Q. What is the purpose of your books?
KG. The main purpose is to prepare people for encounters with unfamiliar states of consciousness.
Q. Do these include extraterrestrial encounters?
KG. Yes, extra-, sub-, and ultraterrestrial encounters.
Q. You think such events are imminent?
KG. They are likely at any time, but whether now or at some future period, their occurrence is certain and it is necessary to be prepared for such events.
Q. If these forms of consciousness are other than terrestrial what exactly are they?
KG. All one can say is that there will be extraterrestrial contacts, have in fact already been extraterrestrial contacts, but there will also be other forms of contact. But although man may learn to assimilate extraterrestrial contacts he may find it impossible to cope with those from the Other Side.
Q. Is that what you mean when you refer, in your books, to the back of the ‘Tree of Life’? Is that the Other Side?
KG. The ‘Tree’ serves as a comprehensive model. The known universe is represented by the hitherside of the ‘Tree’, the unknown by the other side.
Q. And your books provide maps, so to speak, of the other side?
KG. They seek to indicate certain ‘gateways’ through which alien forms of consciousness may manifest to man, and through which man may go to meet them.
Q. The book you are now writing is entitled Outer Gateways. Do you suppose that such encounters are imminent because there is a desperate and word-wide wish that something, someone, somewhere will help us out of the mess we’ve made of things?
KG. Man has evoked certain energies, and therefore certain entities, the nature of which he is ignorant, and for confrontation with which he is almost totally unprepared.
Q. He has called them into being by his own folly?
KG. Ignorance is the prime culprit, but there are others. There is a deliberate and perverse determination on the part of man today to amass material possessions. Complete materialisation is desired and therefore a state of total materialism dominates and conditions his activities. With exclusively materialistic motivations man can but destroy himself for they admit of nothing beyond himself.
Q. And he is not equipped to face the consequences?
KG. Decidedly not. His attitude has closed his mind to real knowledge and deprived him of the power of recognising it when it presents itself, as it does today in numerous but unfamiliar forms. If man is to survive he will have to prepare himself for a total encounter with himself. Even so, it may be too late.
Q. How much time is required?
KG. That depends entirely upon individual circumstances. Time Outside is not as it is here; in fact, there is no time there where all is perpetually present. Man could realise instantaneously that present, and that presence, if he were not ignorant.
Q. Then it follows that certain individuals, perhaps those able to realise this Presence, would be immune to the explosion of new forms or consciousness?
KG. In a sense, that is so.
Q. In a physical sense?
KG. No survival is possible in a physical sense. Those that imagine there is are deluding themselves.
Q. But some individuals would survive in some state or other?
KG. In the states to which you allude there is no question of survival. Let us say that there will be a transformation. If man is able to integrate these new experiences into his psyche he must begin NOW to think in terms at least of extraterrestrial trial encounter. If he does this the rest may follow.
Q. All this suggests UFOs and similar phenomena. Surely, if such grave dangers are imminent those in authority will take steps to see that precautions are taken?
KG. How can they? Besides, it is well known that some governments are considered to be responsible for evasions and distortions of information about UFOs. But UFOs are merely projections within the terrestrial sphere, occasionally registered by waking and dreaming humans, and radar screens, of something beyond them; and those ‘in authority’ know nothing about that ‘something’.
Q. Your books do not treat specifically of Ufology.
KG. Others are taking care of that aspect of the matter; there are literally hundreds of books on the subject.
Q. But are they reliable?
KG. Their details are controversial and they are mainly speculative, but the fact of their existence in such abundance suggests that an increasing number of people are experiencing unfamiliar forms of consciousness, or that they are becoming aware of the existence of these forms.
Q. Which brings us back to my initial question: The purpose of your books?
KG. To provide concepts that are essentially strange so that the faculty of intuitive insight may be awakened and aligned with such alien concepts.
Q. Is this the reason for the inclusion in your books of weird sigils, symbols, and outré art?
KG. At this primitive stage of man’s evolution the visual sense is of paramount importance.
Q. Surely sound is equally important; yet you do not lecture.
KG. Sound is important, but in the form you have mentioned it can be a positive hindrance. All sorts of conflicting vibrations impinge upon the listener compared with the silence and stillness that attends the reader. And the reader can again immerse himself at will in the current, if necessary.
Q. So your negative attitude to lecturing is a positive affirmation of the power of silence?
KG. The silent or printed word is more potent than its spoken counterpart except in very exceptional cases, and it reaches those for whom it is intended. People attend lectures for different reasons, but few attend to gain knowledge. They go to meet people, to pass the time, but they are rarely affected deeply by the spoken word, which is quickly forgotten. Books on the other band have been known to change lives. My own was changed by Crowley’s Magick.
