what's happened to Michael Hoffman from egodeath?

[Eldritch]

This is where I really start to lose you because I always feel a strong sense of consciensciousness, even on my deepest journeys there is still this core of me there, it feels purer in a way. While I have contemplated self-harm, killing another would still feel wrong.

I would like to explore this question. In anceint meaning of 'being possessed by god', THE most profound mythic god you need to research is Dionysos. This 'god' has always fascinated me. He is ambiguous of gender, is known as the 'god of many names', and these include 'Liber' --origin of our term 'liberation', also god of nature, god of dance, of theatre/MASKS, etc etc etc

Dionysos is the entheogen! Hence when you eat it Dionysos is 'born again' as in now s/he is possessing you. Now, the term 'possession' comes from the Greek enthusiasm. because when you are enthused, then you forget yourself right? So it is meaning that in very deep ecstatic way!

Ecstatic participation is not usually encouraged in the west. If you look at the psychotherapeutic design of consciousness researchers like Stan Groff, for example, he rather wanted people to be still and lying on their backs reclining, kind of cut off wearing eyeshades and earphones--Certainly not dancing about wildly in the wilderness, or a room even. His model is the psychoanalytical model which requires we go into ourselves. But that doesn't HAVE to be the only way to experience ecstasy!

Certainly not, just look at the rave culture.

Dancing is a great way to experience and express religious ecstasy, a couple of my finest moments have been while doing so. It was uncontrollable, I had no choice. Sometimes the music is generated from within too, no sound system needed.

Now, there is a usual telling of the Dionysian Mysteries where it claimed that his Celebrants of Dionysos wyhen they were possessed would attack a tethered animal with their bare teeth and savage it! Also that the Maenads--his female followers--would, when possessed roam through the forests and tear apart anyone unfortunate they came across. Do I believe this? No! Even though some supposedly good scholars repeat this theory, I never felt it was right. And then some time back I was reading this online book and in the notes this other scholar said what I thought. That he feels this is an added propaganda to demonize ecstatic possession. So do I!! because not many people feel like DOING that! As you said you have felt like self harm but not killing another.

I am inclined to agree. In fact I am starting to feel that a destructive, vengeful god is a contradiction. A god must by their very nature be loving & creative. It is impossible to be otherwise.

 

[zezt]

But I am questioning Hoffman's assertions ABOUT an 'ego death'--as though so-called ego-death is only possible in a dramatic psychedelic cybernetic formula.

This ^ doesnt make any sense, ego death is an experience, it is 'only possible' when you experience it

Maybe we're getting lost in semantics, I dunno. I meant that we experience so-called 'ego death' all the time. We change. thangs happen and we change course, hopefully for the good. Some people will drink themselves to death, etc.

basically Hoffman would claim I haven't tripped deep enough because I don't agree with his theory.

the theory doesnt require that you agree or disagree with it, because all it is doing is explaining the ego death experience

haha, of course you can agree or disagree with it. I am disagreeing with it

We go through these 'ego death' through life don't we? A love affiar that went wrong. Losing someone. The Blues etc etc, or some GOOD event. It is all about that.

This is an important point, there are all kinds of crisis events that people go through in life such as the examples you mention here. What makes the psychospiritual crisis different from all of these, is the fact that it involves the religious dimension, it is a religious crisis

You are trying to make out it is more profound from 'ordinary' experience, and thus creating a duality between 'nonordinary experience' and 'ordinary experience'. Look, in 'ordinary' experience if someone loses someone they love do not assume that is some lesser event than Hoffman's precious 'ego death experience'....? That is disrespecting experience. Experience is experience. It is continuum.

There is no definative psychedelic event that can then make you think yourself superior than the next person. Yes you can be deeply healed, but you are not superior. You still gonna have to deal with shit, and others will too

as i have said several times, the word 'superior' is strange and misleading in this context, so i dont know why you insist on using it. the ego death experience certainly makes you think that you have learned something incredibly profound about life which other people have no idea about

because you IMPLY that term. Why pretend you don't mean it? because you say the same in so many other words. Have YOU been in a war and had your friend blown up in front of you....? Using a powerful even like that as an example to show you that just because it may not be psychedelic doesn't mean it is not profound. Would you say to that person 'acchhhh, that's nuthin! You aint had a Hoffman ego death experience yet"

Plato's 'cave allegory' explains it perfectly (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave), when the metaphysically enlightened initiate returns to the cave and confronts the other people who have not seen the light of truth, it is impossible for him to communicate his insight to them about the true, hidden nature of reality. He understands something about the structure of ordinary experience which his fellow human beings are completely ignorant of. This is exactly the position that the ego death initiate finds himself after he has returned to the world

aha Plato? Well that character's influence is what I warn against. He looked down on a big proportion of the world community, and believed that only his 'class' of "philosopher kings" knew what 'truth' was, and were fit to lead! That is total elitism. His book The Republic was a totalitarian vision which is a fave of the facist mentality. World's politics are based on that, so I am not drawn to him and his allegory at all.

If I dont agree it doesn't mean I don't understand/ How do YOU know I don't?

Because i am continually having to correct your basic misunderstandings of what the theory says

like I say, I am fully aware what it is I am finding fault with

But I dont think I mean it like you think you think I mean it.

Im talking about the way Watts and Hoffman mean it

I have read quite a few books of Watts. He didn't critique Eastern philosophy enough!

Look----there is a great danger of inlfation when someone thinks they have no ego.

it makes no sense to say 'i have no ego', that is a blatant self-contradiction

But you keep saying 'ego death'. So I presume you mean then that you get a new ego?

For a start 'ego' is just a term---it is a word. Whats it mean? Well Freud meant just 'I', and then he created this mechanical idea of this I being caught in the middle between an 'Id' and 'superego'.

The Freudian concept of 'ego' has nothing to do with the concept of ego as in 'ego death', these are 2 entirely different concepts

the concept of 'ego' relevant to this discussion means the same thing as 'self' or 'person', it is what the name 'zezt' refers to, it is the self-controlling agent, who wields power as you move forwards in time

so you don't mean the Jungian idea of 'self'? Do you mean 'person' as in the real meaning of persona as 'mask'?

How can there be an 'unelightened ego' if you said before that the ego is fictitious?

unenlightened ego thinks that it is simply, literally real. Enlightened ego knows that it is merely a convenient fiction

I see. So your saying that 'unenlightened people' think that the ego is real, but 'enlightened people' know that it is not real?
But you just said this above: "it makes no sense to say 'i have no ego', that is a blatant self-contradiction" So if someone knows that the ego is 'not real' why is it a contradiction to say 'I have no ego'? Dont make sense

When I listen to me thoughts I just think them. Somethimes I act on them sometimes I dont. We all do that. So why is someone Unenlightened. How can someone say to another they are unenlightened because they aint thinking the right way? That is wrong, and like I said is dangerous because it causes inflation in the one swanning around thinking themselves enlightened.

there are 2 worldmodels being contrasted here, egoic (or unenlightened) and transcendent (enlightened). the unenlightened ego believes/assumes that it is real, in the sense that it has the power to control the immediate future, the ego death experience drastically corrects this mistaken belief, so the enlightened person acknowledges the unreality of this power of control, and bows his head humbly in the face of the transcendental ground of being from which its control ultimately emanates

so the 'enlightened' person cant arrange a holiday? Sorry I dont see a difference

No no, that IS elitism. Listen all a person needs to know is this---that destroying the land, the waters, the animals etc is wrong. Now it doesn't take someone who is 'ego-deathed the Hoffman or Maxfreakout way' to know that. But knowing that deeply IS sacred. All that other stuff mystical stuff, and this has formed brotherhoods in the past which think themselves aloof from the rest of us. That is why I am calling it out!

there is a certain kind of elitism associated with psychedelic use, we are elite in some strange way, because we know about the psychedelic experience. most people do not know about this experience, so therefore most people are less aware (about transcendental cognitive dynamics) than we are

Don't include me though. I don't want to be elitist. I can realize that trying to describe to someone who hasn't had a psychedelic experience what it is like is impossible, but this is the same as an adult trying to explain to a kid what sexula orgasm is like. BUT the adult has ALSO forgot what being a kid may be like so the kid describing what playing in the woods that day was like--for him --is also impossible. In fact r=trying to explain to ANYone YOUR unique experience is impossible because they aren't you. Surely that doesn't make you elite to them?

