what's happened to Michael Hoffman from egodeath?

[BrainEater]

you seem to be too stupid. you see, but you don't recognize that they worship the devil.

AND YOU FAIL TO RECOGNIZE THAT THE CONSTANT UNKNOWN FACTOR IN GENERALLY SPEAKING ABOUT MEDITATION IS THE MEDITATOR. AND IT IS A FACT THAT MOST PEOPLE ARE JUST TOO STUPID OR BRAINWASHED SO GO FIGURE.

man i am so aggressive, it's not your fault, don't stone me for that please. sorry i think it's just that the way you formulate your ideas makes me aggressive. maybe because my own language-code-conditioning restricts me in seeing thru language like thru a lens.

sorry i didn't see you already found out the ego is the thinker and that what IS YOU isn't the thinker, init??

 

[magickmumu]

So you want to convince modern spiritual and religious people. Is that the purpose of this meditation vs medication debate?

 

[BrainEater]

if that is addressed to me i'd rather not want to convince them, the only thing i would want to do is telling them how stupid and ignorant most of them are, without being aware of it. and if they were aware of it i'd want to tell them how ignorant they are.
maybe they'd realize then they had been blinded or blind. however i'd leave that up to them.

 

[magickmumu]

I was addressing Max

 

[maxfreakout]

how can you know that the past can't be manipulated and is like frozen

You can know this by using basic logical deduction: once an event has happened and is in the past, it cant be changed without travelling backwards in time. Travelling backwards in time is impossible because nobody has yet invented a working time machine.

Therefore, events in the past are eternally frozen, unchangeable, fixed

that's just your superimposed deterministic idea of linear time on what you think to know to be true or know to be true.

It isnt 'my idea', rather it is a logical conclusion of the fact that time machines dont exist, you cannot go backwards in time and change events that have already happened

 

[BrainEater]

good boy!!!!!!!!

 

[maxfreakout]

I don't really dig that explanation of a 'frozen past'--it makes no sense to me. and is a conceptualization, and a conclusion.

The 'past'--what is 'it'?

the 'past' refers to anything before the present moment, things that have ALREADY happened, are in the past, for example, yesterday is in the past, tomorrow is in the future

in tis context, 'frozen' means the same as 'unchangeable', you cannot change an event in the past because it has already happened

For example with polarity it is very hard for many to understand deeply that there is no 'dark' or a 'light', nor an 'inside' or 'outside', nor 'life' or 'death', or a 'past' or 'future' etc, they are all conceptualizations abstracted out of a dynamic whole, and what that is is a mystery.

there is a past, or at least there *seems* to be, if i asked you what you did yesterday, you would be able to answer the question by referring to the past. So it is real enough that you can refer to it, remember it, tell stories about it etc

On the contrary it is living, and not fixed. It is 'fixed' as when the past is a blocked energy which is effecting your present sense of life. Hence some forgotten memory can dramatically heal you from a life-destroying addiction, or trauma from being raped, loss, etc.

the past is fixed in the sense that it is unchangeable, while you can recover from the trauma of being raped, you cannot go back in time and stop it from happenening, once you have actually been raped, the rape will forever be a part of the story of your life, it is 'fixed' within your life story

I feel ego is a word too

It isnt the word itself that is important, it is what the word refers to

"The terms "id," "ego," and "super-ego" are not Freud's own. They are latinisations by his translator James Strachey. Freud himself wrote of "das Es," "das Ich," and "das Über-Ich"—respectively, "the It," "the I," and the "Over-I" (or "Upper-I"); thus to the German reader, Freud's original terms are more or less self-explanatory."

So 'the I' I like this---I love Jazz and hate trance music. I hate jazz and love trance music. I have a trip and someone puts trance music on and I have an ecstatic understanding of the music, and so 'I' then --when I 'come down' am a larger sense of 'I' than I was before. I am still I though. I bety Michael Hoffman--if HE has had 'ego death' hasn't stopped saying I want, dont like etc?

the word 'I' doesnt refer to the properties of the self like what kind of music you like or whatever, it refers to the bearer of those properties

 

[maxfreakout]

So you want to convince modern spiritual and religious people. Is that the purpose of this meditation vs medication debate?

nobody is trying to 'convince' anyone, im just talking about ego death theory, lots of people find it difficult to understand the theory, so i am explaining it clearly and clarifying people's misunderstandings about it


there is no "meditation vs medication debate", there is simply the fact that you cannot trip repeatedly without taking drugs. Modern spiritual and religious people will bend over backwards to deny and distort this fact, but it is a fact nonetheless

 

[maxfreakout]

if that is addressed to me i'd rather not want to convince them, the only thing i would want to do is telling them how stupid and ignorant most of them are, without being aware of it. and if they were aware of it i'd want to tell them how ignorant they are.

the core of the ignorance and stupidity in modern religion and popular spirituality is the lack of awareness of entheogens

entheogen-free religion is apostasy

 

[BrainEater]

yeah probably but also at the same time, a lack of cultivating something in between in our ears, that does not promote stupidity so much, as stupidity has become teh weapon of the greedy to attack the purses of the stupid.

