“The nature of belief equals all possibilities ultimately true by identification through culture to an idea of time, so what is not timely is not true, and what is not true, prognostication. Thought of one thing, implies the possibility of another idea as contradicting but not dissociated, belief is to make “one” more convincing. The condition of belief is the denial or limit imposed on the capability of the vitality. To believe at all as such is a concentration and schooling to exclude the implied by adopting a hypothesis or faith that reflects non-worryingly or deceitfully rationalizes the rejected. Truth is not the truth of formula.
The centre of belief is love for one’s self, projecting environment for fulfilment but allowing its distortion to simulate denial, an ambition to become ulterior to self-desire, but you cannot get further than the centre, so one multiplies (believes) in order to be more unaware of the fundamental. Now this refusal to believe what one believes and exactly as one believes, is the first condition for all those who are in desire in any sense whatsoever; the man who is in love perforce becomes a liar, self-hypnotised by his morbid ornamentation. You know the results. . . . .You can only “truly believe” one thing, yet its implexion is essential (as the truth seems to kill 12), so the imagined goes on for ever. The imagination learns that the idea is its compulsion. To explain the “why” of belief (or of anything else), we must transcend its schism. By entire consciousness in how the self loves is the means. As we imitate this law of duality in all our processes of believing, it is not so simple as it seems. Who has transgressed the law of conception? Who has no fear? Yet by this sin, is the sciential of what determines the Schetic. Gracefully compelling or expecting disappointment at the time of desire is the means of locating its deceit, a consciousness that alone gives the chance of inquiry. Beyond it is something arbitrary, the pauser, the ordainer of law, imitating it by “reason” is but damning the consequences. Reason is belief, belief is fear of one’s capability, the faith that you are not even all the wonders of creation, let alone the possibility of being the creator. It is delay . . . . Belief well earns the terrible hatred of the vitality. Belief is not freedom. Belief creates its necessary experience, progress germinates in retrogression. Consider the reality is somewhere: and your belief may be too small for its habitation. Oh, ye of much faith in God, merge into it by the worship of self! Ah! foolish man, worship the glorious in freedom. When death approaches the faith in God and desire of woman will not save you, what are their use when withering and decay sets in and the body is an object of disgust? And what is the use of knowledge and charity when reality is known? Unsheathe the sword of self; ideas of the Almighty should be constantly slain and righteousness should be inquired into.”
– Austin Osman Spare, The Book of Pleasure, or The Psychology of Ecstacy