MY great insight from psychedelics from my very first trips was SEEING nature in all its beauty and wonder. Remember though you called that seeing 'secondary'? To you, not me.

i did not call seeing secondary, that doesnt make any sense, seeing is seeing

[/quote]

It is somewhere above. Maybe I will try and find it later on

 

[maxfreakout]

I am inclined to agree. In fact I am starting to feel that a destructive, vengeful god is a contradiction. A god must by their very nature be loving & creative. It is impossible to be otherwise.

why should it be the case that a god "by their very nature" be loving and creative?

This goes against the religious view of what 'god' it, because every religion contains the idea of a dual-aspect god, - the compassionate/loving/creative god and the vengeful/punishing/destructive god. Furthermore this concept of the dual aspect fits in perfectly with psychedelic experiencing, because as most of us here know, a trip can be good or bad, heaven or hell etc (or contain aspects of both), during a trip session you can experience heavenly ecstatic bliss, and also terrifying torturous hell

 

[maxfreakout]

I meant that we experience so-called 'ego death' all the time. We change. thangs happen and we change course, hopefully for the good. Some people will drink themselves to death, etc.

We do change all the time during daily life, but that is a very different thing from mystical-state ego death. Ego death occurs when you think you have died during an intense mystical experience, that is not something that 'we all experience all the time', it is actually a fairly rare experience that only a small minority of people ever experience

haha, of course you can agree or disagree with it. I am disagreeing with it

you do not disagree with it, you are not in a position to agree or disagree with it until you have first fully understood it

Any moron can say something like "i disagree with Einstein's theory of relativity", but of course just because they say that doesnt mean that they actually disagree with it, it merely demonstrates their own sheer cluelessness that they would say such a thing in the first place

There is a real phenomenon to be accounted for, - the fact that psychonauts sometimes feel as if they have died (or else experienced some other irreversible/ultimate catastrophe) during a trip, and then feel as if their psychology has been permanently transformed by the experience after the trip ends. Ego death theory provides a satisfying, consistent, coherent explanation of exactly why and how this experience happens. In order for you to legitimately 'disagree' with ego death theory, you would need to fully understand it, and also you would need to have some alternative explanation of the phenomenon in question. You have done neither of these things

You are trying to make out it is more profound from 'ordinary' experience, and thus creating a duality between 'nonordinary experience' and 'ordinary experience'.

you already indicate yourself here ^ that such a duality exists, by using the labels 'ordinary' and 'nonordinary'. There is obviously a duality/distinction between these two kinds of experience, tripping on entheogens is a fundamentally different kind of experience than not tripping on entheogens. You can make this distinction in terms of each experience's relative 'profundity' (tripping is a more profound type of experience), but this isnt a particularly meaningful or descriptive way to make the distinction. Ego death theory uses a very neat phenomenological distinction, in terms of the binding intensity of cognitive associations - ordinary state experience is characterised by rigid association binding, whereas in the psychedelic state association binding is loosened or disengaged to some extent. It is precisely this loosening of associations that opens up the possibility of 'profound' occurences during a trip such as schizoid mental fragmentation, encounters with angels/elves/aliens or whatever

Look, in 'ordinary' experience if someone loses someone they love do not assume that is some lesser event than Hoffman's precious 'ego death experience'....? That is disrespecting experience. Experience is experience. It is continuum.

The most relevant feature of psychedelic experience in this context is its potential for causing religious mental reconfiguration, experiences such as losing a loved one typically (although not necessarily always) lack this potential, whereas with psychedelics it is fairly standard. In that specific sense, it could be said (using your terminology) that losing a loved one is 'lesser' than tripping, although i wouldnt put it in those terms myself, i would rather say stick with Hoffman's terminology and distinguish between ordinary state experiences such as losing a loved one, and religious altered state experiences such as experiencing death and transcendent rebirth during an LSD trip

because you IMPLY that term. Why pretend you don't mean it? because you say the same in so many other words. Have YOU been in a war and had your friend blown up in front of you....? Using a powerful even like that as an example to show you that just because it may not be psychedelic doesn't mean it is not profound. Would you say to that person 'acchhhh, that's nuthin! You aint had a Hoffman ego death experience yet"

no i certainly wouldnt say that, im certainly not saying that 'profound' (or shocking, awesome, powerful etc) experiences are solely limited to trip sessions, but that comes down to what i said above ^^, that the word 'profound' isnt really such a meaningful, descriptive term to use to make the relevant distinction between modes of cognitive processing that ego death theory makes. The important point is that having a friend blown up in front of you is NOT in any sense a religious experience, whereas mystical ego death and rebirth is the ultimate, peak religious experience

aha Plato? Well that character's influence is what I warn against. He looked down on a big proportion of the world community, and believed that only his 'class' of "philosopher kings" knew what 'truth' was, and were fit to lead! That is total elitism. His book The Republic was a totalitarian vision which is a fave of the facist mentality. World's politics are based on that, so I am not drawn to him and his allegory at all

this ^ has no relevance whatsoever to the cave allegory that i was referring to, and (even though it is somewhat true, albeit in a simplistic and misguided way) in no sense does it diminish the power of the cave allegory to explain the relevant point about peak religious experience

the philosopher who returns to the darkness of the cave after having seen the blinding light of metaphysical truth, is in the same position as the religiously matured initiate returning to the ordinary world after the ego death experience, - he is unable to meaningfully explain metaphysical truth to the people in the cave who have not had the experience, all that he can do is hint at what a ridiculously awesome experience he has had

But you keep saying 'ego death'. So I presume you mean then that you get a new ego?

not really a 'new ego', you get a new religiously reconfigured mental worldmodel, a radically new way of understanding the concepts of self/time/world/change. Ego (ie the apparent experience of self-control) remains exactly as it was before the experience, but the initiate no longer identifies with it, because the memory of the experience serves as a constant correction to the belief in fallacy of egoic logic, the principle that 'i am the controller of these thoughts' (which was uncritically taken for granted before the experience). The religiously transformed worldmodel takes into account the existence of a transcendental 'ground of being' (Wilber's terminology) from which the ego's control acts timelessly emanate, entirely beyond the control of ego itself. You do not really control your own thoughts, your thoughts at each moment are injected into your head by the ontologically primary ground of being

This experience is neatly reflected by a quote in the bible from Balaam, the old testament prophet:
“the Lord said to me, "Behold, I have put My words in your mouth”” (Jeremiah 1:9)

so you don't mean the Jungian idea of 'self'? Do you mean 'person' as in the real meaning of persona as 'mask'?

i dont know about the Jungian idea of self, what i was saying is that it is very different from the Freudian concept of 'ego'

'ego' in the sense of 'ego death' refers to the control agent, the author of the stream of thoughts and actions

who is it who thinks your thoughts? It is YOU who thinks your thoughts, - that is ego

I see. So your saying that 'unenlightened people' think that the ego is real, but 'enlightened people' know that it is not real?

yes exactly, but you have to be careful using blanket assertions like 'x is real/x is unreal'. That is why it is crucial to understand the distinction between appearance and reality. Ego is merely appearance, the eternal ground of being is the only thing that is ultimately real.

But you just said this above: "it makes no sense to say 'i have no ego', that is a blatant self-contradiction" So if someone knows that the ego is 'not real' why is it a contradiction to say 'I have no ego'? Dont make sense

saying "I have no ego" is a self-contradiciton because the word 'I' and the word 'ego' both refer to the same thing (the mentally constructed self-controller agent), so it is just like saying "I have no I" or "I am not myself"

Instead, the matured initiate would say something like: "I acknowledge that my apparent power to control my near-future thoughts is ultimately illusory, thank God for this deeply cherished illusion, and thank God for revealing its illusory nature to me in the ego death experience so that i can continue to live my life in this world in light of higher metaphysical truth, free of satanic delusion"

so the 'enlightened' person cant arrange a holiday? Sorry I dont see a difference

the enlightened ego can do everything that the unenlightened ego can do. the difference is that the enlightened ego doesnt believe in blatant logical fallacies like 'being an uncaused cause of mental activity'

Don't include me though. I don't want to be elitist. I can realize that trying to describe to someone who hasn't had a psychedelic experience what it is like is impossible, but this is the same as an adult trying to explain to a kid what sexula orgasm is like. BUT the adult has ALSO forgot what being a kid may be like so the kid describing what playing in the woods that day was like--for him --is also impossible. In fact r=trying to explain to ANYone YOUR unique experience is impossible because they aren't you. Surely that doesn't make you elite to them?