 

[ararat]

the past isn't anything more than an idea, such is the future and the ego. if you think about the past, you do it in the NOW, if you think about the future, you do so in the now, which, ultimately, is the only thing that is really there. did you ever arrive in the future?

being able to tell stories of the past doesn't make it "real", back then it was now as well. you don't find the past lying around in some corner of your room.

 

[maxfreakout]

the past isn't anything more than an idea, such is the future and the ego. if you think about the past, you do it in the NOW, if you think about the future, you do so in the now, which, ultimately, is the only thing that is really there. did you ever arrive in the future?

being able to tell stories of the past doesn't make it "real", back then it was now as well. you don't find the past lying around in some corner of your room.

the relevant point about the past regarding determinism isnt how real or unreal it is, it is rather the fact that the immediate future seems to be more or less under my control, whereas the past is completely beyond my control. I can decide for example to go and get a drink of water in the next 30 seconds, but i cannot possibly decide to get a drink of water 30 seconds ago, because what happened in the past is already fixed in place

 

[magickmumu]

So you want to convince modern spiritual and religious people. Is that the purpose of this meditation vs medication debate?

nobody is trying to 'convince' anyone, im just talking about ego death theory, lots of people find it difficult to understand the theory, so i am explaining it clearly and clarifying people's misunderstandings about it


there is no "meditation vs medication debate", there is simply the fact that you cannot trip repeatedly without taking drugs. Modern spiritual and religious people will bend over backwards to deny and distort this fact, but it is a fact nonetheless

I see
Those naughty spiritual religious people. :lol:

 

[maxfreakout]

hmm so your point is that our understanding of computers is too marginal in order to comprehend mechanisms of the MIND?

The naive, uninitiated ego is like a computer with a logical paradox programmed right at the core of its operating system, the ego believes that it is *literally* an independant control-agent wielding power over the immediate future.

When the ego undergoes psychedelic ego-death, the ego operating-system crashes and is then rebooted with an updated transcendent/shamanic upgrade

and we can't transcend this MIND without drugs

Without drugs you cannt experience the transcendent level of reality that is revealed in the intense psychedelic-state

and well your definition of drugs is blurry too

no the definition is absolutely clear and unambiguous, it is the entheogens, the religious/mystical experience inducing plants and chemicals, including endogenously produced chemicals like DMT and beta-carbolines

so it makes sense as endogenous drugs alter consciousness similarly like psychadelics trigger these alterations.

yes obviously because the endogenous chemicals ARE psychedelic, ie DMT.

however in my view it's childish to assume that the technological device called HUMAN BRAIN that we were given, cannot create the power necessary to transcend a creation of it's own (=MIND) and therefore create similar or maybe identical alterations of consciousness, assumed that we can use TIME to train the MIND.

It isnt an 'assumption', it's an obvious fact about the condition of 'being a human', - people typically can't/don't controllably trigger, in themselves spontaneous intense religious experiences without taking drugs, you need the drugs to do that.

hmm i think the difference between machines and living beings is LIFE and NO LIFE. why is that so hard to see?

What is 'life' that makes the human mind different from a computer? If you define 'computer' as 'information processor' then the mind is, by definition a computer, because it processes information

and why do you think you have to substitute religious experience??

You don't 'substitute' it, you HAVE it, only by taking entheogens do people *typically* get to experience mega-intense, mind blowing religious experiences

what makes you contradict yourself or not accept the reality of people acomplishing such a shift of consciousness, just by meditation???

But this is exactly what i have been saying in every post, *some* people, rarely, achieve intense altered states by meditating, because meditating *sometimes*, rarely (ie in some rare people) causes release of endogenous entheogens like DMT, but *everybody*, all the time is able to access these super-intense mind-bending experiences when they take a decent dose of an entheogen, LSD, mushrooms, DMT whatever. - Entheogens are a super-ergonomic tool for immediately accessing the transcendent levels of reality

 

[ochho]

The naive, uninitiated ego is like a computer with a logical paradox programmed right at the core of its operating system, the ego believes that it is *literally* an independant control-agent wielding power over the immediate future.

