned
Alan says that traveling through that drama has this nature of accommodating yourself to the damned. If you're in a situation that's damned, you have to be damned. In other words, you have no recourse. Nothing is left. You lie down to die because you've got nothing else left to give. That's how you sink down with the damned into the underworld until eventually you'll reach the bottom where the goddess is.
Finding Sophia
Alan says that to travel through what's damned, you have to do what the damned do. You have to be damned. In other words, you have no recourse. Nothing is left. You lie down to die because you've got nothing else to give. That's how you sink down with the damned into the underworld until eventually you'll reach the bottom where the goddess is.
Crowley and Jung
Alan says that this process is described by people like Alistister Crowley in a particular way but very clearly with someone like Cal Young. What's called active imagination really means the unconscious being alive. Everything that you encounter in that process is persuasive. It gets primal, it gets dark. It will remove the delusion that following the silent knowing is the same thing as encountering pleasant experiences.
Myth of Sophia
Alan says that descending to hell to meet the goddess, people always want to know what her name is, but she's not to be possessed in that way. She's not speech, she's silence. It's the same thing, however, as redeeming her. In the old story about Sophia, she attempts to create without God and births a monster, the demi urge. God intervenes and sends a savior from another world to descend into the fallen one.
Sequel plans
Steve petitions Alan for a sequel, asking about the language of the birds and revisiting some of his previous writings. Alan says it's always interesting to do, but his view is that he was in his 20s, and God knows what he said. Steve also wants to talk about the practical dharma movement and revisit some intersections, particularly from where Alan is standing now.
Alan’s perspective on near death experiences
Steve asks Alan about his understanding of near-death experiences. Alan says he had a student who had a near-death experience. He doesn't like the term "near-death experience" and wonders what it means to come back and what the nature of this place is. He wonders how awakening is related to it and why people don't retain the state they talk about encountering when they're here.
Purpose of life and awakening
Alan says that dying and coming back is not the same thing as being awake. Even having a relationship with that world is still not the same thing. There is a purpose and a virtue to all life. Everyone participates in it to the extent that they're capable. Even when someone goes in the opposite direction and no fruit is produced, the harvest is inescapable at the end.