The orgasm analogy is very accurate, Hoffman refers to ego death as a 'mystical orgasm'. The adult is "superior" to the child in the specific sense that the adult knows what an orgasm feels like, the child doesnt. the adult could never meaningfully describe this experience to the child. The analogy doesnt hold in the reverse direction, because the adult knows what it is like to be a child (even though their memory of childhood may be clouded to some degree)

Wilber's concept of 'transcendending but including' is useful for understanding this point, the adult's experience 'transcends but includes' the child's experience

It is somewhere above. Maybe I will try and find it later on

It is nowhere above, i didnt say it, it would take you 30 seconds to see that for yourself by using the 'search' function. You were mistakenly, and grossly inaccurately, referring to the distinction i explained between appearance and reality

 

[zezt]

I meant that we experience so-called 'ego death' all the time. We change. thangs happen and we change course, hopefully for the good. Some people will drink themselves to death, etc.

We do change all the time during daily life, but that is a very different thing from mystical-state ego death. Ego death occurs when you think you have died during an intense mystical experience, that is not something that 'we all experience all the time', it is actually a fairly rare experience that only a small minority of people ever experience

Have YOU ever experienced losing someone you love in a road accident, or them being murdered in front of your eyes, etc etc etc. Stop trying to make out only 'ego deather in a described Hoffman trip' are the only ones with any intense mystical experience. Every experience is unique. How come I know this you don't. it doesn't say much for 'ego death' does it, if you haven't the empathy to know what I mean?

haha, of course you can agree or disagree with it. I am disagreeing with it

you do not disagree with it, you are not in a position to agree or disagree with it until you have first fully understood it

Any moron can say something like "i disagree with Einstein's theory of relativity", but of course just because they say that doesnt mean that they actually disagree with it, it merely demonstrates their own sheer cluelessness that they would say such a thing in the first place

There is a real phenomenon to be accounted for, - the fact that psychonauts sometimes feel as if they have died (or else experienced some other irreversible/ultimate catastrophe) during a trip, and then feel as if their psychology has been permanently transformed by the experience after the trip ends. Ego death theory provides a satisfying, consistent, coherent explanation of exactly why and how this experience happens. In order for you to legitimately 'disagree' with ego death theory, you would need to fully understand it, and also you would need to have some alternative explanation of the phenomenon in question. You have done neither of these things

How do you know?! You sound very elitist and arrogant. IF someone, who is NOT your 'moron' which is very insulting to call anyone actually. does not agree with Einstein's theory of relativity for whatever reason that is their right. MAYbe they are right. Maybe they have an intuition that cannot be communicated in the scientific language Albert does it in---whatever, just because they disagree with some big shots THEORY does not mean you have the right to look down on them. And by the way, do you understand QM?
I am afraid maxfreakout your efforts of argument purporting todefend Hoffmans cybernetics, or whateveryou wanna calls it, is having more and more the OPPOSITE effect on me, the way your coming across

You are trying to make out it is more profound from 'ordinary' experience, and thus creating a duality between 'nonordinary experience' and 'ordinary experience'.

you already indicate yourself here ^ that such a duality exists, by using the labels 'ordinary' and 'nonordinary'. There is obviously a duality/distinction between these two kinds of experience, tripping on entheogens is a fundamentally different kind of experience than not tripping on entheogens. You can make this distinction in terms of each experience's relative 'profundity' (tripping is a more profound type of experience), but this isnt a particularly meaningful or descriptive way to make the distinction. Ego death theory uses a very neat phenomenological distinction, in terms of the binding intensity of cognitive associations - ordinary state experience is characterised by rigid association binding, whereas in the psychedelic state association binding is loosened or disengaged to some extent. It is precisely this loosening of associations that opens up the possibility of 'profound' occurences during a trip such as schizoid mental fragmentation, encounters with angels/elves/aliens or whatever

No how you speak about 'nonordinary experience' and 'ordinary experience' does seem dualistic to me, and it does matter what psychobabble you use, you try and make out that our ordinary mode of being is static, and I dont see it that way. I rather see a continuum. That ordinary experience is always changing, and that extraordinary experience can spontaneously happen, but that often oppressive conditionings and so on suppress it, and that yes true ecstatic experience with the aid of psychedelics is profound, but it still is in continuum with our ordinary life. So to repeat i see it all as continuum, and not dualistically

Look, in 'ordinary' experience if someone loses someone they love do not assume that is some lesser event than Hoffman's precious 'ego death experience'....? That is disrespecting experience. Experience is experience. It is continuum.

The most relevant feature of psychedelic experience in this context is its potential for causing religious mental reconfiguration, experiences such as losing a loved one typically (although not necessarily always) lack this potential, whereas with psychedelics it is fairly standard. In that specific sense, it could be said (using your terminology) that losing a loved one is 'lesser' than tripping, although i wouldnt put it in those terms myself, i would rather say stick with Hoffman's terminology and distinguish between ordinary state experiences such as losing a loved one, and religious altered state experiences such as experiencing death and transcendent rebirth during an LSD trip

Ohhh Max. You nor me KNOWS what is like for another to lose a loved one! There is no category 'losing a loved one' that you can use as some known factor to compare your 'ego death ego death ego death' with. And I didn't say losing a loved one was 'lesser' than tripping, I was trying to paint out what you seem to be saying most of the time. That Hoffman's cartography of 'ego death' surpasses so-called ordinary experience. You say this is because of religious symbolism?
So-called 'Bi polar' and other so-called 'mental illness' states can bring up all the archetypal imagery etc also.

because you IMPLY that term. Why pretend you don't mean it? because you say the same in so many other words. Have YOU been in a war and had your friend blown up in front of you....? Using a powerful even like that as an example to show you that just because it may not be psychedelic doesn't mean it is not profound. Would you say to that person 'acchhhh, that's nuthin! You aint had a Hoffman ego death experience yet"

no i certainly wouldnt say that, im certainly not saying that 'profound' (or shocking, awesome, powerful etc) experiences are solely limited to trip sessions, but that comes down to what i said above ^^, that the word 'profound' isnt really such a meaningful, descriptive term to use to make the relevant distinction between modes of cognitive processing that ego death theory makes. The important point is that having a friend blown up in front of you is NOT in any sense a religious experience, whereas mystical ego death and rebirth is the ultimate, peak religious experience

But again---HOW do you KNOW that. Has it ever happend to you? Do you know ANYONE that has happened to? WHAT do you even mean by religious experience? You seem to underestimate others' experience, and that is not good maxfreakout. I for example could talk to someone and they could tell me with words some bad shit they've been through. I could PRETEND I know what they are feeling because I am listening to their words, emotional state etc, but I can never really know what they are feeling.

aha Plato? Well that character's influence is what I warn against. He looked down on a big proportion of the world community, and believed that only his 'class' of "philosopher kings" knew what 'truth' was, and were fit to lead! That is total elitism. His book The Republic was a totalitarian vision which is a fave of the facist mentality. World's politics are based on that, so I am not drawn to him and his allegory at all

this ^ has no relevance whatsoever to the cave allegory that i was referring to, and (even though it is somewhat true, albeit in a simplistic and misguided way) in no sense does it diminish the power of the cave allegory to explain the relevant point about peak religious experience

the philosopher who returns to the darkness of the cave after having seen the blinding light of metaphysical truth, is in the same position as the religiously matured initiate returning to the ordinary world after the ego death experience, - he is unable to meaningfully explain metaphysical truth to the people in the cave who have not had the experience, all that he can do is hint at what a ridiculously awesome experience he has had

But it is HIS experience. And that does not mean he can impose his unique experience on all reality as though it is 'the truth', and from there others are 'lesser'. See?