When the ego undergoes psychedelic ego-death, the ego operating-system crashes and is then rebooted with an updated transcendent/shamanic upgrade

This makes perfect sense to me, and actually correlates to my experiences. And so it must then mean, that the ultimate ego death experience can only happen once. And all other subsequent psychedelic experiences, even though fruitful, will never match that first one. Which also correlates to what I've gone through, because I've always felt I was never able to match the "greatness" of my first psychedelic experience

About the bubble experience article you linked to. Although I still find Micheal Hoffman's choice of wording very difficult to understand, I can see what he's talking about. It reminds me of something Alan Watts said that goes along the lines that we each live in our own universe that is created by our mind. And that while the color blue is "blue" to me, it might be "red" (under my definition of "red") to you, and there's no way of finding out. We just agree to refer to the color of banana as "yellow" and so on..
(Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I remember something along these lines ;p)

And thank you for the clarification about the "frozen" stream of thoughts subject. It makes much more sense now ;p

 

[Sticki]

Once your eyes are open, You merely repeat the process to refresh the spiritual connection, the mind and help undo some of the fresh programming you have been subjected to since your last experience.

I would agree the the brain works like a computer, However...
When your computer comes to an error, Who must click "ok" or press Enter?

The brain is the central processing unit of this great piece of bio-mechanical structure, This is why we have a soul. :mrgreen:

 

[maxfreakout]

This makes perfect sense to me, and actually correlates to my experiences. And so it must then mean, that the ultimate ego death experience can only happen once. And all other subsequent psychedelic experiences, even though fruitful, will never match that first one. Which also correlates to what I've gone through, because I've always felt I was never able to match the "greatness" of my first psychedelic experience

I think maybe there are 2 senses of 'ego death' - one sense is the trip itself where you die, that can happen more than once and it can happen to different degrees, if you trip hard enough you can always start to 'worry' to some extent whether you will be able to maintain your egoic stability until the trip ends

the second sense is the permanent psychological transformation which is brought back into everyday ordinary life, and in that sense ego death only happen once, after you have permanently upgraded your mental operating system you will never again be able to fully fall back into egoic delusion, because you will always have the memory of the transformative experience burned into your mind, for the rest of your life, and the memory of the experience serves as a constant correction to the ego-delusion.

So before ego death (in the sense of 'transformation') the ego itself is a delusion, because the mind fully, literally identifies with it. After ego death, the ego is transformed from a delusion into an illusion, because although it is still there, the memory of the ego death experience prevents the mind from believing in its literal reality, and from identifying with it

About the bubble experience article you linked to. Although I still find Micheal Hoffman's choice of wording very difficult to understand, I can see what he's talking about. It reminds me of something Alan Watts said that goes along the lines that we each live in our own universe that is created by our mind. And that while the color blue is "blue" to me, it might be "red" (under my definition of "red") to you, and there's no way of finding out. We just agree to refer to the color of banana as "yellow" and so on..
(Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I remember something along these lines ;p)

That point by Watts is exactly the point Hoffman is making in the article, the whole universe is a subjective appearance being generated by YOUR brain. It is a deeper level of scepticism that just saying 'colours might appear differently to other people', it is saying that even other people might not exist (ie solipsism might be true), there might not be any other people, since other people are all part of the subjective hallucination that you refer to as 'the world'

In philosophy it is often referred to as the 'brain in a vat' principle, the appearance of being a human with a body living a life might arise because you are a brain suspended in a chemical vat, your sensory experiences are being 'fed' to you by the vat, so everything you perceive as being 'real' is actually just a chemically-induced hallucination

 

[BrainEater]

yes, if we were a brain in a tank, we couldn't find that out, just by perception. we must trust our bodies. perception requires DUALITY. so well why do we choose to experience ego-death?? i think because we experience ourselves while thinking too much and we seem to build fake identities and fake personalities in our heads and at some point it becomes to hard to cope with these multitude parts of yourself, i sometimes even feel it like i can't live with myself anymore. it's pure terror in a way. well then what can we do then and why not stop it? find out why we seem to build these fake identities and stop it. maybe easier said then done but who knows..

and....... oh-ho so you're up to a holographic theory of the universe, or are you just not sure that such a model of reality might be reality??

peace :weedman:

 

[zezt]

I don't really dig that explanation of a 'frozen past'--it makes no sense to me. and is a conceptualization, and a conclusion.