Q. Because it opened a gate for you?
KG. Precisely.
Q. But the Bible or the Koran can do that.
KG. Certainly they can, I mention Crowley because his work is more especially relevant to our present discussion.
Q. Have other occultists touched upon these matters?
KG. Blavatsky’s work is replete with insights that suggest she was in touch with some source of ultraterrestrial knowledge. The Book of Dzyan, of which The Secret Doctrine is a comment, contains evidence of contact with Outer Intelligence.
Q. The Bible, Blavatsky, Crowley… Are there any writers today who approach the subject from your particular angle?
KG. Not many.
Q. Why is this so if the subject is of such urgency?
KG. There are several reasons. The mystic, who is probably the most qualified, is concerned essentially with liberating consciousness from the illusion of embodied existence. The magician, on the other hand, seldom cares about status of consciousness that do not promote his personal aims. The mystic is little concerned with the ego; the magician’s is so inflated that he sees little else! The scientist bases his science upon the assumption that the world has a reality independent of consciousness. He therefore finds it difficult to understand the mystic or the magician, who do not.
Q. So there is no one you can name who writes intelligently about the subject?
KG. Somewhat surprisingly a few writers on Ufology, some of them ‘contactees’, have supplied valuable insights. Incidentally, Crowley himself could be classed as a contactee.
Q. He had contact with extraterrestrial Intelligence, hence the Message and the Mission?
KG. Not necessarily extraterrestrial, but certainly ultraterrestrial. Crowley described it as ‘praeterhuman’. The history of The Book of the Law as given in his Confessions reveals him as one of the more important contactees of our age. Some would say the most important.
Q. But contactees are considered disreputable because of their conflicting messages and outlandish statements.
KG. True, but the overall drift of the messages is similar in the majority of cases. One has to allow for the type of mentality through which they are channelled and by which they are interpreted. Very few contactees are versed in magick, mysticism, metaphysics, science. A distinction should be made between communications of a general ethical nature and those in the category of Dzyan and The Book of the Law, both of which contain specialised information and formulae.
Q. What is the message for the non-specialist?
KG. That caution is required in the use of the technologies which man is in process of developing. Owing to distorted growth, man in the mass suffers severe moral deficiencies. It is the defective moral element that threatens humanity with catastrophe.
Q. What exactly is the moral element to which you refer?
KG. The Will. The development of man’s will is in excess of his other moral faculties. He is strong willed but weak minded.
Q. You mean he wants things and will go to any lengths to acquire them?
KG. Precisely. Hitler was an extreme example; his will was a vampire force that grew monstrous at the expense of other faculties and was inflamed to the point of madness by a lust for power. On the other hand, his message, his doctrine, the vehicle of his will, was puerile to the point of idiocy. The same applies to many another so called leader of men.
Q. Crowley was not in this class?
KG. Crowley‘s mind was lucid and highly developed. Had his will been equal to it, the doctrine which he received may have gone far towards preparing man to deal with the new forms of consciousness that are now beginning to manifest. There is little evidence that contactees in recent years have any proper understanding of the messages they receive. What is not in doubt is that none has yet sufficient will effectively to transmit them. Crowley at least has provided a coherent system.
Q. What then is the solution?
KG. There is none. It may now be too late to think in terms of doctrines. They take time to be absorbed. As with all concerns of ultimate value it is up to the individual.
Q. A sort of ‘Operation Noah’s Ark’?
KG. Not exactly. Noah was able to take a lot with him.
Q. It’s no good if you can’t take it with you!
KG. That is a profound observation. If people understood it and acted accordingly no problems would ever arise, even those we have been discussing.
Q. Is there a document such as the Book of Dzyan, the Necronomicon, the Book of the Law, etc., that contains more specific references to the terms we have come to associate with your own books and the Typhonian gnosis which they express?
KG. The Wisdom of S’lba is one such document. It is presented in Outer Gateways, together with a preliminary analysis by way of a tentative comment.
Q. How was Wisdom of S’lba obtained, and when?
KG. It was ‘distilled’, by a protracted process extending over years, from the intensive Rituals performed in New Isis Lodge between 1955-1962. Some idea of the nature of these Rituals may be gathered from my book, Hecate‘s Fountain.
Q. Does ‘S’lba’ contain the keys you have discussed elsewhere in Outer Gateways?
KG. It does. It is the purpose of Outer Gateways to provide those keys but the ‘Wisdom’ must be lived, not merely discussed; and, preferably not discussed at all.