But you keep saying 'ego death'. So I presume you mean then that you get a new ego?

not really a 'new ego', you get a new religiously reconfigured mental worldmodel, a radically new way of understanding the concepts of self/time/world/change. Ego (ie the apparent experience of self-control) remains exactly as it was before the experience, but the initiate no longer identifies with it, because the memory of the experience serves as a constant correction to the belief in fallacy of egoic logic, the principle that 'i am the controller of these thoughts' (which was uncritically taken for granted before the experience). The religiously transformed worldmodel takes into account the existence of a transcendental 'ground of being' (Wilber's terminology) from which the ego's control acts timelessly emanate, entirely beyond the control of ego itself. You do not really control your own thoughts, your thoughts at each moment are injected into your head by the ontologically primary ground of being

This experience is neatly reflected by a quote in the bible from Balaam, the old testament prophet:
“the Lord said to me, "Behold, I have put My words in your mouth”” (Jeremiah 1:9)

Well like I keeps saying, this is inflation. IF the one 'coming down' goes around thinking that they are different and more advanced than the 'poor wretches' they come across then their trip has been an abysmal failure in my opinion!

so you don't mean the Jungian idea of 'self'? Do you mean 'person' as in the real meaning of persona as 'mask'?

i dont know about the Jungian idea of self, what i was saying is that it is very different from the Freudian concept of 'ego'

'ego' in the sense of 'ego death' refers to the control agent, the author of the stream of thoughts and actions

who is it who thinks your thoughts? It is YOU who thinks your thoughts, - that is ego

Hmmmm, you know I found this podcast last night. Apparently it is a rare copy of Alan Watts talking about LSD. I just love the way he talks, and his sense of humour, but I was also listening knowing his future---that he was gonna die most likely from being an alcoholic, so this understanding tended to undermine a lot of what he was purporting to say. Irony and all that.
And I have been reflecting after why he did what he did. I am trying to figure out if there was some unaccepted contradiction going on. I heard him often in the talk seem to romanticize about gurus, and zen masters. Ie., that they could 'look right through you' etc , and that they had themselves seen through the game---the game of duality, and thus understood polarity. So I have been thinking about this, and this is where I am up to.
As you may know, in that period, the 1960s/70s, most of the younger generation were taking psychedelics and looked up especially to Alan Watts, Leary etc, and they were very into Eastern philosophy and mysticism! And thus you got this flight from psychedelics by many of the young who wanted to go to India and find a guru and find out how to get all-the-time-enlightenment! Remember the Beatles? They were doing the same and had their own guru lol
A common mantra from this set was 'when you get the message hang up the phone'. ie., many turned their backs on psychedelics, and because Buddhists, got a guru, joined a cult, became a yogi. get me?
I listened to a talk which included Ralph Metzner a couple of months ago, and he admitted that when he and Leary were doing their stuff in the 60s they didn't know much about the very anceint use, and shamnic use of psychedelics.
So whats my point?
I think the major contradiction with Watts was the idea that you must become somehow a 'god', and that from his knowledge and everything it was not acceptable to be 'normal', and thus would drink to 'ride the wind' so to speak, like he would often poeticise wine-drinking zennists and Taoists would do.
Also it came later just how dodgy many of the so-called gurus and zen masters actually were, and were just AS human as the rest of us, but using the gullibility of their followers to abuse them in various ways. I dont mean Alan did that, but the exposure and critique about it wasn't apparent when he was alive THIS is what I warn about!

I see. So your saying that 'unenlightened people' think that the ego is real, but 'enlightened people' know that it is not real?

yes exactly, but you have to be careful using blanket assertions like 'x is real/x is unreal'. That is why it is crucial to understand the distinction between appearance and reality. Ego is merely appearance, the eternal ground of being is the only thing that is ultimately real.

That is just wordplay

But you just said this above: "it makes no sense to say 'i have no ego', that is a blatant self-contradiction" So if someone knows that the ego is 'not real' why is it a contradiction to say 'I have no ego'? Dont make sense

saying "I have no ego" is a self-contradiciton because the word 'I' and the word 'ego' both refer to the same thing (the mentally constructed self-controller agent), so it is just like saying "I have no I" or "I am not myself"

Instead, the matured initiate would say something like: "I acknowledge that my apparent power to control my near-future thoughts is ultimately illusory, thank God for this deeply cherished illusion, and thank God for revealing its illusory nature to me in the ego death experience so that i can continue to live my life in this world in light of higher metaphysical truth, free of satanic delusion"

:lol: thats a mouthfull, isn't it? and it begs a lot of other questions. 'Satanic delusion'? care to explain what you mean exactly by that?

so the 'enlightened' person cant arrange a holiday? Sorry I dont see a difference

the enlightened ego can do everything that the unenlightened ego can do. the difference is that the enlightened ego doesnt believe in blatant logical fallacies like 'being an uncaused cause of mental activity'

" the enlightened ego" ? NOW your saying the ego does exist. This surely is The Madhatters Teaparty is it not?

Don't include me though. I don't want to be elitist. I can realize that trying to describe to someone who hasn't had a psychedelic experience what it is like is impossible, but this is the same as an adult trying to explain to a kid what sexula orgasm is like. BUT the adult has ALSO forgot what being a kid may be like so the kid describing what playing in the woods that day was like--for him --is also impossible. In fact r=trying to explain to ANYone YOUR unique experience is impossible because they aren't you. Surely that doesn't make you elite to them?

The orgasm analogy is very accurate, Hoffman refers to ego death as a 'mystical orgasm'. The adult is "superior" to the child in the specific sense that the adult knows what an orgasm feels like, the child doesnt. the adult could never meaningfully describe this experience to the child. The analogy doesnt hold in the reverse direction, because the adult knows what it is like to be a child (even though their memory of childhood may be clouded to some degree)

Wilber's concept of 'transcendending but including' is useful for understanding this point, the adult's experience 'transcends but includes' the child's experience

I don't agree and I cannot stand Ken Wilbur! It has been said that the child has a polymorphous perverse body--a longwided way os saying that the child's body is sensitive in all areas not just the genital area like it is for many adults who have LOST their sensual being due to the batterings of the oppressive culture. So in THAT respect we can say they are INFERIOR to the child, hey?

It is somewhere above. Maybe I will try and find it later on

It is nowhere above, i didnt say it, it would take you 30 seconds to see that for yourself by using the 'search' function. You were mistakenly, and grossly inaccurately, referring to the distinction i explained between appearance and reality

Ie., you put-down someone who hasn't had your 'glorious ego death psychedelic experience as certified and patented by Hoffman' in how they perceive nature, reality, their own feelings.

 

[strangeloop]

http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/annotations/PHILOSI.0.html a very well written comprhensive outline of the ego death theory...

 

[maxfreakout]

Have YOU ever experienced losing someone you love in a road accident, or them being murdered in front of your eyes, etc etc etc.

This question isnt really relevant to the conversation, but yes i have lost a very good friend in a road accident a few years ago, and no i havent had anyone murdered in front of my eyes

The important point is, neither of these 2 experiences are mystical altered state experiences, the kinds of experiences you mention here ^ are both experiences you undergo while you are in the ordinary state of consciousness, they are 'ordinary state' experiences

Stop trying to make out only 'ego deather in a described Hoffman trip' are the only ones with any intense mystical experience. Every experience is unique. How come I know this you don't. it doesn't say much for 'ego death' does it, if you haven't the empathy to know what I mean?

The ordinary state of consciousness, and the intense mystical altered state of consciousness, are two entirely distinct realms of experiencing, - ie tripping and not-tripping are two entirely distinct types of experience. When you are not on drugs, you are in the ordinary state, when you take drugs, you enter the altered state until the drug wears off. Understanding this point has nothing to do with having 'empathy', it just involves understanding the distinction between tripping and not tripping, it is a very basic distinction

How do you know?! You sound very elitist and arrogant. IF someone, who is NOT your 'moron' which is very insulting to call anyone actually. does not agree with Einstein's theory of relativity for whatever reason that is their right. MAYbe they are right. Maybe they have an intuition that cannot be communicated in the scientific language Albert does it in---whatever, just because they disagree with some big shots THEORY does not mean you have the right to look down on them. And by the way, do you understand QM?

