There are some who consider that a Great Work for dedicated Thelemites is to discover their True Will — the Divine Purpose they sought to carry out in their current incarnation — and put all their thought and effort into the pursuit of that purpose, probably after freeing themselves of all outside influences, received wisdom, ingrained biases and the like. Such influences would include the dictates of civil society, corporations, religious institutions, peer groups, family and so on. Some would say that this needn’t be a matter of denying all external input but becoming fully aware of such influence and selective in utilizing it or no. To that end, a book of interest to some could be Annie Murphy Paul’s The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain, which looks at all the ways our thinking is shaped by external forces. Here’s an excerpt from the review that was published in the New York Times Book Review :
“We get constant messages about what’s going on inside our bodies, sensations we can either attend to or ignore. And we belong to tribes that cosset and guide us. Still, we ‘insist that the brain is the sole locus of thinking, a cordoned-off space where cognition happens, much as the workings of my laptop are sealed inside its aluminum case,’ Paul writes. Paul’s view is that we are less like data processing machines and more like soft-bodied mollusks, picking up cues from within and without and transforming ourselves accordingly.”
Read the entire interview: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/11/books/review/the-extended-mind-annie-murphy-paul.html.