The 'past'--what is 'it'?

the 'past' refers to anything before the present moment, things that have ALREADY happened, are in the past, for example, yesterday is in the past, tomorrow is in the future

in tis context, 'frozen' means the same as 'unchangeable', you cannot change an event in the past because it has already happened

For example with polarity it is very hard for many to understand deeply that there is no 'dark' or a 'light', nor an 'inside' or 'outside', nor 'life' or 'death', or a 'past' or 'future' etc, they are all conceptualizations abstracted out of a dynamic whole, and what that is is a mystery.

there is a past, or at least there *seems* to be, if i asked you what you did yesterday, you would be able to answer the question by referring to the past. So it is real enough that you can refer to it, remember it, tell stories about it etc

On the contrary it is living, and not fixed. It is 'fixed' as when the past is a blocked energy which is effecting your present sense of life. Hence some forgotten memory can dramatically heal you from a life-destroying addiction, or trauma from being raped, loss, etc.

the past is fixed in the sense that it is unchangeable, while you can recover from the trauma of being raped, you cannot go back in time and stop it from happenening, once you have actually been raped, the rape will forever be a part of the story of your life, it is 'fixed' within your life story

I feel ego is a word too

It isnt the word itself that is important, it is what the word refers to

"The terms "id," "ego," and "super-ego" are not Freud's own. They are latinisations by his translator James Strachey. Freud himself wrote of "das Es," "das Ich," and "das Über-Ich"—respectively, "the It," "the I," and the "Over-I" (or "Upper-I"); thus to the German reader, Freud's original terms are more or less self-explanatory."

So 'the I' I like this---I love Jazz and hate trance music. I hate jazz and love trance music. I have a trip and someone puts trance music on and I have an ecstatic understanding of the music, and so 'I' then --when I 'come down' am a larger sense of 'I' than I was before. I am still I though. I bety Michael Hoffman--if HE has had 'ego death' hasn't stopped saying I want, dont like etc?

the word 'I' doesnt refer to the properties of the self like what kind of music you like or whatever, it refers to the bearer of those properties

" Jaron Lanier, philosopher, visionary, digital guru and an architect of Virtual Reality - is worried. Individual creativity has begun to go out of fashion. People are being restricted to what can be represented on a computer. Not only is individual creativity old-fashioned, but individuals themselves. The crowd is wise and it seems that machines, specifically computers, are no longer tools to be used by human minds - they are better than humans. By endlessly devaluing individuals, and seeking to promote pack mentality over personal intelligence, are we deadening the human experience? A person, for example, is something that defies definition; it is a bottomless, multi-faceted thing - but technological advancements, instead of aiding human expression has increasingly come to define it. Seeking alternatives, this controversial and fascinating book is a call to arms against digital collectivism from an author uniquely qualified to comment on the way technology interacts with our culture. (zvg) Here’s the review from The New York Times: The Madness of Crowds and an Internet Delusion, and on Slate: The Geek Freaks"

You see Max, my main concern is that you here seem to be the one most enthusiastic about Michael Hoffman's ideas, and I might be tempted to really engross myself in them, because I am not exactly NOT a lover of entheogenic research and experiences, but you state, and have done a few times--and in defending Hoffman--that we are computers. This says to me that you are agreeing with Michael on this--implying that he means that we are? And THAT is exactly what puts me right off!

 

[strangeloop]

WOW! That was a painful post! It actually inspired me to join this forum. All I can say is... Maxfreakout, you are a saint! How do you keep your composure with these half-wits? What was it that Albert Einstein said? "Two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the universe." I'm sorry, that's a bit harsh, I guess what I'm getting at here is that I'm always amazed at how people of average intellect, can be so confident with their ontology. Truly a great stumbling block! I'm no Michael Hoffman, but I have the commen sense to know genius when I see it. Reminds me of the story of the guru pouring tea into the seekers cup, it's overflows and the the seeker asks "why". The Guru responds "what can I teach you? Your mind is overflowing like this cup..." Anyways, I'm glad to see this topic posted on here, I am itching for Micheal's return... Michael, if your out there.... Can you please let your audience know when we might expect your eagerly anticipated book?

P.S. BrainEater... CHill out with the "you are ignorant" and "too stupid to understand" comments. It makes you come off like a jerk, but if the shoe fits....