I do not understand QM, therefore I am in no position to say "i disagree with QM, all quantum mechanicists are idiots", if i did say such a thing, it would only indicate my own stupidity, it would say nothing at all about QM or the people who understand it or make theories about it

Understanding a theory is a prerequisite for agreeing OR disagreeing with it, you cannot agree or disagree with a theory that you dont understand, simply because you would not know what it was that you were agreeing or disagreeing with

You do not seem to have even a basic grasp of the ego death theory, therefore you are not in a position to agree or disagree with it, wait until you understand it first, then make up your mind, read and learn :wink:

I am afraid maxfreakout your efforts of argument purporting todefend Hoffmans cybernetics, or whateveryou wanna calls it, is having more and more the OPPOSITE effect on me, the way your coming across

I have no intention of 'defending' the theory as it doesnt require being defended, all i am doing on this thread is explaining it as clearly as i possibly can, for the benefit of people who genuinely want to understand it, and people who already understand it who are interested in reading about it as i am

what i write here is solely aimed at those people who are on a path of understanding and knowledge

No how you speak about 'nonordinary experience' and 'ordinary experience' does seem dualistic to me

that's because it is dualistic, there is an obvious difference between the kind of experience you have when you are on drugs, and the kind of experience you have when you arent on drugs, these are 2 distinct kinds of experience

the whole point of taking psychoactive drugs, is to alter your mode of experiencing from the ordinary mode to the altered mode

and it does matter what psychobabble you use, you try and make out that our ordinary mode of being is static, and I dont see it that way.

im not sure what you mean by 'static', the ordinary mode of experiencing could be described as 'static' in the specific sense that it remains ordinary until you take drugs or go to sleep, but i dont think 'static' is a particularly useful or meaningful word to describe ordinary state experiencing.

I rather see a continuum. That ordinary experience is always changing, and that extraordinary experience can spontaneously happen, but that often oppressive conditionings and so on suppress it, and that yes true ecstatic experience with the aid of psychedelics is profound, but it still is in continuum with our ordinary life. So to repeat i see it all as continuum, and not dualistically

tripping is an entirely different kind of experience from ordinary life, for example, when you trip you see crazy geometric patterns crawling all over the place, when you dont take drugs, you dont see these patterns - therefore there is at least one fundamental difference between the ordinary state and the psychedelic state (ie the presence or abscence of spontaneous pattern formation)

Ohhh Max. You nor me KNOWS what is like for another to lose a loved one!

I know perfectly well what this is likebecause i have experienced it myself, if you havent yet experienced it yourself you will one day because at some point one of your parents or grandparents is going to die (hopefully before you do). This kind of experience is definitely not the same thing as a psychedelic trip - ie an experience of the intense mystical altered state of consciousness

There is no category 'losing a loved one' that you can use as some known factor to compare your 'ego death ego death ego death' with.

losing a loved one happens within the ordinary state of consciousness, it is an experience that occurs (albeit rarely for most people) during everyday life. Ego death by contrast does NOT happen during everyday life, it only happens during the intense mystical state when the ego comes face to face with the beautific vision of God (which is its own logical negation) and self-destructs

And I didn't say losing a loved one was 'lesser' than tripping

you introduced the word 'lesser' into the discussion, i dont think it is really 'lesser' or 'morer' than tripping (because it isnt clear what that means), but it is definitely distinct from tripping, if you cant understand why this is the case, i cant help you, tripping and not tripping are two different kinds of experience

I was trying to paint out what you seem to be saying most of the time. That Hoffman's cartography of 'ego death' surpasses so-called ordinary experience.

this ^ is a category error, the ego death experience itself (not Hoffman's cartography of it) in some sense 'surpasses' ordinary experience, because ordinary experience lacks the potential to cause homeostatic state-shift to a radically new, religiously reconfigured level of consciousness

You say this is because of religious symbolism?

no it isnt 'because of' religious symbolism (that is another category error), rather, religious symbolism symbolises this psychological transformation

So-called 'Bi polar' and other so-called 'mental illness' states can bring up all the archetypal imagery etc also.

bi polar disorder does not cause religious transformative regeneration as far as i know, it just causes a whole lot of stress and suffering

But again---HOW do you KNOW that. Has it ever happend to you? Do you know ANYONE that has happened to?

i have experienced shit, i know other people who have experienced shit, experiencing shit is just a part of life, but it is a different thing entirely from intense mystical altered-state cognitive fireworks

WHAT do you even mean by religious experience?

I have explained that very clearly several times, it is a kind of experience characterised by loosened associations, the kind of experience you have when you take a big dose of LSD on your own in a forest at night, for example

You seem to underestimate others' experience, and that is not good maxfreakout. I for example could talk to someone and they could tell me with words some bad shit they've been through. I could PRETEND I know what they are feeling because I am listening to their words, emotional state etc, but I can never really know what they are feeling.

im not uderestimating anybody's experience, i am just pointing out the obvious distinction between what you experience when you take entheogens compared to what you experience when you dont take entheogens

But it is HIS experience. And that does not mean he can impose his unique experience on all reality as though it is 'the truth', and from there others are 'lesser'. See?

It wasnt his experience, it was an allegory about a fictional person living in a fictional artificial reality inside a cave, who comes to discover that the shadow-world which he took to be 'real' is in fact just a superficial illusion on the wall of the cave. This allegory allegorises the experience of the entheogen initiate who undergoes regenerative psychological transformation and comes to see that the ordinary world of people and objects is in fact just a very detailed, very consistent and very convincing illusion

'The Matrix' does exactly the same thing as the cave allegory, Mr Anderson believes in the reality of the world he is embedded in, then he takes the red pill (the sacred entheogen), is transformed into 'Neo' and discovers that everything he thought was real throughout his whole life was actually a just computer generated artificial reality all along. This is an allegory of the ego death experience

Well like I keeps saying, this is inflation. IF the one 'coming down' goes around thinking that they are different and more advanced than the 'poor wretches' they come across then their trip has been an abysmal failure in my opinion!

it is a simple truism that the psychonaut is 'more advanced' than the entheogen-naive person, if you clearly define 'being more advanced' as 'knowing about the psychedelic experience'

when you know about the psychedelic experience, you are more advanced than someone who doesnt know about it in that specific sense of 'being more advanced', you have more knowledge than someone who doesnt know about this experience

Hmmmm, you know I found this podcast last night. Apparently it is a rare copy of Alan Watts talking about LSD. I just love the way he talks, and his sense of humour, but I was also listening knowing his future---that he was gonna die most likely from being an alcoholic, so this understanding tended to undermine a lot of what he was purporting to say. Irony and all that.
And I have been reflecting after why he did what he did. I am trying to figure out if there was some unaccepted contradiction going on. I heard him often in the talk seem to romanticize about gurus, and zen masters. Ie., that they could 'look right through you' etc , and that they had themselves seen through the game---the game of duality, and thus understood polarity. So I have been thinking about this, and this is where I am up to.
As you may know, in that period, the 1960s/70s, most of the younger generation were taking psychedelics and looked up especially to Alan Watts, Leary etc, and they were very into Eastern philosophy and mysticism! And thus you got this flight from psychedelics by many of the young who wanted to go to India and find a guru and find out how to get all-the-time-enlightenment! Remember the Beatles? They were doing the same and had their own guru lol
A common mantra from this set was 'when you get the message hang up the phone'. ie., many turned their backs on psychedelics, and because Buddhists, got a guru, joined a cult, became a yogi. get me?
I listened to a talk which included Ralph Metzner a couple of months ago, and he admitted that when he and Leary were doing their stuff in the 60s they didn't know much about the very anceint use, and shamnic use of psychedelics.
So whats my point?
I think the major contradiction with Watts was the idea that you must become somehow a 'god', and that from his knowledge and everything it was not acceptable to be 'normal', and thus would drink to 'ride the wind' so to speak, like he would often poeticise wine-drinking zennists and Taoists would do.
Also it came later just how dodgy many of the so-called gurus and zen masters actually were, and were just AS human as the rest of us, but using the gullibility of their followers to abuse them in various ways. I dont mean Alan did that, but the exposure and critique about it wasn't apparent when he was alive THIS is what I warn about!

this isnt really relevant to the conversation, but i agree it is wrong to put 'zen masters' or 'gurus' or whatever on a pedestal, because they are still just human beings

on the other hand, i certainly do put the entheogens on a pedestal, they are the sacred, hallowed teachers of religous insight, the keys to unlock the divine potential of the human mind. As Hoffman puts it, they are the origin, essence and ongoing wellspring of esoteric religion

:lol: thats a mouthfull, isn't it? and it begs a lot of other questions. 'Satanic delusion'? care to explain what you mean exactly by that?

yes it is a mouthful i got a bit carried away when i was typing that

'satanic delusion' refers to the naive unenlightened belief in the causal power of ego, ie the belief that i can control my future thoughts. This belief is monstrously illogical, a demonic, beastly mistake which is thoroughly exorsised by the ego death experience

" the enlightened ego" ? NOW your saying the ego does exist. This surely is The Madhatters Teaparty is it not?

this ^ quote demonstrates exactly why, as i said in my last post, it is not a good idea to think of anything in simplistic terms like 'x is real/x is unreal'

ego is real in a sense, and unreal in a sense, ego appears (convincingly) to be real, but it is not ultimately real

ego basically consists of a claim of being more real than it actually is, it is a hollow mental construct which claims to be a concrete entity, it is causally impotent but it claims to have causal power

unenlightened ego believes in its own claim of being a sovereign control agent, enlightened ego is humbled in the face of the true, ultimate source of control which is the transcendental ground of being, 'the eternal tao which flows everywhere' which is entirely above and beyond the ego's control

 

[strangeloop]

by the way... I just read in Michael Hoffmans Amazon profile that he is intending to start writing his book this summer

 

[strangeloop]

http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/annotations/PHILOSI.0.html

 

[strangeloop]

http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/annotations/PHILOSI.0.html

 

[maxfreakout]

by the way... I just read in Michael Hoffmans Amazon profile that he is intending to start writing his book this summer

where is that? I have read his book reviews on amazon but i cant find anything else

 

[strangeloop]

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/egodeath/ "I'm on hiatus until June 2010...." BTW. Do you have any books you would recommend?

 

[maxfreakout]

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/egodeath/ "I'm on hiatus until June 2010...." BTW. Do you have any books you would recommend?

Ah thanx i hadnt seen that

I would recommend Douglas Hofstadter but im sure you already know about his books :lol:

Both books by Louis Sass are very awesome indeed, 'madness and modernism' and 'paradoxes of delusion'

'the hero with a thousand faces' by Joseph Campbell is awesome

'infinity and the mind' and 'the fourth dimension' by Rudy Rucker are both good

'metaphors in the history of psychology' edited by David Leary has some good essays in it

'the return of the perennial philosophy' by John Holman is quite good

if i think of anymore i will post them, nothing really compares to Hoffman's writing, i recommend cyberdisciple's ego death blog at http://cyberdisciple.wordpress.com he is a very good writer

 

[strangeloop]

awesome, thanks man...

 

[strangeloop]

I've always wanted to ask Michael what his opinions on such 'occult' phenomena as the I-Ching, Tarot and even Akashic Fields are.

Seeing that you are obviously of the same ilk.... What prey tell is your opinion of said phenomena?

 

[zezt]

Have YOU ever experienced losing someone you love in a road accident, or them being murdered in front of your eyes, etc etc etc.

This question isnt really relevant to the conversation, but yes i have lost a very good friend in a road accident a few years ago, and no i havent had anyone murdered in front of my eyes

The important point is, neither of these 2 experiences are mystical altered state experiences, the kinds of experiences you mention here ^ are both experiences you undergo while you are in the ordinary state of consciousness, they are 'ordinary state' experiences

Well STUFF your 'mystical'--you are making me hate the 'mystical' because in your defense of 'it' as something far superior to real life experience you aim to demean real life experience. I do not. I see all experience as sacred be it called 'ordinary' OR 'mystical'.
If you gain deep understanding from the slings and arrows, and the pleasures of life and have never had a psychedelic that is AS authentic, and if you are claiming it is not then you are inflatedly wrong and really have no insight from your psychedelic experience though you imagine you do.

Stop trying to make out only 'ego deather in a described Hoffman trip' are the only ones with any intense mystical experience. Every experience is unique. How come I know this you don't. it doesn't say much for 'ego death' does it, if you haven't the empathy to know what I mean?

The ordinary state of consciousness, and the intense mystical altered state of consciousness, are two entirely distinct realms of experiencing, - ie tripping and not-tripping are two entirely distinct types of experience. When you are not on drugs, you are in the ordinary state, when you take drugs, you enter the altered state until the drug wears off. Understanding this point has nothing to do with having 'empathy', it just involves understanding the distinction between tripping and not tripping, it is a very basic distinction

Well like I said, like Hoffman, your belief system creates a dualisty between 'psychedelic experience/ego death' and 'ordinary experience'. YES I know what is meant by psychedelic experience because I have had many experiences, but I do not share you are Hoffman's conclusions.

How do you know?! You sound very elitist and arrogant. IF someone, who is NOT your 'moron' which is very insulting to call anyone actually. does not agree with Einstein's theory of relativity for whatever reason that is their right. MAYbe they are right. Maybe they have an intuition that cannot be communicated in the scientific language Albert does it in---whatever, just because they disagree with some big shots THEORY does not mean you have the right to look down on them. And by the way, do you understand QM?

I do not understand QM, therefore I am in no position to say "i disagree with QM, all quantum mechanicists are idiots", if i did say such a thing, it would only indicate my own stupidity, it would say nothing at all about QM or the people who understand it or make theories about it

Understanding a theory is a prerequisite for agreeing OR disagreeing with it, you cannot agree or disagree with a theory that you dont understand, simply because you would not know what it was that you were agreeing or disagreeing with

You do not seem to have even a basic grasp of the ego death theory, therefore you are not in a position to agree or disagree with it, wait until you understand it first, then make up your mind, read and learn :wink:

Look, I saw this documentary about permaculture, and its founder, Bill Mollison said that he had met physicists who all talk about energy, and YET do not know how to live sustainably! See maxfrweakout? You may 'know' a theory, but this doesn't mean you 'know' life, and that others cannot challenge your conclusions about what you think you 'know'.

No how you speak about 'nonordinary experience' and 'ordinary experience' does seem dualistic to me

that's because it is dualistic, there is an obvious difference between the kind of experience you have when you are on drugs, and the kind of experience you have when you arent on drugs, these are 2 distinct kinds of experience

the whole point of taking psychoactive drugs, is to alter your mode of experiencing from the ordinary mode to the altered mode

aha, you admit you are being dualistic. Dualism--as Christian Rätsch told you in your podcast interview--is different from polarity! So say something is dualistic is not to understand the dynamic relationship. I am afraid you don't either, as you describe things.

and it does matter what psychobabble you use, you try and make out that our ordinary mode of being is static, and I dont see it that way.

im not sure what you mean by 'static', the ordinary mode of experiencing could be described as 'static' in the specific sense that it remains ordinary until you take drugs or go to sleep, but i dont think 'static' is a particularly useful or meaningful word to describe ordinary state experiencing.

Well obviously life is never static. It is always changing. Being in love is different than a toothache, etc. Like I keep saying, I understand this change as a continuum. I know that if you need energy to feel this change in a more vital way you need to eat good food, drink healthy substances, get excercise etc, have a sense of humour, know how to feel emotions, and so on, and psychedelic or sacred food is of course a very important part of life, but psychedelic experience and as this integrates, it is to integrate understanding of the sacredness of ALL life not just the ecstatic dynamic of the psychedelic experience and so-called 'ego death'. I can put myself into the role of someone who had never taken any psychedelics, and listening to you, and I am sure I would feel I was being put-down because I hadn't had not ONLY psychedelic experience, but yours and Hoffman's 'ego death'!

I rather see a continuum. That ordinary experience is always changing, and that extraordinary experience can spontaneously happen, but that often oppressive conditionings and so on suppress it, and that yes true ecstatic experience with the aid of psychedelics is profound, but it still is in continuum with our ordinary life. So to repeat i see it all as continuum, and not dualistically

tripping is an entirely different kind of experience from ordinary life, for example, when you trip you see crazy geometric patterns crawling all over the place, when you dont take drugs, you dont see these patterns - therefore there is at least one fundamental difference between the ordinary state and the psychedelic state (ie the presence or abscence of spontaneous pattern formation)

You CAn see those types of things AND have archetypal visions in certain states of consciousness without having taken psychedelics such as 'bi polar disorder' (and other so-called 'mental illnesses') for example

Ohhh Max. You nor me KNOWS what is like for another to lose a loved one!

I know perfectly well what this is likebecause i have experienced it myself, if you havent yet experienced it yourself you will one day because at some point one of your parents or grandparents is going to die (hopefully before you do). This kind of experience is definitely not the same thing as a psychedelic trip - ie an experience of the intense mystical altered state of consciousness

Of course I have experienced it. You don't understand what I meant. I meant that even though I have experienced losing someone this doesn't mean that I KNOW what it is like for someone else to lose someone, ie., what they are ACTUALLY feeling.
And you are making the 'mystical state of consciousness' into a fetish---cutting 'it' off from the continuum of feeling. Like I keeps saying.

There is no category 'losing a loved one' that you can use as some known factor to compare your 'ego death ego death ego death' with.

losing a loved one happens within the ordinary state of consciousness, it is an experience that occurs (albeit rarely for most people) during everyday life. Ego death by contrast does NOT happen during everyday life, it only happens during the intense mystical state when the ego comes face to face with the beautific vision of God (which is its own logical negation) and self-destructs

Actually it does happen in everyday life. When you have your intense psychedelic experiences you are having it in time, albeit a different sense of time--the eternal--but it is still also in time. It has a duration, a climax, and a 'come down', just like how we experience emotional states in life.

I was trying to paint out what you seem to be saying most of the time. That Hoffman's cartography of 'ego death' surpasses so-called ordinary experience.

this ^ is a category error, the ego death experience itself (not Hoffman's cartography of it) in some sense 'surpasses' ordinary experience, because ordinary experience lacks the potential to cause homeostatic state-shift to a radically new, religiously reconfigured level of consciousness

'category error" ? Isn't that a computer term...? :wink: What IS ordinary. You seem to have a 'category' error with your insistanece that all life not tripping is 'ordinary'. Is all YOUR life--not tripping 'ordinary'? If people ask you how your day is do you say, "oh, it's ordinary", if someone asks you how your holiday was do you reply "oh, ordinary"? Feel me?

You say this is because of religious symbolism?

no it isnt 'because of' religious symbolism (that is another category error), rather, religious symbolism symbolises this psychological transformation

So in other words for any psychological transformation it has to have religious symbolism--in your book?

So-called 'Bi polar' and other so-called 'mental illness' states can bring up all the archetypal imagery etc also.

bi polar disorder does not cause religious transformative regeneration as far as i know, it just causes a whole lot of stress and suffering

Is that so? Did you per chance see the video link above yet?

WHAT do you even mean by religious experience?

I have explained that very clearly several times, it is a kind of experience characterised by loosened associations, the kind of experience you have when you take a big dose of LSD on your own in a forest at night, for example

ahaaa, fine. This is a good example of religious or spiritual experience. Sacred experience in a sacred forest at night. Yes this can be life changing alright, but this experience doesn't HAVE to include 'religious symbolism' to make it sacred. Agreed?

But it is HIS [Plato's] experience. And that does not mean he can impose his unique experience on all reality as though it is 'the truth', and from there others are 'lesser'. See?

It wasnt his experience, it was an allegory about a fictional person living in a fictional artificial reality inside a cave, who comes to discover that the shadow-world which he took to be 'real' is in fact just a superficial illusion on the wall of the cave. This allegory allegorises the experience of the entheogen initiate who undergoes regenerative psychological transformation and comes to see that the ordinary world of people and objects is in fact just a very detailed, very consistent and very convincing illusion
'The Matrix' does exactly the same thing as the cave allegory, Mr Anderson believes in the reality of the world he is embedded in, then he takes the red pill (the sacred entheogen), is transformed into 'Neo' and discovers that everything he thought was real throughout his whole life was actually a just computer generated artificial reality all along. This is an allegory of the ego death experience

Well old Plato --although famous for abstractions--was surely basing this cave allegory on his own psychedelic experience in the Eleusinian Mysteries, but because his mental set was already of an aloof dualistic philosophical kind he wooud choose to INTERPRET his 'mystical' experience in an inflationary way. Further proof of this dangerous influential inflation can be read in his facist mainfesto The Republic where he sees people in categories which once in cannot get out of and thus need the leadership of the 'superior' "Philosopher-Kings" of which he included hisself “This is based on what some refer to as the “founding myth” but which is in fact “the founding lie”, (pseudos). This is that God has introduced different metals into the natures of people. There are men of gold, of silver and of bronze and iron. The latter are the labourers, the people who do the dirty work, for even the “perfect” Guardians who have a “vision of the Good” need people to clean up after them and to cook their meals. Those with bronze are the craftsmen, and other professionals.” And of course this idea comes from the Indian oppressive caste system!

"he [Neo, in the film The Matrix} takes the red pill (the sacred entheogen), is transformed into 'Neo' and discovers that everything he thought was real throughout his whole life was actually a just computer generated artificial reality all along. This is an allegory of the ego death experience"

Hmmm wonder from what the brothers based that story on--could it be the Platonic-influenced paradigm we are in? Also there is a link between Plato's philosophy and the Kabbalah, and the makers of that film were Jewish right? Influences.
But looking more at what your saying here---as I have said from the start, your view of reality is influenced by your belief in computationalism, and this is why you defend Hoffman's computer manula-like description of the 'ego death' experience. Like 'Neo' you feel convinced that reality is "just a computer generated artifical reality all along" (you share this belief with David Icke after his Ayahuasca experience).
I do NOT share this belief, as you may have guessed by now. I see reality as sacred!

Well like I keeps saying, this is inflation. IF the one 'coming down' goes around thinking that they are different and more advanced than the 'poor wretches' they come across then their trip has been an abysmal failure in my opinion!

it is a simple truism that the psychonaut is 'more advanced' than the entheogen-naive person, if you clearly define 'being more advanced' as 'knowing about the psychedelic experience'

when you know about the psychedelic experience, you are more advanced than someone who doesnt know about it in that specific sense of 'being more advanced', you have more knowledge than someone who doesnt know about this experience

In other words aloof. You think your hot shit.

Hmmmm, you know I found this podcast last night. Apparently it is a rare copy of Alan Watts talking about LSD. I just love the way he talks, and his sense of humour, but I was also listening knowing his future---that he was gonna die most likely from being an alcoholic, so this understanding tended to undermine a lot of what he was purporting to say. Irony and all that.
And I have been reflecting after why he did what he did. I am trying to figure out if there was some unaccepted contradiction going on. I heard him often in the talk seem to romanticize about gurus, and zen masters. Ie., that they could 'look right through you' etc , and that they had themselves seen through the game---the game of duality, and thus understood polarity. So I have been thinking about this, and this is where I am up to.
As you may know, in that period, the 1960s/70s, most of the younger generation were taking psychedelics and looked up especially to Alan Watts, Leary etc, and they were very into Eastern philosophy and mysticism! And thus you got this flight from psychedelics by many of the young who wanted to go to India and find a guru and find out how to get all-the-time-enlightenment! Remember the Beatles? They were doing the same and had their own guru lol
A common mantra from this set was 'when you get the message hang up the phone'. ie., many turned their backs on psychedelics, and because Buddhists, got a guru, joined a cult, became a yogi. get me?
I listened to a talk which included Ralph Metzner a couple of months ago, and he admitted that when he and Leary were doing their stuff in the 60s they didn't know much about the very anceint use, and shamnic use of psychedelics.
So whats my point?
I think the major contradiction with Watts was the idea that you must become somehow a 'god', and that from his knowledge and everything it was not acceptable to be 'normal', and thus would drink to 'ride the wind' so to speak, like he would often poeticise wine-drinking zennists and Taoists would do.
Also it came later just how dodgy many of the so-called gurus and zen masters actually were, and were just AS human as the rest of us, but using the gullibility of their followers to abuse them in various ways. I dont mean Alan did that, but the exposure and critique about it wasn't apparent when he was alive THIS is what I warn about!

this isnt really relevant to the conversation, but i agree it is wrong to put 'zen masters' or 'gurus' or whatever on a pedestal, because they are still just human beings

on the other hand, i certainly do put the entheogens on a pedestal, they are the sacred, hallowed teachers of religous insight, the keys to unlock the divine potential of the human mind. As Hoffman puts it, they are the origin, essence and ongoing wellspring of esoteric religion

Yes they are sacred, but so is life, is reality. That is really essential to understand in my opinion. If we are talking about plants, fungi, cacti, etc (though of course ALL substances originally come from the earth)--they ARE reality, are nature, and the eating and drinking of them should open our eyes and bodyminds to this deep insight, NOT have you putting down the natural world as a mere projection of a computer virtual reality.

:lol: thats a mouthfull, isn't it? and it begs a lot of other questions. 'Satanic delusion'? care to explain what you mean exactly by that?

yes it is a mouthful i got a bit carried away when i was typing that

'satanic delusion' refers to the naive unenlightened belief in the causal power of ego, ie the belief that i can control my future thoughts. This belief is monstrously illogical, a demonic, beastly mistake which is thoroughly exorsised by the ego death experience

So hmmm you think the majority of people who haven't had yours and Hoffman's 'ego death' are 'demonic'? Have I got you right?

" the enlightened ego" ? NOW your saying the ego does exist. This surely is The Madhatters Teaparty is it not?

this ^ quote demonstrates exactly why, as i said in my last post, it is not a good idea to think of anything in simplistic terms like 'x is real/x is unreal'

ego is real in a sense, and unreal in a sense, ego appears (convincingly) to be real, but it is not ultimately real

ego basically consists of a claim of being more real than it actually is, it is a hollow mental construct which claims to be a concrete entity, it is causally impotent but it claims to have causal power

unenlightened ego believes in its own claim of being a sovereign control agent, enlightened ego is humbled in the face of the true, ultimate source of control which is the transcendental ground of being, 'the eternal tao which flows everywhere' which is entirely above and beyond the ego's control

I personally think you are lost in semantics and make it up as you go along. This reminds me of the mental illness myth, very much, where shrinks etc., will also make it up as they go along, their 'mastership OF language' being their power!

"Szasz consistently pays attention to the power of language in the establishment and maintenance of the social order, both in small interpersonal as well as wider socio-political spheres:

"The struggle for definition is veritably the struggle for life itself. In the typical Western two men fight desperately for the possession of a gun that has been thrown to the ground: whoever reaches the weapon first shoots and lives; his adversary is shot and dies. In ordinary life, the struggle is not for guns but for words; whoever first defines the situation is the victor; his adversary, the victim. For example, in the family, husband and wife, mother and child do not get along; who defines whom as troublesome or mentally sick?...[the one] who first seizes the word imposes reality on the other; [the one] who defines thus dominates and lives; and [the one] who is defined is subjugated and may be killed."[7]"

 

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Ecstatic participation is not usually encouraged in the west. If you look at the psychotherapeutic design of consciousness researchers like Stan Groff, for example, he rather wanted people to be still and lying on their backs reclining, kind of cut off wearing eyeshades and earphones--Certainly not dancing about wildly in the wilderness, or a room even. His model is the psychoanalytical model which requires we go into ourselves.

This isn't true at all. Stan Grof is an exponent of experiential therapy, which involves complete freedom to express the emotions and physical sensations one is experiencing. It's true that in psychedelic therapy the client is encouraged to wear eyeshades, but if you read Grof's books carefully (which you haven't, because you can't even spell his name right), you'll find many examples where clients are free to do whatever they need to do, like shouting, singing, dancing, rolling on the floor or even engaging in masturbation. If you had read LSD Psychotherapy from cover to cover you would have known this.

If you had read any of his other books, you would have realized that the statement "his model is the psychoanalytical model" is utter bullshit. According to Grof's observations, healing results from direct re-experiencing and resolving of traumatic material, not from intellectual analysis by either the therapist or patient.

Dancing wildly in the wilderness is great if you live in an area where "wilderness" can still be found, but most of us modern human beings have to do with public forests and parks. Moreover, don't confuse psychedelic therapy, which involved massive doses for patients with emotional disorders, with traditional use for socio-religious purposes. Regarding the Eleusian Mysteries and such, we have no idea what kind of dosages were taken. But we do know that in psychedelic therapy patients were given between 250 and 600 micrograms, and at such dosages not everyone feels like dancing. Stan Grof has commented that he does think LSD can be used for recreational activities like dancing and strolling along the beach, but that for such purposes the dosages should be kept relatively low, between 50 and a 100 ug.

 

[Eldritch]

And what about MH's crazy acid rock lyric stuff, huh? What's up with that? All hail Ozzy as the enlightened one?

When it comes to the Beatles catalogue most entheogen partakers would identify more with "Tomorrow Never Knows" rather than MH's wishful spiritual crisis in Help's lyrics.

But I'm with him on the wild electric guitar solo, don't think anything can quite match that for otherworldliness, except for maybe bagpipes. lol

 

[zezt]

Ecstatic participation is not usually encouraged in the west. If you look at the psychotherapeutic design of consciousness researchers like Stan Groff, for example, he rather wanted people to be still and lying on their backs reclining, kind of cut off wearing eyeshades and earphones--Certainly not dancing about wildly in the wilderness, or a room even. His model is the psychoanalytical model which requires we go into ourselves.

This isn't true at all. Stan Grof is an exponent of experiential therapy, which involves complete freedom to express the emotions and physical sensations one is experiencing. It's true that in psychedelic therapy the client is encouraged to wear eyeshades, but if you read Grof's books carefully (which you haven't, because you can't even spell his name right), you'll find many examples where clients are free to do whatever they need to do, like shouting, singing, dancing, rolling on the floor or even engaging in masturbation. If you had read LSD Psychotherapy from cover to cover you would have known this.

If you had read any of his other books, you would have realized that the statement "his model is the psychoanalytical model" is utter bullshit. According to Grof's observations, healing results from direct re-experiencing and resolving of traumatic material, not from intellectual analysis by either the therapist or patient.

Dancing wildly in the wilderness is great if you live in an area where "wilderness" can still be found, but most of us modern human beings have to do with public forests and parks. Moreover, don't confuse psychedelic therapy, which involved massive doses for patients with emotional disorders, with traditional use for socio-religious purposes. Regarding the Eleusian Mysteries and such, we have no idea what kind of dosages were taken. But we do know that in psychedelic therapy patients were given between 250 and 600 micrograms, and at such dosages not everyone feels like dancing. Stan Grof has commented that he does think LSD can be used for recreational activities like dancing and strolling along the beach, but that for such purposes the dosages should be kept relatively low, between 50 and a 100 ug.

I actually have read quite a few books of Grof's but not LSD Psychotherapy--I had wanted to but then I went onto to something else.
Not sure where your hostile manner comes from really. Why you angry?
All i am saying is that unlike say the real wild ecstatic rituals of our ancestors as most likely happened in the Dionysian Mysteries the general psychotherapeutic model is more based on the psychoanlytical model of going into the 'unconscious' hence you would hear Grof speaking about his 'patients' putting on music earphones and eyeshades so as to encourage going within inspired with music

I also am familiar with his Holographic Breathing and that demands a sitter, so of course there is no group participation either though yeah people can freak out on their mat but even going to the toilet they have to be escorted by their sitter

Ourt ancestors and indigenous people will have had completely different worldviews from the ones influenced by the psychotherapeutic model although I know Grof takes all that into account

 

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Not sure where your hostile manner comes from really. Why you angry?

Not really angry, but annoyed about the way you represented him in that paragraph, because on practically every page of his books he criticizes the standard psychoanalytical model. If he had been in favor of that model, he would have practiced psycholytic therapy (using low to medium dosages, accompanied by verbal therapy). Instead he came to the conclusion, as described in the first chapters of LSD Psychotherapy, that psychedelic therapy (high doses and very little verbal interaction during the peak) is much more effective.